Normal hegemony balances force and consent so that force appears based on majority consent

Evidence

The development of Jacobinism (of content), and of the formula of Permanent Revolution put into practice in the active phase of the French Revolution, found its juridical constitutional ‘completion’ in the parliamentary regime. The latter, in the period in which ‘private’ energies in society were most plentiful, realised the permanent hegemony of the urban class over the entire population in the Hegelian form of government with permanently organised consent. (However, this organisation of consent was left to private initiative, and was thus of a moral or ethical character, because it was consent ‘voluntarily’ given in one way or another.) … The ‘normal’ exercise of hegemony on the now classical terrain of the parliamentary regime is characterised by the combination of force and consent, which balance each other reciprocally, without force predominating excessively over consent. Indeed, the attempt is always made to ensure that force will appear to be based on the consent of the majority, expressed by the so called organs of public opinion newspapers and associations which, therefore, in certain situations, are artificially multiplied. Between consent and force stands corruption/fraud (which is characteristic of certain situations when it is hard to exercise the hegemonic function, and when the use of force is too risky). This consists in procuring the demoralisation and paralysis of the antagonist (or antagonists) by buying its leaders —either covertly, or, in cases of imminent danger, openly in order to sow disarray and confusion in his ranks. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1952

Categorization

• DEFINE: The passage defines hegemony’s normal parliamentary exercise as the reciprocal balance of force and consent, with corruption as a supplement when neither suffices.
• XREF: Directly feeds the toolkit for reading Islamophobia as a hegemony regime: how force masks itself as consent through newspapers, associations, and ‘public opinion’.