Large activated masses are ruthlessly radical because they grasp only simple ideas

Evidence

Yet this statement must be qualified. For, precisely where large masses are activated by political, social, or religious movements, they are ruthlessly radical, and extreme parties overwhelm moderate ones. The reason is that large masses can always be animated and guided only by simple ideas: what is common to many must be accessible even to the lowest and most primitive among them. — Georg Simmel, The Sociology of Georg Simmel, 3104

Categorization

• XREF: Links to the reading on information overload and how scale degrades nuance; also reverse-maps to Simmel-triad concerns about the third party’s distorting role.
• DEFINE: Qualifies the earlier claim about large-group moderation by distinguishing the inert mass from the activated mass.