Hate groupsRecord expansion of U.S. hate groups slows during Trump’s first year
A new analysis explains why, as President Donald Trump goes past his first year in office, the pronounced, decades-long expansion of U.S.-based hate groups has slowed to a crawl during the first year of his administration. “[H]ate groups tend to grow in response to threats emerging from environments where social groups perceive their standing to be uncertain or at risk,” says an expert on hate-based social movements. “Hate incidents, in contrast, are most likely to rise primarily in response to expanding opportunities to act. Whether perpetrated through established extremist organizations or by free-standing adherents, such actions are most likely when those who desire to commit them perceive lower costs or risks.”
As President Donald Trump goes past his first year in office, a new analysis by a Washington University in St. Louis sociologist may explain why the pronounced, decades-long expansion of U.S.-based hate groups has slowed to a crawl during the first year of his administration.
“Trump’s election signaled the closing of the perceived threats that drove hate groups to form during the Obama administration and provided a perceived window of opportunity for existing groups and their supporters to act with relative impunity,” said David Cunningham, a professor of sociology in Arts & Sciences.
Trump’s 2016 election campaign took place as the number of extremist hate groups in the nation was reaching near-historic levels. In the thirty-four days following his election, more than 1,000 right-wing hate incidents were documented by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).
While it would be easy to conflate these trends, Cunningham’s research showed that there are important differences between factors that spur growth among hate groups and in individual hate crimes.
“My research shows that hate groups tend to grow in response to threats emerging from environments where social groups perceive their standing to be uncertain or at risk,” said Cunningham, an expert on the Ku Klux Klan and other hate-based social movements.
“Hate incidents, in contrast, are most likely to rise primarily in response to expanding opportunities to act. Whether perpetrated through established extremist organizations or by free-standing adherents, such actions are most likely when those who desire to commit them perceive lower costs or risks.”
Cunningham is the author of Klansville, U.S.A.: The Rise and Fall of the Civil Rights-Era’s Largest KKK (2013), which served as the basis for a 2015 PBS “American Experience” documentary of the same name. He is also the author of There’s Something Happening Here: The New Left, the Klan, and FBI Counterintelligence (2004), and a an authority on the causes and ongoing legacies of racial and ethnic conflict.
