‘Scapegoat,’ ‘Proxy’ and ‘Base’: A World Powers’ Guide to Domestic Extremist Co-Optation

Abstract

Over the last decade the United States, Russian and Chinese governments have each been implicated in internationally recognized plots to subvert domestic and international law to their own benefit in which the individual countries’ interactions with a domestic extremist element played a pivotal role. While each of these events has garnered widespread media and academic attention, little focus has been directed at the way in which each Great Power interacted with domestic extremism in order to advance its goals. This study uses a Webarian comparative analysis to describe the Chinese internment of Uyghurs in Xinjiang, the Russian annexation of Crimea and the radicalization of the Republican party in the United States, and how domestic extremism was in each case co-opted in order to achieve unpopular but critical goals. This study finds that domestic extremist co-optation is a proven strategy commonly employed by powerful authoritarian regimes around the world to achieve the most imperative and sensitive policy goals. Domestic extremist co-optation as a foreign policy strategy is characterized by the spread of disinformation, the promotion of violence and the concealment of the party responsible. This study identifies three archetypes of domestic extremist co-optation: the ‘scapegoat’, the ‘proxy’ and the ‘base,’ and empowers future research to increase that number.