Authoritarian stampedes are latent but have been checked by cooler heads historically

Evidence

I do not mean, in pointing out this latent threat, to move you three paces closer to the panic button. High RWAs have been around for a long time, and cooler heads have usually prevailed. But as long as authoritarians do not think much about what they hear, and believe “X is our biggest problem, where X is a variable,” and are vulnerable to fear-arousing bombast, they are prone to stampede. — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 1297

Categorization

• XREF: Offers a useful qualifier or historical counterweight to alarmist readings in vault claims about authoritarian capture.