Why do insurgents target certain groups for extermination? Despite a great deal of attention to the targeting of civilian ethnic minorities, comparatively little scholarship exists on insurgent violence against sexual minorities (lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transsexual individuals). This article maintains that the decision to target sexual minorities follows three distinct logics: two strategic and one ideological. First, insurgents face an incentive to outbid rivals by targeting sexual minorities when homophobic violence is politically and socially legitimated. Second, territorial control creates an incentive for insurgents to signal their ability to selectively punish, which they can accomplish through homophobic violence. Third, revolutionary ideologies provide legitimation for exclusionary violence in the pursuit of transforming society. Statistical analysis of insurgent violence against sexual minorities from 1985 to 2015 lends strong support for these arguments. Process tracing of the spread of violence against sexual minorities in Iraq and Syria clarifies the strategic causal mechanisms. When progovernment militias targeted perceived homosexuals with impunity, antigay violence was adopted by insurgent groups seeking to legitimize their claims to power; violence then quickly spread to competing insurgents. Two additional cases from Latin America demonstrate that ideology plays an important role in influencing which groups embrace homophobic violence even under these strategic constraints.
Objectives: Despite its growing importance, few quantitative studies on right-wing terrorism exist. This study develops and tests the implications of a novel theory of right-wing terrorism. It hypothesizes that the right-wing terrorist personality is uniquely characterized by vengefulness and a perception that the world is fundamentally chaotic. Method: Using recently developed approaches in computational personality assessment, a large corpus of texts-by right-wing terrorists (N ϭ 12), Islamist terrorists (N ϭ 12), and controls (N ϭ 9,660)-is analyzed to test whether those written by right-wing terrorists are associated with the proposed personality features. Results: Consistent with theoretical expectations, the results show that there is a statistically significant relationship between preoccupation with revenge and chaos and right-wing terrorism. Further analysis reveals that the proposed personality features assist in accurately classifying texts written by right-wing terrorists. Conclusion: Results reveal that right-wing terrorists have unique personality features that differ from the general population and other terrorists. Future research is needed to typologize different forms of terrorism based on their personality profiles. Additionally, the method here is shown useful for screening large quantities of text for potential extremists.
Why do unthreatening social groups become targets of state repression? Repression of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people is especially puzzling since sexual minorities, unlike many ethnic minorities, pose no credible violent challenge to the state. This article contends that revolutionary governments are disproportionately oppressive toward sexual minorities for strategic and ideological reasons. Since revolutions create domestic instability, revolutionaries face unique strategic incentives to target ‘unreliable’ groups and to demonstrate an ability to selectively punish potential dissidents by identifying and punishing ‘invisible’ groups. Moreover, revolutionary governments are frequently helmed by elites with exclusionary ideologies – such as communism, fascism and Islamism – which represent collectivities rather than individuals. Elites adhering to these views are thus likely to perceive sexual minorities as liberal, individualistic threats to their collectivist projects. Statistical analysis using original data on homophobic repression demonstrates that revolutionary governments are more likely to target LGBT individuals, and that this effect is driven by exclusionary ideologues. Case study evidence from Cuba further indicates that the posited strategic and ideological mechanisms mediate the relationship between revolutionary government and homophobic repression.
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