I think he was saying that if you are not a noble universalist, then the media will portray you as only being in pursuit of your narrow interests, and conclude

I think he was saying that if you are not a noble universalist, then the media will portray you as only being in pursuit of your narrow interests, and conclude that you are probably a racist in disguise. In addition to that they try to claim a monopoly on the label of universalism and deny it from anybody else at will. Is that correct? It took me some time to parse the sentence, I guess he would reach more people if he had used simple terms The fun thing is that this argument that only the elite may be noble isn't exactly new - it goes back to Ps-Xenophon in the ‘Political regime of the Athenians’ back in 5th century BC. He claimed that the demos is corrupted by his debased position, and that only elites are good (given the chance to rule exclusively, which they hadn't in Athens)