Structural violence does not manifest itself as force; rather, unperceived, it blocks those communications in which convictions effective for legitimation are formed and passed on. Such a hypthothesis about inconspicuously working communication blocks can explain, perhaps, the formation of ideologies; with it one can give a plausible account of how ideologies are formed in which subjects deceive themselves about themselves and their situation. Ideologies are, after all, illusions that are outfitted with the power of common convictions.

Jürgen Habermas, “Hannah Arendt’s Communications Concept of Power”, translated by Thomas McCarthy