Why They Join -SPLC- on Hate Groups
A SCHOLAR WHO’S DONE EXTENSIVE FIELDWORK ON THE RADICAL RIGHT DISCUSSES WHY PEOPLE JOIN EXTREMIST GROUPS, AND HOW THEY LEAVE
Earlier, in 2010, Simi and Robert Futrell of the University of Nevada-Las Vegas wrote the award-winning American Swastika: Inside the White Power Movement’s Hidden Spaces of Hate, a book that relied on in-depth interviews and observation of hate group members. Simi is currently studying risk factors for radicalization among domestic terrorists as an investigator for the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism at the University of Maryland and is also working on a project funded by the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation to understand how extremists defect from the movement.
You’ve spent a great deal of time interviewing current and former adherents of the radical right about their reasons for joining the movement. Are there common themes in their personal histories? Do they tend to have similar personalities, or experiences, or come from similar socioeconomic backgrounds?
It’s pretty diverse but if I had to nail it down I would say one of the most common background characteristics is some kind of family disruption, whether that be divorce or parental abandonment, a parent becoming incarcerated, or substance abuse by one or both of the parents. That kind of thing is very common, but I should emphasize that I have interviewed folks who report coming from very “normal,” typical, stable upbringings as well.
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In terms of personality, I wouldn’t say there is one type of personality, but I would say there are certain characteristics of thinking that make a person more prone or susceptible. For instance, low tolerance for ambiguity seems to cut across most if not all extremist ideologies; this goes along with a certain type of concrete thinking where a person wants to categorize things as “black and white” rather than deal with so-called “gray areas.”
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