A vague umbrella term like revulsion summarizes unstated negativity

Evidence

‘Revulsion’ is the operative word, an umbrella-term, a description, for everything that is negative about the Romanies and need not be stated. In this extract, this description does not appear alone and it is the more insidious as it appears alongside positive descriptions of Hungarians and is upgraded by the use of an extreme case formulation (‘complete revulsion’). — Cristian Tileagă, The Nature of Prejudice, 542

Categorization

• QUESTION: How do extreme-case formulations (‘complete revulsion’) vs. qualified ones shift the rhetorical force of prejudice?
• XREF: connects to: Disappointment shifted nativist targets to vaguer enemies — John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of…, 1626