A test of Sprinzak’s split delegitimization’s theory of the life course of far-right organizational behavior

Abstract

This article applies Sprinzak’s theory of split delegitimization to the American far-right. We examine a sample of 30 violent and 30 nonviolent far-right groups for each year of their existence, drawn from the Extremist Crime Database, and explore the violent and legal behavioral patterns over their lifecycle. Sprinzak hypothesized that far-right groups undergo a radicalization process through three stages, conflict of legitimacy, crisis of confidence, and crisis of legitimacy. He predicted that terrorism would occur at the peak of group radicalization or during the third stage. Results supported Sprinzak’s conceptualization of conflict of legitimacy and crisis of confidence stages. Groups initially selected nongovernment targets, but after experiencing disillusionment with the ruling regime, they equally attacked government and nongovernment targets. Importantly, prolonged and increasingly violent acts against government targets were not observed.

Keywords:

• far-right
• extremist groups
• split-delegitimization
• crime
• terrorism

Notes

1. Freilich, Chermak and Caspi (2009, p. 499) define the ideology the far-right movement as: “fiercely nationalistic (as opposed to universal and international in orientation), antiglobal, suspicious of centralized federal authority, reverent of individual liberty (especially their right to own guns, be free of taxes), believe in conspiracy theories that involve a grave threat to national sovereignty, and/or personal liberty, believe that one’s personal and/or national ‘way of life’ is under attack and is either already lost or that the threat is imminent (sometimes such beliefs are amorphous and vague, but for some the threat is from a specific ethnic, racial, or religious group), and believe in the need to be prepared for an attack by participating in paramilitary preparations, training and survivalism.”

2. A search of JSTOR and EBSCO Host identified no empirical studies of split delegitimization theory on the American far-right.

3. Split delegitimization, according to Sprinzak (1995), can be used to explain the radicalization of particularistic terror organizations, such as far-right extremist groups. He argued that universalistic terror groups, such as nationalist and radical left-wing movements, follow a different radicalization process (Crisis of Confidence, Conflict of Legitimacy, and Crisis of Legitimacy), whereby the subject of delegitimization is the ruling political regime. See Sprinzak (1991, 1995).

4. The ECDB is divided into three databases: The violence database contains homicides and violent plots/incidents committed by extremists (see Gruenewald & Pridemore, 2012 for detailed description); the financial database contains financial schemes and material support crimes committed by extremists (See Belli, 2011); and the groups database contains violent and nonviolent extremist groups (see Chermak et al., 2013).

5. Also see Chermak (2002) for details of commonly held conspiracy theories by the far-right that includes the Zionist Occupation Government (ZOG), Jewish Occupation Government (JOG), and a UN conspiracy to isolate Anglo-Saxon Americans.

6. Kaplan (1997) based this line of reasoning on the proactive action of the FBI during the 1990s. Kaplan (1997) argued that if a strong leader arose in the American far right, the FBI would move to neutralize the individual, for example, via criminal charges for preparatory crimes.

7. See Chermak et al. (2013) for detailed description of how the ECDB group database was created.

8. See Asal and Wilkenfeld (2013) for a more detailed explanation of the MAROB protocol.

9. Since the first two models consisted of a dichotomous dependent variable, multiple independent variables and time element, a fixed effects model, or mixed model might have been appropriate. Fixed models uses each group as its own control and time cannot be entered as an independent variable. Therefore, fixed models would not have been appropriate for the study. Mixed models allow for the inclusion of time, but this statistical technique requires that the data to be organized into panels. When the data-set was organized to capture group behavior from 1–5 years, 6–10 years, and 10 plus years, the sample size was reduced to less than 200. As a result, the mixed models did not converge. We decided to use logistic models, which was the simplest model that fit the data. All the assumptions for logistic models were fulfilled. Since the errors were normally distributed, independent observations can be assumed. Graphs of the predicted and observed probabilities revealed an absence of complete split of the data. Finally, cell counts were adequate for logistic models.

10. Mixed effects (GEE) models were used to determine if age is a significant predictor of violent or legal behavior for each individual group. This type of analysis would use each group as its own baseline. Unfortunately, since few of the groups sampled existed for 20+ years, we have an unbalanced design (a larger N for young and middle-aged groups and a small N for old groups), which prevented the mixed regression models from converging. Thus, we did not present the biased results from the mixed effects regression models and instead choose to present logistic regression models, which provided unbiased results of the effects of age on aggregated groups’ violent behavior.

11. Since group violent behavior had a cyclical relationship with group age, the results depicted in the logistic model in Table 3 was nonsignificant. Logistic models can identify associations between categorical variables and liner relationships with continuous variables. Consequently, line graphs were used to uncover the offending patterns of far-right groups over time.

12. While Crenshaw (2012b) recognized that feelings of group solidarity, commitment, guilt, loyalty, and the need for revenge could prevent extremist groups from accepting a compromise, she argues that a lack of choice or legal avenues to inspire political change is crucial to extremist groups’ initial decision to engage in terrorism.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ashmini G. Kerodal

Ashmini G. Kerodal is a doctoral candidate in the Criminal Justice program at John Jay College of Criminal Justice/the Graduate Center, City University of New York. Her academic interests include hate crimes, terrorism, and the unintended effects of counterterrorism policies.

Joshua D. Freilich

Joshua D. Freilich is a member of the Criminal Justice (CRJ) Department and the CRJ PhD Program at John Jay College. He is the Creator and Co-Director of the United States Extremist Crime Database, an open source relational database of violent and financial crimes committed by political extremists in the US. Freilich is a member of the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), a US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Center of Excellence. He is a member of START’s Executive Committee and a member of the Global Terrorism Database’s Advisory Board. Freilich’s research has been funded by DHS and the National Institute of Justice. His research focuses on the causes of and responses to terrorism, measurement issues, and criminological theory, especially environmental criminology and crime prevention.

Steven M. Chermak

Steven M. Chermak is a Professor of Criminal Justice at Michigan State University and a lead investigator for the START. Dr Chermak’s research includes activities in the following areas: far-right extremism, the effectiveness of strategies used to prevent terrorism and crime, and the media’s role in relation to crime and terrorism issues. Other research has focused on terrorism and media coverage of terrorist activities, including depictions of the militia movement and the September 11 attacks. Current research includes research on the characteristics of lone wolf terrorism, differences between violent and nonviolent extremist groups, and county-level predictors of far-right violence.

Michael J. Suttmoeller

Michael J. Suttmoeller is an Assistant Professor at Missouri State University. He received his PhD from Michigan State University in Criminal Justice. His research interests include extremist and terrorist groups, terrorist group decline and death, extremist violence against the police and police organizations.