The determinants of domestic right-wing terrorism in the USA: Economic grievance, societal change and political resentment

Abstract

This study tests three categories of motivations for domestic right-wing terrorism in the USA: economic grievances, particularly those produced by economic restructuring; societal changes that challenge notions of white male privilege; and political and public policy elements that stoke resentments. Executing a series of negative binomial regression estimations on state-level data in the USA for the period 1970-2011, I find that measures of societal factors-specifically increase in abortion rates and growing female participation in the labor force-and political indicators such as Democratic Party control of the White House, precipitate right-wing terrorist attacks. Factors associated with economic hardships-such as poverty, the decline of manufacturing employment and the ''Farm Crisis''-as well as growth of the non-white population, control of state government by the Democratic Party and growth of average Federal Income Tax rates-are not found to be significant predictors of right-wing terrorism. KeywordsExtremism, political violence right-wing, terrorism, USA Domestic, right-wing terrorism 1 in the United States-terrorist activity perpetrated by groups and individuals motivated by various extremist right-wing political ideologies including extreme nationalism, racism and white supremacy, Christian religious radicalism and radical anti-government beliefs-represents a significant threat, but with some notable exceptions is curiously understudied by scholars of terrorism. 2 Since 1970, domestic rightwing terrorists have committed more than 500 attacks in the USA. 3 Although this comprises only about a quarter of all terrorist attacks on US soil-and is only half the number committed by domestic left-wing terrorists-right-wing terrorism has resulted in more deaths than any other type of domestic terrorist activity. Over the period 1970-2011, out of 471

Revisiting the Economics and Terrorism Nexus: Collective Deprivation, Ideology and Domestic Radicalization in the US (1948–2016)

“…Taken together, these results may explain why studies investigating the effect of economic conditions on far-right terrorism and hate crimes have insofar found mixed evidence (Soule and Dyke 1999;Falk et al 2011;Dustmann et al 2011;Green et al 1998a, b;Piazza 2017;Freilich et al 2015a). Indeed, most of this research has focused on short-term or absolute indicators of deprivation at the state-level, instead of long-term national variations.…”

“…Similarly, Falk et al (2011) found that far-right extremist crimes in Germany were related to regional unemployment rate (see also Dustmann et al 2011). In contrast, other studies did not find short-term economic conditions to be consistent predictors of hate crimes and far-right offenses (Green et al 1998a;Piazza 2017;Freilich et al 2015a).…”

“…In contrast, the second argument states that terrorism is encouraged by the messages from sympathetic governments. To date, results have been mostly supportive of the exclusion hypothesis that terrorism emerges under unsympathetic governments (Hewitt 2003;Piazza 2017).…”

Radicalization and violent extremism: Perspectives from research on group processes and intergroup relations

“…Since 2001, and the terrorist attacks on September 11, the study of radicalization and violent extremism has become a research field in its own right, in tandem with an influx of research funding on preventive interventions (Kundnani, 2012; Sedgwick, 2010). While violent religious extremism has received much attention, the past decade has seen a renewed focus on revitalized right-wing and antiglobalization violence, as well as types of violence that cut across ideological lines, such as single-issue extremism (Horgan, 2016; Piazza, 2017). Research into radicalization and violent extremism has become a field of research, rather than a subject studied within different scholarly traditions.…”

Topics in terrorism research: reviewing trends and gaps, 2007-2016

“…Writing in 2012, Jackson reiterated the overemphasis on al-Qaeda, jihadism more generally, WMDs, and the ubiquitous but poorly-understood concept of "radicalization" (See also Jackson 2012b; Schuurman and Taylor 2018). Authors have also increasingly begun to demonstrate and criticize the relative paucity of academic research on (and policymakers' attention for) the threat of right-wing extremism and terrorism (Freilich et al 2018;Koehler 2016;Manz 2018;Michael 2019;Perry and Scrivens 2016;Piazza 2017;Weinberg 2013). Another topic that has been particularly noted for its absence, especially so by scholars drawn to Critical Studies on Terrorism, is state terrorism (Dixit and Stump 2011;Silke 2019a).…”