Authoritarian states consolidate support by merging threats into one Enemy figure

Evidence

The years 1970–1974 witnessed the shift of social regulation from consent to coercion, the state’s knee-jerk recourse to “the law,” and the onset of a full crisis of hegemony. The state provided, not only the instruments of authoritarian governance, but “just that ‘sense of direction’ which the lay public feels society has lost” (315). This process was much enhanced by the construction of nightmares: the mapping of discrete areas into one, commodious, all-inclusive, protean but invisible “Enemy.” — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 1064

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces the ‘crisis of hegemony’ as the shift from consent to coercion, and the constructed ‘Enemy’ as a unifying ideological device.
• XREF: Echoes the Frankfurt School analysis of anti-Semitism’s interchangeable victims and the construction of a unified enemy.