Examining the Relationship Between General Social Survey (GSS) Measures and Far-Right Ideological Violence: A County-Level Analysis (original) (raw)
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Far-Right Extremism in America: A Geospatial Analysis of Incident Distribution
2020
There has been little empirical research on the spatial relationship of violent far-right extremism. Previous studies have only focused on portions of far-right violent incidents, such as homicides, or amalgamated all far-right extremist activity, including legal incidents. This study uses data from the Extremist Crime Database (ECDB) and Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) in a temporal frame of 2000 to 2018 to test the relationship of violent incidents against geographic and social factors. The goal is to explore the relationships between macro-level factors and violent far-right extremist incident. The research determines that the presence of hate groups, higher immigrant populations, higher unemployment rates, higher education levels and higher urbanicity in counties all indicate an increased likelihood a violent extremist far-right incident will take place.
Journal of Quantitative Criminology, 2012
This paper examines the reliability of the methods used to capture homicide events committed by far-right extremists in a number of open source terrorism data sources. Although the number of research studies that use open source data to examine terrorism has grown dramatically in the last 10 years, there has yet to be a study that examines issues related to selectivity bias. After reviewing limitations of existing terrorism studies and the major sources of data on terrorism and violent extremist criminal activity, we compare the estimates of these homicide events from 10 sources used to create the United States Extremist Crime Database (ECDB). We document incidents that sources either incorrectly exclude or include based upon their inclusion criteria. We use a ''catchment-re-catchment'' analysis and find that the inclusion of additional sources result in decreasing numbers of target events not identified in previous sources and a steadily increasing number of events that were identified in any of the previous data sources. This finding indicates that collectively the sources are approaching capturing the universe of eligible events. Next, we assess the effects of procedural differences on these estimates. We find considerable variation in the number of events captured by sources. Sources include some events that are contrary to their inclusion criteria and exclude others that meet their criteria. Importantly, though, the attributes of victim, suspect, and incident
Explaining the Spontaneous Nature of Far-Right Violence in the United States
Perspectives on Terrorism, 2018
Racialist, Anti-Federalist, and Christian Fundamentalist ideologies drive adherents of the American Far Right. Terrorists like Timothy McVeigh and Dylan Roof exemplify the damage, to property and life, caused by planned, calculated acts of terrorism motivated by far-right sentiments. Nevertheless, a growing number of American Far Right ideologically motivated attacks occur spontaneously and without premeditation. The stabbing to death of Richard Collins III by Sean Christopher Urbanski at the University of Maryland is a case in point, as it occurred without warning and no evidence suggests the victim or offender knew each other. This murder and similar incidents drive us to question what drives affiliates of American Far Right groups to commit spontaneous, unplanned attacks? More specifically, we develop a theoretical framework that strives to explain how personality traits and the characteristics of the offender's community, may facilitate such incidents. To test our theoretical framework, we utilize a dataset of 1,000 spontaneous far-right attacks between 1990-2012 as well as a dataset of a control group of approximately 300 planned attacks driven by adherents of the American Far Right. We find that locations undergoing demographic diversification, related to 'other' racial categories, and which have an increasing median individual income, will have a higher chance of spontaneous attacks. Coincidentally, spontaneous perpetrators are less socially connected to their community than planned perpetrators. We argue spontaneous perpetrators react spontaneously because they observe their community changing and react criminally without an element of planning.
Explaining the Spontaneous Nature of Far-Right Violence in the United States by
2018
Racialist, Anti-Federalist, and Christian Fundamentalist ideologies drive adherents of the American Far Right. Terrorists like Timothy McVeigh and Dylan Roof exemplify the damage, to property and life, caused by planned, calculated acts of terrorism motivated by far-right sentiments. Nevertheless, a growing number of American Far Right ideologically motivated attacks occur spontaneously and without premeditation. The stabbing to death of Richard Collins III by Sean Christopher Urbanski at the University of Maryland is a case in point, as it occurred without warning and no evidence suggests the victim or offender knew each other. This murder and similar incidents drive us to question what drives affiliates of American Far Right groups to commit spontaneous, unplanned attacks? More specifically, we develop a theoretical framework that strives to explain how personality traits and the characteristics of the offender’s community, may facilitate such incidents. To test our theoretical fr...
The Relationship Between Hate Groups and Far-Right Ideological Violence
Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice
This study examines whether the presence of hate groups increases the likelihood of serious ideologically motivated violence committed by far-rightists. While hate crime research has generally focused on a single state or made comparisons across several states, we seek to examine this relationship within the context of U.S. counties. A smaller unit of analysis allows for the simultaneous consideration of several social processes operating at the community level, which might also influence ideologically motivated offending by far-right extremists. We test the relationship using data from the Extremist Crime Database (ECDB) for the dependent measure, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) for the hate groups measure, and various other sources for additional variables. We find that the existence of a hate group in a county is significantly related to the occurrence of far-right ideologically motivated violence.
Journal of Quantitative Criminology, 2014
Objectives This exploratory study examines if causal mechanisms highlighted by criminology theories work in the same way to explain both ideologically motivated violence (i.e., terrorism) and regular (non-political) homicides. We study if macro-level hypotheses drawn from deprivation, backlash, and social disorganization frameworks are associated with the likelihood that a far-right extremist who committed an ideologically motivated homicide inside the contiguous US resides in a particular county. To aid in the assessment of whether criminology theories speak to both terrorism and regular violence we also apply these hypotheses to far-right homicide and regular homicide incident location and compare the results. Material and methods We use data from the US Extremist Crime Database (ECDB) and the FBI's SHR to create our dependent variables for the 1990-2012 period and estimated a series of logistic regression models. Conclusions The findings are complex. On the one hand, the models we estimated to account for the odds of a far-right perpetrator residing in a county found that some hypotheses were significant in all, or almost all, models. These findings challenge the view
Terrorism and Political Violence, 2014
States. This paper makes four contributions. First, we empirically test criminological theory in the context of terrorism by using routine activities to devise four core hypotheses to explain differences between the two types of victims. Second, our investigation uniquely includes a non-terrorist comparison group (i.e., victims of homicides committed by extremists for personal reasons like greed). Third, our study focuses on ideological victimization. Terrorism researchers have usually ignored victims because of the difficulty in accessing the necessary data. Finally, we also make a methodological contribution by showing that criminology can build upon the terrorism literature by utilizing open-sources. Using data from the Extremist Crime Database (ECDB), the results of a multivariate analysis partially supported the hypotheses, showing that RAT and LST offer empirically supported theoretical constructs that have the ability to differentiate between ideological and non-ideological homicides.
The Three Ps of Domestic Extremism in the United States
ICSVE Brief Reports, 2022
The question of the rise of domestic extremism in the United States is one which is regularly commented upon by journalists, political pundits, and scholars of numerous academic fields. The data supports a sharp rise in hate crimes over the past five years, including those directed at Asian Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic. Violent extremist groups that have existed in the United States for decades if not centuries like the Ku Klux Klan and National Socialist Movement continue to gain members and sympathizers but are increasingly joined at rallies and protests, and in violent crime, by newer groups like the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys. Notably, members of the latter two groups have been charged with seditious conspiracy for their actions during the January 6th riot at the U.S. Capitol; their violent attempt to keep former President Trump in power was one never seen since the end of the Civil War. What is it that has contributed to the observed rise in domestic extremism, in the United States in particular? Our own research, as well as that of others, has consistently shown that the making of a terrorist or violent extremist consists of four parts: the group, its violence-justifying ideology, social support for that ideology which may exist in one’s local community or online, and individual needs and vulnerabilities. For those living outside of active combat zones, such as those becoming radicalized in the United States, those individual needs and vulnerabilities often include those for belonging, dignity, meaning, purpose, and significance. This “lethal cocktail of terrorism” is a psychosocial one which applies equally to violent extremists of all ideologies, whether they are militant jihadists, white supremacists, incel shooters, single-issue terrorists, or those on the far left. Presently, we present an additional model which applies to the broader social milieu in the United States and has brought about the recent rise of domestic extremism described above. This model may appear to be sociological or political in nature, yet each of its components can affect the individual psychology of any American. Under these conditions, the ingredients of the lethal cocktail are made all the more potent, and any American can be at risk for radicalization to violent extremism. We have entitled this lethal cocktail-amplifying model the “3P” model of domestic extremism.