The Five-Step Sequence: How Psychological Capture Architectures Move from Installation to Weaponisation

Psychological capture architectures do not arrive in target environments fully formed. Mapping what configurations persist — their installation across historical time, their structural recurrence across ideological ruptures — establishes the processual question rather than answering it. The five-step sequence codified in this paper describes how latent configurations move from installation to weaponisation: capacity shock weakening state suppression mechanisms, mobilisation opportunity as institutional coherence declines, external sponsorship ecosystems supplying the infrastructure that makes local mobilisation scalable, narrative shock restructuring what is politically thinkable, and escalation as these conditions converge. Demonstrated through two primary corridors — the Bulgarian documentary record from Bogomil-era sediment to the Revival Process of 1984–89, and Weimar Germany's progression from the Dolchstoßlegende through the Enabling Act — the framework is confirmed in environments with no genealogical connection to each other. For analysts, the framework's value is diagnostic: identifying which step a target environment currently occupies determines what intervention is available before the escalation stage is reached and the intervention window contracts.