A small organized mob can manufacture consent for the whole community

Evidence

We begin with the knowledge that some Irish had reasons to hate and fear people of black skin. We also assume that not all Irish felt that way, at any rate not strongly enough to join a white supremacist mob; this we know from our general knowledge of humanity, of Irish history, and, most of all, from the fact that the mob numbered only hundreds in a community of many thousands. Yet that organized force of hundreds was able to batter those who opposed it, or even those who held back, into silence and submission, so that in time it came to speak for the entire community. Rioters do not merely reflect public opinion; they shape it. — Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White, 462

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: A solitary individual could temporarily prevail against the mob’s herd pressure; A sufficiently large group creates mobile private territory that suspends stranger-negotiation demands — Lyn H. Lofland, World of Strangers_ Order and Action in…, 818; A large enough group generates a mobile private territory anywhere in public space (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• Hegemony runs on consent backed by a standby coercive apparatus #expands (0.85)
• A solitary individual could temporarily prevail against the mob’s herd pressure #contradicts (0.80)
• Under hegemony, organized consent displaces direct coercion as the main instrument #expands (0.80)
• Government-sponsored mobs linked police, church, and intellectuals in pogroms #exemplifies (0.80) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 2451
• Organized mob politics emerges when elites aestheticize the mob as vital strength #expands (0.80)
• A sufficiently large group creates mobile private territory that suspends stranger-negotiation demands #expands (0.75) — Lyn H. Lofland, World of Strangers_ Order and Action in…, 818
• A large enough group generates a mobile private territory anywhere in public space #expands (0.75)
• The New Left’s communal we was an aggregate of consenting individuals #contradicts (0.75) — Marianne DeKoven, Utopia Limited, 451
• Effective revolutionary parties unite force with consent dialectically #expands (0.75) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 595
• Democracy’s need for consensus forces complicity with the mafia #expands (0.70)