(though they generally occur together)
and both dont necessarily depend on occurring among the *entire* majority or even a plurality. and there is fluidity and different degrees to each as well.

i think people are viewing mainstreaming/normalization as some tangible absolute barrier thats crossed instead of a spectrum.

like once you hit the mainstream border theres no more maintstreaming to travel to lol.

an example stringing all of the above together...

after a bunch of rule changes, lobbying, informational/educational efforts, dana white helped normalize mma to a general sports audience around early 2000s (it wasnt just seen as human cockfighting anymore). it took a while longer to normalize among larger society, family households, etc.

concurrently...

it started getting mainstreamed like around the bonnar/griffin tuf 1 fight, tito/liddell prime, in the mid 2000s.

it got further mainstreamed to a new level with gsp.

it got further mainstreamed to a new level when brock lesnar came.

then it got further mainstreamed to a new level with rousey/mcgregor.

even still...the large majority of sports fans watch nfl, nba and baseball. mma is relatively still small-scale (the entire ufc sold for the price of just the dallas cowboys alone).

so even tho the alt right might have been at tito/liddell or even gsp...kanye could potentially take it to brock. maybe someone else comes along and takes it to rousey/mcgregor.

doesnt mean the majority are active participants or agree with it.
doesnt even mean the majority is acutely knowledgeable or in tune with it. just means someone amplified its reach and helped it climb atop another successive plateau. something that was done before and could be done after.

make sense?