Racist extremism and inter-group violence

 

Ethnic cleansing, Srebrenica, July 1995

Milan Obaidi is a prolific Danish social psychologist who has worked extensively on right-wing extremism. His scientific publications provide greater detail on his emerging views of the psychology of extremism. A useful document for the ongoing discussion of the mechanisms of right-wing extremism here is a well-documented 2020 summary of findings in the field of the social psychology of right-wing extremism here. The title is descriptive: “What are the psychological characteristics of people holding far-right beliefs?”. In this summary research report Obaidi singles out a handful of psychological characteristics that are associated with receptiveness to extremist beliefs and actions.

• Avoidance of uncertainty or ambiguity
• Rigid mindset
• “Significance quest theory” (SQT)
• Psychological distress and perceived deprivation
• Need for cognitive closure

There is a substantial amount of overlap between these characteristics and the BUC(k)ET theory offered by Susan Fiske and Shelley Taylor (link), and it connects to Arie Kruglanski’s 3N theory of the psychology of hate-based extremism as well (Needs, Narratives, Networks). The quest for meaning, the desire for certainty (cognitive closure), and the emotional discomfort with uncertainty and ambiguity all align with Fiske and Taylor’s framework. And like the researchers who have developed the theory of Social Dominance Orientation (link), Obaidi’s account emphasizes a desire for maintaining an “in-group, out-group” division of society in which the extremist individual is in the dominant group. This corresponds to a perverse quest for “belonging” in the sense described by Fiske and Taylor.

Obaidi and his research collaborators have offered an ambitious attempt to unify several lines of thought in social psychology about right-wing extremism.

[Obaidi, Milan; Robin Bergh; Simon Ozer; and Cornelia Sindermann, 2025, “Toward an Integrated Psychological Model of Violent Extremism,” European Review of Social Psychology: 1-50. ]

Here is the abstract of their paper:

ABSTRACT The global threat of violent extremism (VE) has intensified in recent years, evidenced by a significant increase in violent incidents. Despite numerous theoretical and empirical explanations across disciplines, a lack of cross-fertilisation between these research domains has hindered the development of a comprehensive understanding of VE. To bridge this gap, this review integrates diverse lines of research into a comprehensive psychological model of VE, synthesising objective situations, subjective appraisals, and key individual psychological factors contributing to VE inclinations. We aim to develop a framework that more precisely demonstrates how these variables fit together, highlighting the added value of integration over piecemeal investigations. We specifically advocate for a multilevel approach that incorporates predictors from various levels of analysis to provide detailed mechanisms for how these variables relate to and complement one another. We further illuminate a multitude of mediation and moderation effects, some already tested empirically, while others await future research.

As the abstract emphasizes, their goal is to integrate “objective situations, subjective appraisals, and key individual psychological factors contributing to VE inclinations”, which they believe have been largely distinct research topics in past studies of violent extremism. They emphasize that they offer a multi-level analysis of the emergence of violent extremism, which includes information about surrounding social and economic conditions, prevalent ideologies, and individual psychological differences.

The focus on violent extremism requires some comment, since it is likely enough that the large majority of right-wing extremist young people in the US and other democracies draw the line at violence against others. The violent extremists in the United States (like the Michigan Wolverine militia group accused of planning to kidnap Michigan’s governor, or members of the Base, a clandestine terrorist group) are a minority of the right-wing movement (or so one would hope). So how much of the research described here can be applied to the broader group of young people who are “all in” for racist language, discrimination, taunting, and other harmful acts, without crossing the threshold of attacking a church, synagogue, or supermarket? Are non-violent right-wing extremists pretty much the same as violent right-wing extremists, except the latter group has a lower threshold for committing acts of violence? At various points Obaidi and his co-authors make it clear that their ultimate interest is in explaining the factors leading to the violent incidents, not the routine hate-based activism contributing to episodes like the “Young Republican chat channel” scandal of 2025, and this suggests the possibility that there may be important differences between the actively violent members of the far right and the ideological adherents.

Another valuable contribution made by Obaidi and his collaborators is a major empirical research project on the effects of Great Replacement Theory.

[Milan Obaidi, Jonas Kunst, Simon Ozer, and Sasha Y. Kimel, “The ‘Great Replacement’ conspiracy: How the perceived ousting of Whites can evoke violent extremism and Islamophobia” (Group Processes & Intergroup Relations 2022, 25(7) 1675­ –1695).]

This research treats the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory as an incendiary issue currently being used to bring adherents and violent activists into antagonism and violence against other racial groups in the US and Europe, and these investigators attempt to provide empirical evidence concerning the population effects of this conspiracy theory. Here is the abstract for the article:

ABSTRACT Increased immigration and demographic changes have not only resulted in political pushback, but also in violent attacks against immigrants. Several recent terrorist attacks committed by White supremacists invoke rhetoric around a deliberate attempt to make Whites extinct and replace them with non-Western immigrants. Yet, while it is widely acknowledged among extremism researchers that this perception of orchestrated extinction or replacement has tremendous potential to lead to violent extremism, its consequences have not yet been directly examined. Using the Scandinavian context (e.g., Denmark and Norway), in two correlational studies and one experiment, we provide evidence that this perception is associated with the persecution of Muslims, violent intentions, and Islamophobia. Further, we demonstrate that these associations are mediated by symbolic threats. Conspiracy beliefs that one’s group is being replaced seem to drive hostile intergroup attitudes. We discuss the societal implications of this finding (i.e., generating fear, polarization, and hostile public opinion towards immigrants).

An important part of their analysis is their view that this conspiracy theory of “White extinction” is a deliberate strategic effort to show that some “enemy” intends to harm the white Christian population of the United States, and to use the spreading myth as a call to action by far-right leaders and activists. In particular, they call out Stephen Miller’s use of “Great Replacement Theory” to create support for his extremist strategies of expulsion for large numbers of the US immigrant community:

For example, recently leaked emails show the former White House senior advisor Stephen Miller promoting far-right extremist, White nationalist ideas, and anti-immigrant rhetoric through the conservative website Breitbart. Importantly too, he appeared fixated on the prospect of a “White genocide” (i.e., a conspiracy theory associated with White supremacists propagating the idea that the White race is dying due to growing non-White populations; Bellware, 2019). (1676)

Key to their interpretation of this conspiracy theory is the idea that the demographic shifts the US is experiencing are the result of deliberate efforts and actions by nefarious agents to bring about the decline of the white Christian population. The authors note that the same themes are being used in populist and right-wing extremist organizations and networks to stimulate fear and antagonism between “native” Europeans and immigrant people, often Muslim.

In recent years, the “Great Replacement” conspiracy has not only gained prominence among right-wing extremists but has also found a foothold among right-wing populist political parties in Europe. For example, while evoking anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant sentiment, such ideas have been espoused by the former leader of the Danish People’s Party Pia Kjærsgaard, the Prime Minister of Hungary Viktor Orbán, the Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, and the leader of the far-right movement Rassemblement National Marine Le Pen (Alduy, 2017; Kingsley, 2019; Kjærsgaard, 2020). Various conservative intellectuals and far-right organizations have also utilized language that stokes fear about the decline of the “White race” and “White identity.” (1677)

Obaidi et al connect this use of the Great Replacement myth to the 3N theory of radicalization offered by David Webber and Arie Kruglanski. This is a theory of social mobilization based on three large factors — Needs, Narratives, and Networks, with a strong emphasis on the “quest for significance” on the part of potential followers.

[Webber, David and Arie W. Kruglanski. 2017. “Psychological Factors in Radicalization: A ‘3N’ Approach,” Handbook of the Criminology of Terrorism, eds. Gary LaFree and Joshua Freilich, Wiley Blackwell, 33-46.]

Here again it is worth noticing the convergence of this line of thought with that of Susan Fiske and Shelley Taylor in developing their BUC(k)ET model of cognitive and moral development discussed in an earlier post (link). The Great Replacement myth contributes to all of the core needs discussed by Fiske and Taylor: belonging, understanding, controlling, enhancing self, and trusting in-group.

What about the methodology used in these studies? Like Lior Zmigrod and her co-authors discussed in a previous post (link), Obaidi’s research methods are largely quantitative and statistical based on interview and survey data for about 100 subjects. The research goal is to provide a strong empirical basis for making claims about the causal relationships among variables. Here is a summary of some of the findings offered in the Great Replacement paper:

The graph represents correlations and associations among the identified variables, leading ultimately to behavioral outcomes (violent intentions, Islamophobia, Muslim persecution).

Do these findings have important implications for the future of inter-group violence in liberal democracies? Obaidi and his co-authors believe they do:

It has been suggested that immigration-related conspiracy theories trafficked by right-wing groups may nurture hate and violence against immigrants and asylum seekers in the West. Moreover, recent FBI documents predict that right-wing, conspiracy-driven extremism will increase in the next few years (Steinbuch, 2019). Indeed, new reports indicate that far-right terrorism has significantly outpaced other forms of terrorism (Jones et al., 2020). More specifically, right-wing terrorist incidents in the West have increased by 320% over the past 5 years (Institute for Economics & Peace, 2019). One of the most potent conspiracy theories evoked by right-wing extremists, politicians, and commentators is the “Great Replacement”—the conspiracy arguing that there is an attempt to replace the White autochthonous population with non-Western immigrants. (1687)

These are highly suggestive conclusions, and the research is very interesting. However, it would be useful to have a more extensive theoretical basis for linking the empirical results to a theory of the underlying psychological processes that generate them. Obaidi’s reference in the earlier paper to “objective situations, subjective appraisals, and key individual psychological factors contributing to VE inclinations” remains fairly vague. (This is perhaps predictable in a research program that is focused almost exclusively on identifying discrete operationalized variables that can be separately measured.) So once again, we are faced with the question: what processes and internal factors create attitudes of racist extremism among young people?

(The Southern Poverty Law Center 2024 report on White Nationalist organizations and activism in the US is detailed and alarming, and is very relevant to the findings discussed here; link.)

Social psychologists on the appeal of antagonism and hate

Our current political scene presents an unresolved and important question: why have the ideologies of hate, fear, nationalism, antagonism, and violence had such appeal to a segment of young men across many countries in the past thirty years? How does it happen that many fairly typical twelve-year-old boys somehow become captivated by the extremist right-wing political ideas of racism, sexism, and nationalism? Previous posts have considered major generational events and pervasive social influencers as causes of the rise of extremist attitudes among young people. But this leaves the psychological question unanswered: why do these particular divisive attitudes and ideas find such a receptive audience among some young people? And why do messages of inclusion, democracy, and tolerance not have a similar appeal?

Kathleen Blee has devoted her career to understanding the minds of racist activists in the United States, and she emphasizes the importance of the developmental process involved in becoming racist. In Inside Organized Racism: Women in the Hate Movement (2002) she writes:

Intense, activist racism typically does not arise on its own; it is learned in racist groups. These groups promote ideas radically different from the racist attitudes held by many whites. They teach a complex and contradictory mix of hatred for enemies, belief in conspiracies, and allegiance to an imaginary unified race of “Aryans.” (Blee 2002:3)

A new generation of social psychologists have attempted to theorize about the emotional and cognitive systems of children and young people that might help to answer these questions. They have focused on the underlying “needs” that children and young people have, to which various ideologies and belief systems are appealing to a greater or lesser extent. Especially influential is work by Susan Fiske and her collaborators, including especially Social Beings (Susan Fiske and Shelley Taylor, 4th edition, 2021). Fiske and Taylor offer a compact theory of social motives, which they summarize as the “BUC(k)ET” scheme:

Social cognition is animated by social motives traceable to belonging, including understanding, controlling, enhancing self, and trusting others. This framework fits the history of motivations in psychology (S. T. Fiske, 2008) as well as current work in social psychology generally (S. T. Fiske, 2010) and social cognition in particular (S. T. Fiske, 2002). Although other frameworks are possible, this highlights some motives that determine when and how people operate in more automatic or more controlled modes. (Fiske and Taylor 94)

BUC(k)ET scheme

This is a proto-theory of what an adolescent is looking for as he or she approaches adulthood as a grounding of his emotional and social landscape. Fiske’s model places a quest to gain a sense of belonging at the center of this set of needs, as well as a thought framework that helps to “make sense” of the world the young person is beginning to experience (through personal experience, media, social media, clubs, and other social associations). The young person wants to find ways of feeling that he or she is able to control some aspects of the social environment he confronts; to find a basis for developing a positive view of himself; and perhaps most importantly, find ways of forming relationships of trust with some other people. Notice how closely this corresponds to some of the themes of extremist messaging and activism.

Consider these passages from Michael Kimmel’s description of some of the young men and boys attracted to the neo-Nazi movement in Sweden. (See this previous post on Kathleen Blee’s excellent special volume on ethnographies of the far-right (link).) Here Kimmel describes a twelve-year-old boy Edward and his inner life:

Insecure and lonely at twelve years old, Edward started hanging out with skinheads because he “moved to a new town, knew nobody, and needed friends.” Equally lonely and utterly alienated from his distant father, Pelle met an older skinhead who took him under his wing and became a sort of mentor. Pelle was a “street hooligan” hanging out in street gangs, brawling and drinking with other gangs. “My group actually looked down on the neo-Nazis,” he says, because “they weren’t real fighters.” “All the guys had an insecure role as a man,” says Robert. “They were all asking ‘who am I?’” …

Already feeling marginalized and often targeted, the boys and men described themselves as “searchers” or “seekers,” kids looking for a group with which to identify and where they would feel they belonged. “When you enter puberty, it’s like you have to choose a branch,” said one ex-Nazi. “You have to choose between being a Nazi, anti-Nazi, punk or hip- hopper—in today’s society, you just can’t choose to be neutral” (cited in Wahlstrom 2001, 13-14). …

For others, it was a sense of alienation from family and especially the desire to rebel against their fathers. “Grown-ups often forget an important component of Swedish racism, the emotional conviction,” says Jonas Hallen (2000). “If you have been beaten, threatened, and stolen from, you won’t listen to facts and numbers.” (209-210)

Belonging is the recurring theme here. And experts on far-right mobilization suggest that the “influencers” who craft messages of hate, antagonism, and racism are just as aware of these underlying cravings of young people as marketers of sports shoes and cell phones: they find persuasive messages and narratives that play into the need for meaning, direction, belonging, and influence that Fiske describes. The impulses of “belonging” and “narratives of meaning” are powerful, according to Fiske, and these deep psychological needs help to explain the appeal of right-wing extremism and “us-them” antagonism. Fiske’s guiding idea here is that political ideas, attitudes, and ideologies are adopted by the young person as ways of forming a link between a group and the individual’s own course in life. Racism is one way of defining one’s primary group for “belonging”: by defining other groups as separate, threatening, and inferior, the individual simultaneously creates an identity group for himself. And this construction of one’s social identity is fertile ground for aggression, hostility, and prejudice towards other groups.

Lior Zmigrod and co-authors have attempted to discover correlations between cognitive traits and ideological propensities (Zmigrod, Leor, Ian W. Eisenberg, Patrick G. Bissett, Trevor W. Robbins, and Russell A. Poldrack. 2021, “The cognitive and perceptual correlates of ideological attitudes: a data-driven approach”, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 376 (1822)). Their research is relevant to the theories of social cognition offered by Susan Fiske (though they do not mention her work). Here is a relevant description from their abstract:

Even less is known about how cognitive dispositions—individual differences in how information is perceived and processed— sculpt individuals’ ideological worldviews, proclivities for extremist beliefs and resistance (or receptivity) to evidence…. We uncovered the specific psychological signatures of political, nationalistic, religious and dogmatic beliefs. Cognitive and personality assessments consistently outperformed demographic predictors in accounting for individual differences in ideological preferences by 4 to 15-fold. (Abstract)

The methodology pursued here is statistical, based on surveys of a moderate number of subjects. (In fact, the authors are critical of the social-psychology approach that begins with an analysis of psychic needs.) Two kinds of survey instruments are used: one to evaluate the individual’s level on several cognitive measures; and the second to evaluate the individual’s level with regard to a set of political attitudes. The two sets of variables are illustrated on the following table. As the table indicates, “Strategic Information Processing” (a cognitive trait) is strongly negatively associated with each ideological feature except “Social Dominance”. “Caution”, another cognitive feature, is positively associated with each ideological feature across the board.

What were those “psychological signatures” (bundles of psychological attributes strongly associated with features of ideological susceptibility) that Zmigrod and her colleagues discovered? Here is their description of the “religion” signature:

The psychological signature of religiosity consisted of heightened caution and reduced strategic information processing in the cognitive domain (similarly to conservatism), and enhanced agreeableness, risk perception and aversion to social risk-taking, in the personality domain (figure 4 and electronic supplementary material, figure S6). The finding that religious participants exhibited elevated caution and risk perception is particularly informative to researchers investigating the theory that threat, risk and disgust sensitivity are linked to moral and religious convictions [92–97], and that these cognitive and emotional biases may have played a role in the cultural origins of large-scale organized religions [98,99]. (11)

This empirical study is interesting and suggestive, and it has some similarity to research surrounding the Right Wing Authoritarianism scale discussed in earlier posts (link). However, it does not illuminate what seems to be a key question: how are these cognitive attitudes formed, and how does a given set of cognitive attitudes bring about a high (or low) level of receptiveness to racist ideology and extremist political attitudes? We might even ask whether the causal influence might flow in the opposite direction: the person indoctrinated into religious dogmatism is thereby led to develop a low affinity for the cognitive skill of strategic information processing. These are the questions that Fiske’s work seems to provide a basis for answering.

How are an individual’s political values formed?

Human beings have attitudes, behaviors, habits, stereotypes, and values. And somehow these mental attributes are developed or acquired in the course of normal human social life. But how, when, and with what results does this process work? And how persistent are a set of attitudes and values once established in the individual?

The topic here is a deeply interesting question — what forms us as the adult human beings with values and a moral framework that we eventually become? For the past fifty years political scientists and social psychologists have discussed a theory of the formation of political attitudes and values that emphasizes the “impressionable years”. This theory holds that children are fairly fluid in their values and political affinities, and that young people are most open to new values and ideas in the years between 17 and 25 — essentially the years of a traditional university education. And there seems to be survey evidence supporting the idea that the formative events of that period in a given person’s life become bedrock to their political identities, with relatively little change in later years.

David Sears is one of the early founders of this approach. He presented some of his ideas as early as 1975, and in 1983 he describes the “impressionable years” hypothesis in these terms:

A third view could be termed the impressionable years viewpoint, which suggests that any dispositions are unusually vulnerable in late adolescence and early adulthood, given strong enough pressure to change. In other stages of life, people are resistant to change, and of course, even in the most vulnerable life stage, they would not change in the absence of substantial pressure to change. At all ages, the content of the disposition is irrelevant. A specific and particularly interesting instance of the impressionable years hypothesis is the generational effect. This occurs when a sizable number of those in the supposedly impressionable life stage (late adolescence and earlly adulthood) are subjected to a common massive pressure to change on some particular issue, for example, when the nation is engaged in an unpopular war. It presumably yields interactions of birth cohort and dispositional content. The final viewpoint is persistence, which suggests that the residues of early (preadult) socialization are relatively immune to change in later years. This asserts a simple main effect of age, with dispositions acquired primarily in the preadult years. (“The Persistence of Early Political Predispositions: The Roles of Attitude Object and Life Stage”, Wheeler and Shaver, Review of Personality and Social Psychology, 1983: 81-82)

This theory suggests that the ambient political and cultural environment of one’s “impressionable years” (18-25) represents a powerful influence upon his or her lifetime political attitudes and values. The theory has been subjected to some rigorous quantitative efforts at empirical evaluation, with some evidence supporting its accuracy. Especially interesting is Krosnick and Alwin, “Aging and Susceptibility to Attitude Change” (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology [1989] 57: 3 : 416-425). They found a reasonable level of support for the impressionable-years hypothesis. Here is their abstract:

Two hypotheses about the relation between age and susceptibility to attitude change were tested. The impressionable years hypothesis proposes that individuals are highly susceptible to attitude change during late adolescence and early adulthood and that susceptibility drops precipitously immediately thereafter and remains low throughout the rest of the life cycle. The increasing persistence hypothesis proposes that people become gradually more resistant to change throughout their lives. Structural equation models were applied to data from the 1956-1960,1972-1976, and 1980 National Election Panel Studies in order to estimate the stability of political attitudes and unreliability in measures of them. The results support the impressionable years hypothesis and disconfirm the increasing persistence hypothesis. A decrease in the over-time consistency of attitude reports among 66- to 83-year-olds was found to be due to increased random measurement error in their reports, not to increased attitude change.

For the Boomer generation (or the middle part of it anyway), the impressionable years were 1966-1974 or thereabouts. Major events during the period? Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in 1968. Major unrest along racial lines occurred in dozens of cities in the US, including Chicago, Newark, and Los Angeles. The Kerner Commission report on urban unrest was released in 1968. The war in Vietnam became more and more divisive for American young people. The Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act had been enacted in 1964 and 1965. Large demonstrations took place in Chicago in 1968 during the Democratic Convention. The first Moon landing took place in 1969. The feminist movement became a powerful national voice for equality in 1970 or so. The Watergate scandal and President Nixon’s resignation took place in 1972 and 1974. Tumult, large social protest movements, corrupt politicians, a seemingly “no-exit” war in Vietnam — the impressionable years for men and women born around 1950 were very different from those of people born fifteen years earlier or fifteen years later. With only one or two exceptions, these events helped to create habits of mind that counseled resistance, the power of public opposition to injustice, and the particular evils of American racism.

How does the impressionable-years theory contribute to the question of the rise of far-right attitudes and values (racism, xenophobia, receptivity to an authoritarian leader, male supremacy) among some young American and European men in the 2010s and forward? Were there features of life for young men and preadults in the period of roughly 1995-2010 that would explain the eruption of racist and authoritarian attitudes in the cohort coming of age during those years?

Two large factors are often mentioned. First is the prominence of racist and extremist social media influencers who have captured sizable audience of young men to subscribe to their hateful conspiracy theories. Nick Fuentes is just one example. But this isn’t entirely helpful; aren’t these right-wing entrepreneurs responding to the demand for hate created by an emerging generation rather than creating it? And second is the drumbeat of “anti-woke” impulses, trolling and “owning the libs”, and deliberately flouting norms like “don’t admire the Nazis”, “don’t deny the Holocaust”, or “don’t use the language of vile racism” in political discourse. (This is reflected in the recent scandals of encrypted chats by young GOP activists revealed in fall 2025.) Some of this extends back to the reckless language of conservative activists like Pat Buchanan and the John Birch Society (link), whose ranting took place before many of these young men were born. These “anti-woke” thrusts seen to resonate with this segment of young conservative men. Offending people is the goal, not the unfortunate side effect. And the “manosphere” is where it percolates in social media posts, game chats, Youtube videos, and encrypted Telegram chat rooms. But here again — did the John Birch Society and the Tea Party lay the ground for the radical far-right attitudes of one segment of Gen Z, or do we need to look for other causes that more directly impacted the lives of these young people?

The rise of the political attitudes of far-right extremism among young people is quite dangerous for our democracy, and dangerous for the groups who wind up being the objects of the vitriol. The language and demonstration of racist and neo-nazi social-political attitudes reflected in the “Unite the Right” riots in Charlottesville in 2017 speaks for itself: this is a movement based on white supremacy, Christian nationalism, and nostalgia for “strong leaders” who can fight for these values. And Trump, his closest allies, and his MAGA movement seem to encourage this hate-based ideological world. Stephen Miller is a true believer and Donald Trump has a long history of racist statements and ridicule. 

There is another complication as well: the far-right extremist faction of this age group is virulent and uninhibited; but it is a minority of its own generation. There are other “political attitude groups” in the same generation whose values are quite different — egalitarian, anti-racist, and affirmative of the value of an inclusive multicultural democracy. And, of course, there is the large group of young people who are disaffected from existing political institutions in the United Staes, frustrated by diminished opportunities for themselves and others, but inclined to turn away from any kind of political activism at all. They are “disaffected and disinvolved”. So the “impressionable years” hypothesis has a bit of a problem here as well: how is it that the experience world of the United States for young people in the period 1995-2010 gave rise to such different families of political attitudes among its young people? Part of the answer probably lies with the fact that the experiences of daily life differ widely across social and economic classes in the United States, across regions of the country, and across racial lines. So we might hypothesize that young men in Hamtramck, Michigan whose childhood reflected persistent deprivation; who did not find opportunities in high school that led either to better-paying job opportunities or to higher education; and who developed a rising level of resentment when they visited Somerset Mall in Oakland County for the standard of living that would never be theirs might develop political attitudes that highlighted resentment, disassociation from political loyalties, and an openness to antagonism to other ethnic and racial groups.

This topic relates to the questions raised by Desante and Smith in Racial Stasis (link), who focus on whether there has been substantial generational change on the topic of racial attitudes and prejudice since the 1960s.

Group identities and inclusive multicultural democracy

The United States is a multicultural democracy. This is simply an empirical fact; the country is a democracy (imperfect by many important measures); and it is multiracial, multi-ethnic, and multi-national. So what is involved in helping bring about a transition to an “inclusive” multicultural democracy — a social and political order embodying fundamental equality across all groups, developing a political psychology of mutual respect for the dignity and freedoms of members of other groups, and creating an environment of reasonably harmonious social and political life across and within different communities?

Jack Citrin and David Sears address some of these questions in American Identity and the Politics of Multiculturalism (2014). The book is a notable contribution in many dimensions, but of special interest to the topic of inclusive democracy is their effort to gain empirical insight into the “ethnic” or group identities of the groups that make up our population, and some ideas about the social processes that contribute to the formation of those identities. Here is how they characterize social identities:

Social identities refer to the dimensions of one’s self-concept defined by perceptions of similarity with some people and difference from others. They develop because people categorize themselves and others as belonging to groups and pursue their goals through membership in these groups. They have political relevance because they channel feelings of mutuality, obligation, and antagonism, delineating the contours of one’s willingness to help others as well as the boundaries of support for policies allocating resources based on group membership. Indeed, the intimate connection between the personal and the social bases of self-regard becomes clear when one recalls how quickly an insult to the dignitity of one’s group can trigger ethnic violence. (Citrin and Sears 2014: 31)

A person’s social identity may depend on many different kinds of personal characteristics: religion (evangelical vs. Protestant vs. Muslim), gender (M, F, X), region (Midwestern vs. South vs. Long Island), or occupation (blue collar, white collar, service). But Citrin and Sears underline the particular importance of racial and ethnic affiliations in U.S. social and political life.

This approach views racial and ethnic minorities as having especially strong ethnic identities, a sense of common fate with fellow group members, and perceptions of discrimination against their own group. These psychological foundations, we suggest, underlie the normative precepts of identity politics and multiculturalist ideology, particularly resonating with its emphasis on privileging ethnicity as a primary social identity. (19)

And they draw special attention to the relatively unique features of African-American identity in the United States, which they refer to as “black exceptionalism”:

Third, the black exceptionalism model hypothesizes that African Americans have always faced a uniquely powerful color line, one that is not completely impermeable but that continues to be difficult to crack. Despite their linguistic assimilation and their significant and ongoing contributions to a common popular culture, many blacks are excluded by the legacy of the past from the level of integration into the mainstream that voluntary immigrant groups have undergone, and, we argue, are continuing to undergo. Indeed, of all the major ethnic and racial groups blacks have, on average, by far the strongest levels of aggrieved ethnic group consciousness. Young blacks are especially likely to have strong group consciousness, suggesting enduring obstacles to interethnic cooperation. (22)

The black exceptionalism perspective argues that African Americans remain subjectd to uniquely high levels of prejudice and discrimination. Key to this view is the notion of the inertial power of history. Even as laws change, fundamental social practices and the mentalities of ordinary people typically follow only slowly, as in the classic contrast of “stateways” with “folkways.” The residues of racial prejudice in the behavior and attitudes of ordinary Americans have persisted long after the Emancipation Proclamation and 1960s-era civil rights legislation eliminated formalized racial inequality from the law books. (35)

It is important to reflect on these last two points. The persistence of racial prejudice and discrimination in US society is evident. There is indeed a “uniquely powerful color line” in the US. Likewise, the consequent social, economic, and political disparities for African American individuals and families are well-documented, whether we consider health status, family wealth, or educational opportunities. Black exceptionalism is not simply a perspective; it is a well understood historical reality (though a reality that the Trump administration is working very hard to conceal). (Here is an earlier post on this topic.)

In this book, and the research supporting it, Citrin and Sears are primarily interested in a problem that is somewhat distinct from the question of white racial attitudes. They are interested in the question of “national identity” in the context of multiple “ethnic or racial identities”, which they regard as the key issue raised by multiculturalism. Does the fact that Alice identifies as an African American woman make her less likely to have a strong affinity with the nation as a whole? Is she less “patriotic” than a typical member of another ethnic group? Is there a process of “assimilation” through which local identities (“Polish-American”, “Cuban-American”) subside in favor of a composite “American” identity? (For that matter, is this part of the hysterical reaction offered to the Bad Bunny halftime show by the right?)

On this orientation, the question raised by American Identity and the Politics of Multiculturalism is whether specific ethnic and racial identities are compatible with an overarching “civic” or “national” identity. They consider three broad frameworks: cosmopolitan liberalism, soft multiculturalism, and hard multiculturalism. The question of whether levels of “racial and ethnic antagonism” have changed in various groups is secondary. In fact, the topic of generational change in racial attitudes — the question of whether Millennials are less racist than Boomers — is not addressed here directly at all. And yet Sears is himself one of the chief architects of the “symbolic racism” school of thought — the idea that the key change between generations has been the replacement of “old-fashioned biological racism” by a more “color-blind” racism that nonetheless perpetuates antagonism and fear by whites of African Americans.

So how are we to move beyond this “uniquely powerful color line”? Racism is a reality that is conveyed through individual actions and institutional effects. Part of progressive change must take the form of change of attitudes and culture on the part of white people, and of young people in particular. So it is especially important to have empirical and sociological data about the evolution of white racial attitudes since 1950. How have white attitudes, beliefs, and stereotypes about African American people changed during these decades? Has there been generational change? The “impressionable years” hypothesis—which suggests that individuals are highly susceptible to attitude change during late adolescence and early adulthood, and then “crystallize” and remain stable for the rest of their lives—is a cornerstone of some theories of political socialization (Krosnick and Alwin, “Aging and susceptibility to attitude change”). Did the dramatic moments and struggles of the civil rights movement change the way that young white people thought about their black compatriots? (The revolution was televised!) Did the Obama presidency or the Black Lives Movement move the dial? Are we a less racist society today when it comes to attitudes, stereotypes, and expectations? The arguments offered by DeSante and Smith in Racial Stasis suggest — not very much (link). And Eduardo Bonilla-Silva (2022) fills in many of the blanks in Racism Without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in America. We need to have a new surge of practical thinking about how a more genuinely inclusive and respectful “culture of multiculturalism” will come about.

New thinking about generational change about race

The United States has a long history of racism against African-Americans, at multiple levels. At the level of individuals, we have a history of negative attitudes, stereotypes, fears, and antagonisms that are built into the social consciousness of white men and women about African-Americans. Racist attitudes about “genetic inferiority”, crime, and other negative stereotypes have persisted since the slave period. At the level of behavior, institutions and individuals in “majority society” discriminate against African-American men, women, and children. The code of inter-racial behavior embodied in the Jim Crow epoch has continuing relevance to contemporary society, and discrimination in employment and other socially important opportunities persists. And then there is “structural racism” or “institutional racism” — the persistence of patterns of disparity and disadvantage for African-American individuals and families that seem to result from the workings of the institutions themselves. Residential segregation and its consequences provide a clear illustration of structural racism, and the persistence of health and longevity disparities by race illustrates the deadly seriousness of these patterns of unequal treatment. (Here is an earlier post on racial disparities.)

Observers have recognized for decades that American society needs to change in order to eliminate these facts of racism and substantive disparity of outcomes. But what kinds of change are called for? There is a comforting theory of change that seems to have some empirical basis. It is the idea that each cohort of Americans has become less racist and more tolerant of diversity than its predecessor cohort. On this account, the “silent generation” (1928-1945) had more explicitly racist attitudes than the baby boomers (1946-1964), Gen X (1965-1980), and Gen Z (1996-?). Each successive cohort was more accepting of racial diversity than its predecessor. This narrative suggests that racism and its legacy will die out as the more tolerant generations replace their less tolerant predecessors. GlobeScan, a global public opinion research organization, published the results of a brief survey on this topic in 2023 (link):

This report offers an empirical snapshot of the change across generations that is evident in some public opinion surveys: that concern about racial discrimination has steadily increased across recent generations of people. This is a comforting storyline for anyone who cares about an inclusive multicultural democracy. But Christopher DeSante and Candis Watts Smith argue in Racial Stasis: The Millennial Generation and the Stagnation of Racial Attitudes in American Politics (2020) that the storyline is fundamentally incorrect.

DeSante and Smith do not dispute that the generations since the 1940s have indeed experienced a shift in racial attitudes away from overt and explicit “biological racism”. Generations since the baby boom of the 1950s have internalized more “race-neutral” ways of describing current realities. And they have expressed rising discomfort with the fact of continuing racial discrimination. But these generations — GenX, Millennials, and GenZ in particular — appear not to have moved forward to the logical conclusion — the need for supporting the policy changes that would be effective in addressing the continuing realities of racial discrimination. This is the “stagnation and stasis” to which DeSante and Smith refer in the title of the book: progress on ending racism appears to have stalled.

The heart of their argument involves the question of how to measure “racist attitudes” among individuals. For several decades the primary tool of social-psychological measurement of racial attitudes has been based on the concept of “racial resentment” or symbolic racism. Survey questions were designed to elicit the subject’s level of resentment, fear, or antagonism towards members of another race. DeSante and Smith argue that this approach is no longer satisfactory as a measurement tool. They maintain that racism is inherently multidimensional, involving emotions and cognitive assumptions and frameworks, and a satisfactory measure needs to permit observation of several of these dimensions in the subjects of a survey. Instead they offer a four-dimensional framework that they call FIRE (Fear, Institutionalist Racism, and Empathy), and they use a set of survey questions that allow measurement of each dimension. These questions are designed to capture the emotional and cognitive components of “attitudes about race” among individuals in a racially mixed society.

Their measurement tool elaborates on these four questions:

-- I am fearful of people of other races.
-- White people in the US have certain advantages because of the color of their skin.
-- Racial problems in the US are rare, isolated situations.
-- I am angry that racism exists. (DeSantes and Smith 2020: 227)

The questions are borrowed from several other survey instruments and are validated using statistical tools of consistency and predictive value. Here are the results of using these questions on the 2016 Cooperative Congressional Election Study (White respondents only).

The results are striking. Millennials are no less “racist” on average than the population of older whites on each of these measures. Here are the mean values for each question:

• -- “Fearful of other races” 3.83 vs. 3.87
• -- “Recognize whites have advantages” 2.98 vs. 2.48
• -- “Racial problems are rare” 3.64 vs. 3.68
• -- “Angry racism exists” 1.78 vs. 1.59

On average, Millennials demonstrate the same level of racist attitudes as older whites. The pattern is somewhat different when we compare “strongly agree” and “somewhat agree” responses to the four questions.

• -- “Fearful of other races” 14.36 vs. 14.35
• --  “Recognize whites have advantages” 43.06 vs. 59.01
• -- “Racial problems are rare” 21.28 vs. 19.59
• -- “Angry racism exists” 76.84 vs. 85.37

There are two significant differences in these “agree” responses. Millennials are more likely to agree that “whites have advantages” and agree more frequently that they are “angry racism exists”. Millennials are more likely to disagree or strongly disagree that they are “fearful of other races”. But overall, DeSantes and Smith argue that these differences are small, indicating that little change has occurred between the generations born before 1981 and the Millennials. Millennials have abandoned “old-fashioned racism” but have not advanced much further. Here is their summary statement:

Generally speaking, our results in this chapter also highlight the issue of racial stasis, as signs of the countervailing forces remain visible. For instance, White millennials do present more progressive attitudes. Compared to their predecessors, they are more likely to express anger about racism and more likely to acknowledge their privilege. But we also found that nearly one in five White millennials (20 percent) simultaneously feels angry that racism exists and does not believe Whites have advantages because of the color of their skin…. Ultimately we have a large number of walking contradictions in American society that are helping to produce and perpetuate ongoing racial inequities through their political stances and policy preferences. (244)

So if DeSantes and Smith are correct, then the hope that America’s conflicts over race and racism will disappear as a result of generational replacement is not likely to materialize. Instead, positive and purposeful steps will be needed in the realm of public and semi-public policy in order to address the effects of discrimination and prejudice. And since the burdens of discrimination are cumulative, it is not enough to ensure that opportunities are available on the basis of merit and achievement to solve the problem. If residential segregation makes it less likely that black children will receive equal educational opportunities, then all of their opportunities in later life will be stunted as well. If elementary schools or high schools are racially oriented so that black children on average receive lower quality educations, then “equal opportunity” at the university level is insufficient.

DeSante and Smith do not have much to say about what a “non-racist” mentality and culture would look like, but we can extend their thinking by emphasizing the importance of “education for an inclusive multicultural democracy”. This is a view of “civic education” for all of us based on respect across our various lines of division. A major part of such an education is a clear and honest knowledge of some of the sources of racist oppression and violence that have burdened our society in the past. Another is a deliberate and creative effort by educators, leaders, and students themselves to find our way to some of the ideals articulated by MLK and the beloved community. Without some idea of how young people can be genuinely transformed in their underlying attitudes about race, it is hard to see how the “stagnation of racial attitudes” called out by DeSante and Smith can be disrupted and reimagined. (Here is a more extensive discussion of what is needed for an inclusive multicultural democracy to become a reality; link.)

Maintaining social resilience

What is needed for a community of diverse people and groups to maintain its resilience in the face of hateful language, incidents, and provocations?

This question is particularly important for universities, which commonly seek to create a climate of welcome and respect for the various groups of students who make them up, and which are sometimes subjected to anonymous hateful attacks through graffiti, email, posters, social media, or other means. University communities have periodically been thrown into tense situations of fear, mistrust, and anxiety by hateful attacks — even when no physical threats of violence have emerged (NYT).

Hateful and racist propaganda campaigns like these are deeply destructive to the cohesiveness of a community for several reasons. They undermine trust across groups — “do those other people think this way about me?”. They harden the separations that sometimes begin to emerge across groups. They may lead to a cycle of “tit for tat” hostilities, which have the inherent possibility of escalation. And possibly they reinforce and amplify the latent hateful assumptions of some people to a more virulent and expressive form.

So how can a diverse and multicultural community best prepare itself for attacks like these? How can students, faculty, and staff “take on hate” in a university community?

One avenue is to devote the effort necessary throughout the community to establish strong forms of affiliation and trust across groups, so that members of different groups have a substantial basis for sustaining confidence in the motivations and allegiances of members of other groups. This means creating avenues of interaction and communication across groups in routine times, not just the occasions of crisis when threats to cohesion arise.

Another is for leaders to be explicit and passionate about the values of inclusion that hold the community together.

Third, an important source of social resiliency results from affirmative organizations that advocate for the values of mutual respect and inclusion and that have established strong networks of relationships throughout the community, both within and across groups. Student organizations can play the lead in creating and supporting such groups.

Another important source of resiliency is realistic communication about the continuing possibility of individual anonymous expressions of hate and intolerance. It is a fact that hateful expressions are possible in every social setting, and in fact we seem to be in a period where such expressions are becoming more common. So a community that is mentally prepared for such assaults is probably better able to resist their pernicious effects than the world that Mary Poppins lives in.

It also makes sense that a community will be stronger and more resilient if its institutions establish confidence in protection of all members of the community against violence and intimidation. Fear is a toxic emotion in a multicultural community. If a community can ensure that racist actions will be appropriately addressed, and that no one needs to fear racist or hateful violence, then the anxieties created by anonymous hateful messages should have less effect on the cohesiveness of the community. This means that effective and predictable policing and law enforcement is an important source of community resilience.

So we might say that a resilient multicultural community is one in which --

• there are lasting inter-group ties through organizations and person-to-person relationships;
• leaders from civil society and from important organizations publicly espouse the values of inclusion and respect;
• there is a broad understanding of the dynamics of hate and the possibility of occasional hateful occurrences; and
• there is deep confidence in the ability of the community to provide safety for all its members through effective law enforcement.

These circumstances are likely to build the ongoing trust and commitment to positive intergroup loyalties that will make the community resilient to the efforts of hateful outsiders (or insiders) to disrupt its harmonious fabric of civil life.

How democracies die

 

image: Senator Josh Hawley salutes January 6 insurrection

Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt have written with growing alarm about the threat to our democracy by right-wing extremism. How Democracies Die was sobering when it appeared in 2017, and the publication of Tyranny of the Minority: Why American Democracy Reached the Breaking Point (2023) reaches an even higher level of fear for our democratic institutions.

But just as this new democratic experiment was beginning to take root, America experienced an authoritarian backlash so fierce that it shook the foundations of the republic, leaving our allies across the world worried about whether the country had any democratic future at all. Meaningful steps toward democratic inclusion often trigger intense—even authoritarian—reactions. But the assault on American democracy was worse than anything we anticipated in 2017, when we were writing our first book, How Democracies Die. (Tyranny of the Minority, 5)

Levitsky and Ziblatt have spent their careers studying authoritarian regimes and their dynamics, so their assessment of our current situation is eye-opening. And of course, the situation today is worse than what they surveyed in 2023 — much worse. The earlier book focused on the powerful streaks of authoritarianism present in MAGA nationalism — race-baiting, contempt for democratic norms and practices, treating political opponents as contemptible enemies, and barely concealed willingness to defy Federal courts when rulings run contrary to the MAGA agenda. In the current book their focus is on the features of the political institutions (and the elected representatives) which have permitted these authoritarian dreams to come to reality.

They begin by identify a familiar aspect of US politics — the fact that electoral and congressional processes empower “partisan minorities” in dangerous ways.

The U.S. Constitution allows partisan minorities to routinely thwart majorities, and sometimes even govern them. Institutions that empower partisan minorities can become instruments of minority rule. And they are especially dangerous when they are in the hands of extremist or antidemocratic partisan minorities. (Tyranny, 10)

They emphasize that the extremist themes of the MAGA movement — white supremacy, Christian nationalism, anti-immigrant hatred, and glorification of strongman rule — have never been majority views in the US electorate. But a party exploiting these themes has in fact succeeded in gaining control of Congress, the presidency, and the Supreme Court. And this party has been fully willing to use its power to enforce its agenda on the rest of us.

The authors devote a chapter to several historical episodes of attempted right-wing seizures of power in the twentieth century. The first is an episode in France in 1934 that few of us have heard of. In the 1930s political instability in France, along with economic crises and unemployment, nourished the emergence of a constituency of radical right-wing opposition to French political institutions. These included young men and demobilized soldiers from WWI.

On the afternoon of February 6, 1934, tens of thousands of angry young men, mostly members of veterans’ associations and right-wing militias (or “leagues”) with names like Young Patriots, French Action, and Croix de Feu (Cross of Fire) gathered in or near the prominent Place de la Concorde, across the river from France’s national parliament building. Although the groups diverged in their ideologies and goals, they were united in their hostility toward parliamentary democracy. (Tyranny, 34)

On this winter night a large group of these militants marched on parliament. Clashes with mounted police occurred, and some of the militants were able to enter the parliament. “Members of parliament had to sneak out the back door, frightened for their lives. One minister attempted to escape but was discovered by protesters, who dragged him to the river, changing ‘Throw him in the Seine!’ (He was saved by police officers who happened to be nearby.)” (36)

France’s democracy survived the February 6, 1934, assault. But it was badly weakened. Prime Minister Édouard Daladier immediately resigned. He was replaced by Gaston Doumergue, a right-wing politician who was considered acceptable to the leagues. The goal of some of the insurrectionists had been achieved: the center-left Daladier government had been brought down by street pressure. Right-wing extremists were emboldened and mobilized. (36)

And here is the crucial point: the political leaders of France at this moment of crisis did not stand together in denouncing the violent, anti-democratic assault on the parliament:

Yet France’s leading conservative party, the Republican Federation, took a remarkably tolerant stance toward these extremist groups. Founded in 1903, the Federation had been led for many years by Louis Marin, a man with solid democratic credentials. But in the early 1930s, the party drifted to the right, first flirting with, and then openly embracing, the Young Patriot activists in its midst. Long considered a party of the elite, the Federation grew dependent on the Young Patriots and other far-right leagues as a source of activism and energy. Because the same individuals appeared in both groups, the boundary between the official “party” and the violent activists of the leagues grew harder to discern. (37)

There is a disturbing parallel between the French uprising in 1934 and the January 6 Capitol Insurrection in 2021. It is remarkable and disturbing to see how the Republican Party and Donald Trump have rewritten the history of the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol. And Trump’s mass pardon of almost 1,600 individuals who were charged or convicted of crimes on that day makes it clear: he condones (and even encouraged) the actions taken by his supporters on that day. He and his MAGA followers seem to agree with the words quoted by Levitsky and Ziblatt from a vice president of the Republican Federation: “martyrs who can never be sufficiently praised or honored, [they] have paid with their lives…. The blood poured out on February 6, 1934 will be a seed of a great national awakening” (38).

Here is the most important conclusion that Ziblatt and Levitsky draw: the most important bulwark of a democracy is a unified rejection across all political parties of violent and anti-constitutional actions, no matter who stands to gain from those actions. And this is precisely where the Republican Party has failed the American public: it has not reaffirmed our shared democratic principles and has entirely failed to denounce efforts to bypass or destroy our democratic institutions.

Democracies get into trouble when mainstream parties tolerate, condone, or protect authoritarian extremists—when they become authoritarian enablers. Indeed, throughout history, cooperation between authoritarians and seemingly respectable semi-loyal democrats has been a recipe for democratic breakdown. (41)

The phrase “semi-loyal democrats” is key to their analysis. This is the weak link in any democracy in which there is prolonged political conflict. These are politicians who officially affirm the constitution and the rule of law; but who look for gestures and language that will establish common ground with the extremist groups and individuals whose actions most threaten constitution and the rule of law. Democratic institutions are most in peril when “semi-loyal democrats” are most numerous.

To be a loyal democrat, Ziblatt and Levitsky argue that political figures must honor four principles:

• expel antidemocratic extremists from their own ranks
• sever all ties — public and private — with allied groups that engage in antidemocratic behavior
• unambiguously condemn political violence and other antidemocratic behavior
• join forces with rival pro-democratic parties to isolate and defeat antidemocratic extremists (41-43)

By these standards, there are very few “loyal democrats” among the elected Republican members of Congress today. John McCain would fall in this category; so would Liz Cheney. Mitch McConnell does not, and, judging from the photo above, neither does Josh Hawley. There are a few others who have shown this kind of principle and courage; but it is not the majority. And this is a great risk to the continuing vitality of our democracy.