How do powerful elites maintain control of the rest of the population?

1. Cultural
Hegemony
domination by consent

2. “policing by consent”

3. “The power of the police to fulfil their
functions and duties is dependent on public
approval of their existence, actions and
behaviour and on their ability to secure and
maintain public respect.”

4. “To maintain at all times a
relationship with the public that
gives reality to the historic
tradition that the police are the
public and that the public are
the police…”

5. “To use only
the minimum
degree of
physical
force which
is necessary
on any
particular
occasion for
achieving a
police
objective.”

6. Base
and
superstructure

7. Economic Base
Cultural
superstructure

8. capitalism
education, family,
religion, politics,
mass media

10. hegemony

11. “The evil was not in bread and
circuses, per se, but in the
willingness of the people to sell
their rights as free men for full
bellies and the excitement of
the games which would serve to
distract them from the other
human hungers which bread and
circuses can never appease.”
Cicero

12. Powerful
Elite
The Mob

13. the coliseum

14. Powerful
Elite
The Mob
Crowd
(audience)
Media,Education,Police
(thethinblueline)
influence
control
‘common sense’

15. mass entertainment

16. “the illusion of debate”

17. “the bewildered herd”

18. and when all else fails…