pullulate

A rising mass movement attracts and holds a following not by its doctrine and promises but by the refuge it offers from the anxieties, barrenness and meaninglessness of an individual existence.

...

Where new creeds vie with each other for the allegiance of the populace, the one which comes with the most perfected collective framework wins. Of all the cults and philosophies which competed in the Graeco-Roman world, Christianity alone developed from its inception a compact organization. "No one of its rivals possessed so powerful and coherent a structure as did the church. No other gave its adherents quite the same feeling of coming into a closely knit community."...The National Socialist Movement, too, won out over all the other folkish movements which pullulated in the 1920's because of Hitler's early recognition that a rising mass movement can never go too far in advocating and promoting collective cohesion. He knew that the chief passion of the frustrated is "to belong," and that there cannot be too much cementing and binding to satisfy this passion.

- Eric Hoffer, The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements.

pul·lu·late [puhl-yuh-leyt]
–verb (used without object), -lat·ed, -lat·ing. 1. to send forth sprouts, buds, etc.; germinate; sprout.
2. to breed, produce, or create rapidly.
3. to increase rapidly; multiply.
4. to exist abundantly; swarm; teem.
5. to be produced as offspring.


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[Origin: 1610–20; < L pullulātus (ptp. of pullulāre to sprout), deriv. of pullulus a sprout, young animal, dim. of pullus; see pullet]

—Related forms
pul·lu·la·tion, noun
Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.

- definition from http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/pullulate