Social change due to activism happens only if this activism has some support from the elites in charge.

A coherent and interesting contrarian movement is almost inevitably going to attract at least a tiny proportion of the "elite in charge", as the folk psychology of generational shifts tells us. Communists, fascists, libertarians, you name it. There's a reason why contrarianism is usually distributed in a quite specific and generally recurring way along society's pyramid. Elite support for unlikely social change not only can be wielded in clever and indirect ways with disproportionately significant leverage - it probably doesn't even need to be fully conscious.