Diverting popular anger onto secondary targets protects ruling-class power

Evidence

Gramsci analyses this apoliticism elsewhere (PP, pp. 11-12). See too PP, p. 54, where he wrote: “Treves’ ‘expiation’ speech and the obsession with interventionism are closely linked: what is involved is a policy of avoiding the basic problem, the problem of power, and of diverting the attention and the passions of the masses on to secondary objectives; of hypocritically concealing the historical and political responsibility of the ruling class, channelling popular anger against material and often unconscious instruments of ruling-class policies; in essence, this policy was a continuation of that of Giolitti. … It was obvious that the war, with the immense economic and psychological upheaval which it had brought about especially among the petty intellectuals and the petits bourgeois was going to radicalise these strata. The party turned them gratuitously into enemies, instead of making allies of them, i.e. it threw them back towards the ruling class.” — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 2276

Categorization

• XREF: Links forward to how dominant-class strategies of distraction/misdirection of mass anger will recur in Islamophobia discourse analyses. — connects to: Restricting hostility to one precise target can intensify it dramatically — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 305; Attacks on out-groups divert attention from real crises and expand state power — Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America_ The Anatomy of…, 43; Hypernationalist rhetoric served to justify a supranational monopoly of power (+5 more)
• QUESTION: Could investigate Gramsci’s idea of ‘apoliticism’ among petit-bourgeois strata as a precursor to analyses of depoliticized mass media publics.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 2276

Broader Connections

• Attacks on out-groups divert attention from real crises and expand state power #exemplifies (0.85) — Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America_ The Anatomy of…, 43
• Clash-of-civilizations rhetoric ideologically legitimized both foreign wars and domestic attacks #exemplifies (0.82) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 421
• Hypernationalist rhetoric served to justify a supranational monopoly of power #exemplifies (0.80)
• Restricting hostility to one precise target can intensify it dramatically #qualifies (0.75) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 305
• Ideologically rationalized bigotry historically recurs against successive target groups #expands (0.75) — Runnymede Trust (ed. Farah Elahi & Omar Khan), Islamophobia, 30
• Politicians gain power by promising protection against imagined threats #expands (0.72) — Arsalan Iftikhar, Fear of a Muslim Planet_ Global…, 329