Hate Exhaustion, Emotional Support, and Desistance From White Supremacist Groups

April Celeste Gould

doi:10.21428/88de04a1.f94a8367

Abstract

This study examines how and why people join, participate in, and leave White supremacist terrorist (WST) groups. In-depth life history interviews and biographic timelines of former White supremacists in the United States and Canada were collected. Findings indicate that former members’ decisions to engage and desist from WST groups are greatly influenced by their experiences of emotional support—or lack thereof. Participants lacked emotional support prior to joining WST and the emotional support they received from group membership was toxic. Participants exited WST because they experienced hate exhaustion and were willing to sacrifice all or most of their emotional support to alleviate it. This research contributes to the theoretical understandings of emotional support’s influence in engagement and disengagement from WST by speaking to Snow and Machalek’s (1983) characteristics of converts, the Identity Theory of Desistance (Paternoster and Bushway 2009), and Latif et al.’s (2018) WST emotional dynamics models. Moreover, this study asks if desistance is similar to burnout and if radicalization is similar to conversion. This work has practical implications regarding the prevention of initial involvement, the development of interventions to disrupt these activities, and the facilitation of disengagement from WST groups.

Highlights

The United States and Canada have extensive histories of White supremacist terror
This study examines how and why people join, participate in, and leave White supremacist terrorist (WST) groups
Building off the emotional dynamics models for former white supremacists and Colvin and colleagues’ (2002) concept of differential social support, this study investigates the importance of emotional support and its health consequences on formers’ engagement, involvement, and disengagement from WST

Summary

Introduction

The United States and Canada have extensive histories of White supremacist terror. White supremacist terrorism (WST) is “violence perpetrated by organized groups against racial [and other] minorities in the pursuit of white and Aryan supremacist agendas” WST differs from general white supremacism in the United States—underlying attitudes and social structures which value whiteness above non-whiteness—in that it is more overt, organized, and violent. Emotional support can act to either attract members to join violent groups or serve to pull them out when found elsewhere. Social support is inherently linked to the Identity Theory of Desistance (Patternoster & Bushway, 2009) because it recognizes that, “that identity change must come before prosocial opportunities can arrive and be successfully used, and that desistance can occur even in the absence of conventional turning points such as good jobs or partnerships” (Bachman et al 2016b, p. 181)

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Methods

Conclusion