Political Competition and Right-Wing Terrorism: A County-Level Analysis of the United States

• Published date: 01 June 2022
• Date: 01 June 2022
• Author: Stephen C. Nemeth,Holley E. Hansen
• DOI: 10.1177/10659129211006791
• Subject Matter: Articles

2022, Vol. 75(2) 338 –352

https://doi.org/10.1177/10659129211006791

Political Research Quarterly

© 2021 University of Utah

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DOI: 10.1177/10659129211006791

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In its 2020 Homeland Threat Assessment, the Department

of Homeland Security (DHS) identified domestic violent

extremists, specifically white supremacists, as “the most

persistent and lethal threat” to the United States (DHS

2020, 18). Part of the broader family of right-wing terror-

ism, this form of terrorism has become the most prevalent

form of terrorism in the United States over the past few

decades.1 The Center for Investigative Reporting identi-

fied 201 attacks and foiled plots carried out by domestic

actors in the United States between 2008 and 2016, find-

ing that 115 cases were carried out by right-wing extrem-

ists versus 63 that were motivated by Islamist ideology

(Neiwert 2017).2 Right-wing terrorists are also lethal,

responsible for 251 fatalities on U.S. soil compared with

90 by Islamists (National Consortium for the Study of

Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism [START] 2017b).3

Despite the relative frequency and lethality of this

form of political violence within the United States,

research on this topic has a more extensive pedigree in

the fields of sociology, criminology, psychology, and eco-

nomics than in political science. As a result, the extant

theory on right-wing terrorism primarily focuses on indi-

vidual- or organizational-level motivations. Past research

has examined the relationship between the perpetrator

and victim (Parkin and Freilich 2015), perceptions of

racial threat (Durso and Jacobs 2013; LaFree and Bersani

2014), or on identifying economic triggers of radicaliza-

tion (Blazak 2001; Michel and Herbeck 2002). Other

scholars analyze the internal operations of right-wing

extremist groups, including work by Chermak, Freilich,

and Suttmoeller (2013) and Asal et al. (2020) comparing

violent and nonviolent groups.

We seek to extend this research by arguing that right-

wing terrorism is responsive to environmental cues and

more specifically, to the political environment. After all,

right-wing terrorism can be defined as

Violence in support of the belief that personal and/or national

way of life is under attack and is either already lost or that

the threat is imminent. [It is] characterized by anti-globalism,

racial or ethnic supremacy or nationalism, suspicion of

centralized federal authority, reverence for individual liberty,

and/or belief in conspiracy theories that involve grave threat

to national sovereignty and/or personal liberty. (Miller 2017,

1–2)

Therefore, right-wing terrorism is a response to political

fears as much as cultural and/or racial ones, and thus

should have strong political causes. We draw from

research on anti-minority violence in other countries to

argue that electoral competition creates incentives for

politicians to use exclusionary, threat-based rhetoric to

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PRQXXX10.1177/10659129211006791Political Research QuarterlyNemeth and Hansen

research-article2021

1Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, USA

Corresponding Author:

Stephen C. Nemeth, Department of Political Science, Oklahoma State

University, 201 Social Sciences and Humanities, Stillwater, OK 74078,

USA.

Email: stephen.nemeth@okstate.edu

Political Competition and Right-Wing

Terrorism: A County-Level Analysis

of the United States

Stephen C. Nemeth1 and Holley E. Hansen1

Abstract

While many previous studies on U.S. right-wing violence center on factors such as racial threat and economic anxiety,

we draw from comparative politics research linking electoral dynamics to anti-minority violence. Furthermore, we

argue that the causes of right-wing terrorism do not solely rest on political, economic, or social changes individually,

but on their interaction. Using a geocoded, U.S. county-level analysis of right-wing terrorist incidents from 1970 to

2016, we find no evidence that poorer or more diverse counties are targets of right-wing terrorism. Rather, right-wing

violence is more common in areas where “playing the ethnic card” makes strategic sense for elites looking to shift

electoral outcomes: counties that are in electorally competitive areas and that are predominantly white.

Keywords

domestic terrorism, electoral competition, far-right violence

Article