Very much this. The world has changed. It used to be that assuming other people have a low capacity for political reason was itself a "political position" - namely elitism. Folks like Orwell come from a long, long tradition of the educated and socially astute working class. Social media turned the joy of everyday political banter, rational scepticism, and good-natured disputation into a bourgeois pissing contest with seemingly life-or-death stakes.