The Enemy of My Enemy: Anger & the Polarizing Nature of White Terrorism

• In Event: Public Opinion on Political Violence

Abstract

Since 9/11, the prototypical image of terrorism in the imagination of Americans has been a radical, Islamist extremist, perpetrating terrorism in service of organizations such as al-Qaeda or the Islamic State. However, in 2018, every single extremist killing in the United States was perpetrated by an individual with links to right-wing or white nationalist ideology (ADL Annual Report, 2018). Yet, while a large body of literature has documented the responses of Americans to terrorist violence perpetrated by ethnic and religious out-groups (e.g. Muslims, often foreign-born), we know much less about the impact that in-group terrorism (e.g. white, Christian, US citizens) has on the emotional responses and political attitudes of the mass public. I hypothesize that anger (rather than fear) is the driving emotional response to attacks by both in-group and out-group perpetrators, but that the uniformity of this anger depends on the identity of the perpetrator. While Jihadi attacks will increase anger and desire for retribution across the political spectrum, attacks by white nationalists will have a more polarizing effect. Specifically, I predict that exposure to an attack by a Jihadi extremist will unify the public – producing moral outrage and, as a result, support for punitive retaliation among both Democrats and Republicans. In contrast, exposure to an attack by a white nationalist extremist will divide the public – producing moral outrage and support for punitive retaliation among Democrats, but not Republicans. I test these hypotheses using a multi-arm survey experiment, manipulating both the perpetrator (White Nationalist, Jihadist) and target (civilian, military) of the attack, incorporating a parallel encouragement design (Imai, Tingley & Yamamoto 2013) that primes distinct emotions (fear, anger, none) across treatment arms to test the relative importance of moral outrage in structuring policy preferences in the wake of these attacks. This study has important implications for political leaders seeking to enlist public support for effective counter-terror policies, not only against foreign adversaries, but also against the growing menace of homegrown, domestic terrorism.

Author

• Carly Nicole Wayne, Washington University in St. Louis