Revisiting the determinants of far-right violence

ABSTRACT The current research uses the theoretical framework of relative deprivation to identify how the majority group’s perceptions regarding its changing economic and social status are correlated with levels of far-right violence in the United States. By focusing on U.S. far-right violence, which has extensive anti-outgroup bias, this paper investigates whether far-right terrorist attacks increase when the politically dominant racial group loses economic power compared to other racial and ethnic groups and if far-right violence increases when minority groups gain economic power relative to the majority. A county-level dataset covering 2015–2021 is used to identify potential associations between the level of far-right violence and local economic and political conditions. The findings show that White poverty and White median income have a positive correlation with far-right violence, which we ascertain as high, unmet expectations increasing the likelihood of political violence.