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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsPluralistic Ignorance - The thing the Far Right vitally needs to enact it's agenda
In social psychology, pluralistic ignorance is a situation in which a majority of group members privately reject a norm, but incorrectly assume that most others accept it, and therefore go along with it. This is also described as "no one believes, but everyone thinks that everyone believes". In short, pluralistic ignorance is a bias about a social group, held by the members of that social group.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluralistic_ignorance
Whatever you call them... the alt-right, the far right, white nationalists, white supremacists, the neo Nazis, Republican conspiracy theorists, confederate flag wavers, etc.; they don't have the numbers. They really don't. That's not to say this radical right is just a couple guys who can be counted on one hand, but they don't have the manpower to directly influence policy through sheer numbers alone.
The thing they have going for them is a perverted hope that nobody will resist them.
The problem is sometimes we give it to them.
"They're mouthing off conspiracy theories about George Soros working with the martian sex colonies to stage school shootings again... better to just not make a scene."
"But they have a permit... I shouldn't resist them."
"This tweet seems pretty Islamophobic, but should I actually report it? Hmmm..."
Don't give them any platform and don't let them think America agrees with them.
Turbineguy
(37,212 posts)Too many big works for the wingnuts to read.
WhiteTara
(29,676 posts)"pluralistic ignorance is a situation in which a majority of group members privately reject a norm, but incorrectly assume that most others accept it, and therefore go along with it. "
Please explain this more fully. Thanks
ck4829
(34,977 posts)Now I have a name to it.
The ideal camps today's Nazis would have would have no guards or even gates - They want us to just go along with them and actually expect us to.
https://upload.democraticunderground.com/10029516981
It might be by apathy through things like #Walkaway or violence and intimidation, the right wing wants to create a political environment where it becomes "weird" to resist them because they can't win though some sort of right wing revolution via numbers.
WhiteTara
(29,676 posts)TV has numbed people, video games make people think it's all a game, and apathy is general and yep, we could be the ones rounded up in camps and sent to "the showers"
Well, at least I'll have a good hip when I go
Thomas Hurt
(13,903 posts)Ur-Fascism is based upon a selective populism, a qualitative populism, one might say. In a democracy, the citizens have individual rights, but the citizens in their entirety have a
political impact only from a quantitative point of view one follows the decisions of the majority. For Ur-Fascism, however, individuals as individuals have no rights, and the People is conceived as a quality, a monolithic entity expressing the Common Will. Since no large quantity of human beings can have a common will, the Leader pretends to be their interpreter. Having lost their power of delegation, citizens do not act; they are only called on to play the role of the People. Thus the People is only a theatrical fiction. To have a good instance of qualitative populism we no longer need the Piazza Venezia in Rome or the Nuremberg Stadium. There is in our future a TV or Internet populism, in which the emotional response of a selected group of citizens can be presented and accepted as the Voice of the People.
Because of its qualitative populism Ur-Fascism must be against "rotten" parliamentary governments. One of the first sentences uttered by Mussolini in the Italian parliament was "I could have transformed this deaf and gloomy place into a bivouac for my maniples" "maniples" being a subdivision of the traditional Roman legion. As a matter of fact, he immediately found better housing for his maniples, but a little later he liquidated the parliament. Wherever a politician casts doubt on the legitimacy of a parliament because it no longer represents the Voice of the People, we can smell Ur-Fascism.
Umberto Eco: Ur-Fascism June 2, 1995 NY Review of Books
Bold text mine.
Locrian
(4,522 posts)I think trump and ilk have had a similar effect. Before, most thought they were the super fringe group - now with trump etc they've realized there are others out there. Small, true, but more than they thought. More than *I* thought.
h2ebits
(632 posts)We should not let this topic rest simply on the far right. There are many companies that are cashing in on purporting to provide "security" by forcing bag checks and wanding people before they enter theaters or other venues. As sheep, we allow this to happen to us because we think that "everyone else agrees with it" when in fact it is truly Pluralistic Ignorance.
All a person needs to do is take a moment to look around, see the multitudes of people milling around in cramped quarters trying to get in, and realize that if someone wanted to commit mass murder, they certainly wouldn't need to sneak something inside the theater to accomplish their goals. Why bother; their targets are outside and easily accessible.
ck4829
(34,977 posts)paulkienitz
(1,295 posts)They have a lot of resistance to accepting that most people really do not feel the way they do. They'd like think that we're all secretly agreeing with them but are intimidated by the scary PC police so we don't say so. Every time we deflate that balloon and let them know that they really are held in utter contempt, it demoralizes and weakens their movement. People with authoritarian leanings are also people who depend heavily on social acceptance and cultural support for their hatred and cruelty, or at least the illusion of it. We have to take that away from them.
KY_EnviroGuy
(14,483 posts)All a leader has to do is claim a Biblical or Koranic foundation - typically using an abstract context - and millions will believe AND believe millions of others believe it too!
In addition, it's guaranteed someone will soon write a book on the subject!
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