A social movement can potentially exist without its participants knowing they belong to it.

Evidence

If, then, this struggle of mine against antisemitism, along with the motivations that drive me towards and through it, is part of a larger social phenomenon—a movement—this movement might have to be understood as either religious, social or political. Yet can there be a movement, a collective or social movement, that does not know itself? Does a movement have to be concerted? Could I be part of it without my own knowledge? Could I be framed to such an extraordinary extent? But is it at all, I ask again, a movement? Is there a war against antisemitism? — James Renton, Ben Gidley (eds.), Antisemitism and Islamophobia in Europe, 1192

Categorization

• QUESTION: The open question — can an un-self-aware collective constitute a movement? — is genuinely worth chasing in movement theory and sociology of collective action.
• XREF: Connects to questions about whether chronic noise/silence movements too are constituted without self-awareness; also to theories of ‘social movements as fields’ rather than self-conscious actors. — connects to: Leaderless movements that cede representation get represented by opponents — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 443; Universal anti-capitalist discontent stays inert without an organizing agent. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1645; A social movement is defined by three-way interactions, not solo action. — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 338