The Relationship Between Hate Groups and Far-Right Ideological Violence

Abstract

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.