Inside the Extreme Right

Abstract

Chapter 7 turns to the interviewees’ phase of membership within the movement. For the majority of the interviewees, membership satisfied their quest for significance, purpose and acceptance. Nonetheless, life on the fringes of society was not all pleasant. Analyses revealed a significant increase over time in hardships experienced by our research participants, specifically, hardships related to the experience of discrimination and physical harm. The chapter explores these experiences in some detail and examines their impact on members’ commitment to the extreme movement. Finally, we examined participation in violence, and whether belief in various ideological ploys of the right-wing narrative (i.e., those that justify violence on moral grounds or denigrate the opposition) augmented individuals’ tendency to participate in violence.