Revolution: Somewhere between the clink of porcelain teacups and the mellow hum of indie music at a garden brunch, something eerie happened. The revolution arrived. But it came dressed well, almost too well. It smelt like Purple Oud and Guerlain L’Heure Bleue. It quoted Gramsci and Bell Hooks, but only after dessert. There was no tension in its presence, no heat. Rather, it sat comfortably beside heirloom silverware and discussed oppression in immaculate English, almost reeking of entitlement. In the walled-off lawns of elite Pakistani society, the revolution had become a guest, welcome and fashionable as long as it didn’t stay the night.
Once the domain of urgency and sacrifice, radical politics has now boldly entered the drawing rooms of those it intended to challenge. This is not simply about hypocrisy, nor is it a matter of inconsistency. It is a question of performance. Politics, for a certain class, has been reduced to semiotic play. Full of aesthetic markers: protest slogans, communist iconography, and Frantz Fanon quotes are deployed not as tools of struggle, but as lifestyle accessories. They decorate conversations. They signal cultural literacy to make it more digestible. They are not meant to disturb the host.
Although this phenomenon occurs in other countries, its expression in Pakistan remains particularly vivid. Our elite have always been performative. Colonialism may have formally ended, but its residue persists in our schooling, speech, architecture, and taste. It lives on in how we use English to signal superiority, how we reach for the West to borrow language for the local, and how we universalize the elite experience as though it were national. So when political radicalism is appropriated for this matrix, it does not stay radical for long. It becomes polite. Digestible. Marketable. The irony is undeniable.
In this new arrangement, critique is encouraged, as long as it doesn’t pierce the membrane of comfort. You can be critical of the state, but not of your father’s bureaucratic pension. You can protest Israel, but not the family business that underpays its workers. You can call for abolition, but not ask who cleans your bathroom. The trick is to speak loudly but aim nowhere in particular. Make it about systems, not relationships. The focus should be on capital rather than cash. The revolution must be disembodied. Sanitised. Poetic. So it does not hit those in power, only remnants.
The most revealing thing is how often the discourse now orbits around self-image rather than collective transformation. Radical politics has become a mood, like an ambiance of intelligence, a vibe of defiance, wrapped in a Zara linen co-ord. The stakes have become affective instead of material. Feeling like a revolutionary is now sufficient. The emphasis is on appearing critical, rather than being critical in ways that demand change or cause tension. This kind of politics is smooth and frictionless since it preserves every privilege while offering the illusion of dissent.
Aesthetic rebellion, in this context, serves a sort of dual function. It allows the privileged to distinguish themselves from their conservative peers and signal that they are “woke”, informed, and self-aware while still living entirely within the protective shell of class power. And perhaps more insidiously, it forecloses the possibility of more grounded, more dangerous forms of rebellion from gaining traction. The elite, having mastered the language of protest, anticipate criticism by actively engaging in it. They exhaust the vocabulary of dissent so thoroughly that those who truly need it discover themselves displaced, unheard and unseen. Those who have a voice funded by ‘sarkari’ money will passionately explain how their subsidised vacations are vital and their institutions as paragons of patriotism: naturally.
In this sense, the elite’s flirtation with radicalism becomes not merely empty but also obstructive. It absorbs and redirects political energy towards dead ends. The political becomes cultural, the cultural becomes consumable, and what should have been a confrontation becomes a dinner conversation. Power is never named directly. The ones doing the most harm are never asked to leave the table. Instead, we share memes. We post infographics. We always speak as if the real problem lies elsewhere. Somewhere external. Somewhere abstract. Somewhere outside of their state-sanctioned DHA or GOR cocoons.
But this is precisely the catch with politics: it is not abstract. It is lived. It is in the salary you pay your domestic worker. It is in whether you correct your uncle when he mocks a protester. It is in whether you stay silent in a room full of landlords. It is in whether you decline an invitation to speak because your friend from Lyari was not invited. It is at risk. That is what separates performance from politics. Performance flatters the self. Politics implicates it. However, in our society, the opposite is true.
There is also something distinctly colonial about how this elite rebellion borrows its aesthetics and terminology from the global North. It is not unusual to hear Pakistani undergraduates at elite liberal arts universities invoking theories of settler colonialism, prison abolition, and white privilege without ever reflecting on feudal inheritance, ethnic marginalisation, or labour exploitation back home. This borrowed vocabulary, while sophisticated, often obscures the texture of local struggle. It is easier to talk about “decolonial praxis” than to name your father’s sugar mill.
The disconnect is sometimes farcical. A brunch table in Islamabad may feature impassioned conversations about the Gaza Strip while the waiter is not allowed to sit. Someone might denounce neoliberalism while asking their driver to skip lunch so they can make it to a kitty on time. The very structures being critiqued — the exploitation, hierarchy, and servitude — are not historical artefacts. They are present, immediate and literal. And yet, in elite political discourse, they are somehow invisible. That invisibility is engineered. To critique this phenomenon is not to suggest that privileged people should stop caring about justice. But caring is not the same as acting. Awareness is not solidarity. The discomfort of action cannot be replaced with the glow of moral clarity. And perhaps most of all, no radical politics is possible without a willingness to betray the class that benefits you. Not symbolically. Materially. It should be seen in this way: you cannot smash the patriarchy and inherit it too.
Class betrayal is a term rarely discussed in elite circles, for obvious reasons. It demands a fundamental shift. It is not just about refusing to participate in dinner-party radicalism. It is about choosing sides. Sides that may cost you your comfort, your inheritance, and your belonging. It may mean reconfiguring your life so thoroughly that you are no longer legible to the circles that raised you. It might mean letting go of that H&M haul stitched by underpaid Bangladeshi children. It might mean shelving your Charlotte Tilbury makeup because it is not BDS safe. And most importantly, it might demand you stop mistaking inherited privilege for personal merit because a bureaucratic surname and taxpayer-funded everything do not make you exceptional. It only amplifies the sense of entitlement, making it appear even more grotesque.
It is here that the real difficulty arises. For most aesthetic rebels, the idea of discomfort is romanticised but rarely practised. They adore the vocabulary of resistance, the gestures of insurgency, and the iconography of struggle but the moment discomfort becomes real, the moment it threatens status, it is deflected. The Instagram stories go quiet. The memes disappear. What remains is the soft silence of alignment. Of return.
But outside these curated lives, the politics continue. Organisers, students, workers, teachers, activists, and journalists carry the labour of politics without performance. Their words are not always refined. Their theory is not always cited. But their risk is real. And it is through their struggle that change becomes imaginable. They do not need slogans that match the wallpaper. They need solidarity that shows up uninvited. It is also crucial to resist the desire to make this phenomenon purely moralistic. The problem is not that elite individuals are inherently bad. It is that they operate within structures designed to neutralise resistance. Capitalism, especially in its hyper-elite Pakistani variant, does not need to crush rebellion by force. It can simply absorb it. It can turn critique into fashion. It can turn slogans into merchandise. It can turn the revolutionary into a tastemaker.
That is the danger. The danger lies not in repression, but in co-optation. Not silence, but noise. A flood of discourse that says all the right things but builds nothing. That organises no strikes, funds no movements, and disrupts no systems. That substitutes visibility for action and eloquence for solidarity.
And so, the question remains. What does it mean to take politics seriously in a time and place where politics has become a brunch topic? What would it mean to move beyond aesthetic rebellion and into actual commitment? The answer is not simple. But it begins, perhaps, with listening to those whose politics are not performances. It begins by recognising that politics is not a posture. It is a position. And once you choose it, it chooses you back.
Until that happens, the revolution will remain where it has been for some time now. At the dinner party. Seated politely. Quoting Marx with a smile. And leaving just before the dishes are cleared.
