Egalitarian leveling of elites can serve as a mechanism of despotism.

Evidence

And the result of this “equalitarization” was a despotic government. In the same way, the Romans made Gaulish society more egalitarian by humbling the nobility, raising up the common people, and establishing their own Caesarism. — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 161

Categorization

• XREF: Resonates with genealogical/biopolitical critiques that later Foucault will formalize; also echoes the Islamophobia readings on how pseudoequalitarian rhetoric manages subject populations. — connects to: Absorbing rival elites into the ruling bloc decapitates and neutralizes opposition; A sub-proletariat can become the conservative bastion of a monarch against bourgeois revolution