We introduce political salience into a canonical model of attacks against political regimes, as scaling agents’ expressive payoffs from taking sides. Equilibrium balances heterogeneous expressive concerns with material bandwagoning incentives, and we show that comparative statics in salience characterize stability. As main insight, when regime sanctions are weak, increases from low to middling salience can pose the greatest threat to regimes – ever smaller shocks suffice to drastically escalate attacks. Our results speak to the charged debates about democracy, by identifying conditions under which heightened interest in political decision-making can pose a threat to democracy in and of itself.