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SOCIAL SCIENCES

Social sciences examine human behavior, social structures, and interactions in various settings. Fields such as sociology, psychology, anthropology, and economics study social relationships, cultural norms, and institutions. By using different research methods, social scientists seek to understand community dynamics, the effects of policies, and factors driving social change. This field is important for tackling current issues, guiding public discussions, and developing strategies for social progress and innovation.

Posts tagged political extremism
The Cost of Tolerating Intolerance: Right-Wing Protest and Hate Crimes

By Sulin Sardoschau and Annalí Casanueva-Artís

Freedom of speech is central to democracy, but protests that amplify extremist views expose a critical trade-off between civil liberties and public safety. This paper investigates how right-wing demonstrations affect the incidence of hate crimes, focusing on Germany’s largest far-right movement since World War II. Leveraging a difference-in-differences framework with instrumental variable and event-study approaches, we find that a 20% increase in local protest attendance nearly doubles hate crime occurrences. We explore three potential mechanisms— signaling, agitation, and coordination—by examining protest dynamics, spatial diffusion, media influence, counter-mobilization, and crime characteristics. Our analysis reveals that large protests primarily act as signals of broad xenophobic support, legitimizing extremist violence. This signaling effect propagates through right-wing social media networks and is intensified by local newspaper coverage and Twitter discussions. Consequently, large protests shift local equilibria, resulting in sustained higher levels of violence primarily perpetrated by repeat offenders. Notably, these protests trigger resistance predominantly online, rather than physical counter-protests.

CESifo Working Paper No. 11745, Munich: Munich Society for the Promotion of Economic Research - CESifo GmbH

Mapping The Far Right: The Movement’s Conferences Illuminate Its Growing Transnational Networks

By Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE)

Post-war far-right movements have primarily been concerned with domestic issues, preferring to focus on national sovereignty over foreign entanglements, and interested predominantly in their particular domestic landscape. This is in contrast to traditional left-wing movements, particularly socialists and communists, which historically organized across borders.

But things have fundamentally changed in recent years, as an extensive far-right international network has developed over the past two decades. Nowadays, campaigns undertaken in one country by far-right groups and influencers leap quickly across borders and are adopted wholesale by others on the far right.

Key to this policy and campaign coordination are transnational far-right conferences, where movement leaders and supporters from multiple countries share their ideas. Through these interactions, relationships among far-right actors have deepened, creating a truly transnational movement that shares ideological positions, policy preferences, targets, tactics, and strategies. The support this transnational network provides has contributed to the global spread of far-right extremist ideologies.

Far-right activists are forthright about their global ambitions, which often target marginalized communities, restrict human rights, and push for more illiberal democratic systems.

To gain further insight into the far right, the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) compiled a dataset of speakers and organizations involved in far-right conferences held between 2000 and 2024. The dataset includes 3,000 individuals representing 1,800 organizations, and 302 conferences that occurred in 35 countries during this 24-year time period.

In the 302 events analyzed, there were speakers from nearly every country in North America, South America, and Europe, as well as a significant number of participants from parts of Africa and Asia. Though the dataset is large, it still likely underrepresents the true number of events and participants during that period, since GPAHE only looked at speakers, not all attendees.

GPAHE’s data reveals a startling — and strengthening — network of events and speakers that has helped spread a global pandemic of far-right extremism.

Many of those conferences have continued over years, if not decades, expanding their audiences and demonstrating that far-right ideologies increasingly transcend national borders.

Birmingham, AL: Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) 2024.