I love this list by Anand Giridharadas on pg 96-99 of his Winner Takes All. These three steps can be found in the approach of successful ‘thought leaders’:
- Focus on the Victim, Not the Perpetrator
- Personalise the Political
- Be Constructively Actionable
His point is how knowledge becomes plutocrat friendly, stripped of any critical impulse without becoming so banal that there is nothing to be said. In this sense, thought leaders often talk about real issues that matter profoundly, but do so in a way which depoliticises them and focuses on actions which will, at best, ameliorate symptoms while leaving the underlying mechanism which produces them entirely intact.
Mark Carrigan 