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Addicted to Hate: Identity Residual among Former White Supremacists

August 2017
American Sociological Review 82(6):000312241772871

DOI:10.1177/0003122417728719

Authors:

Pete Simi

Chapman University

Steven Windisch

Temple University

The process of leaving deeply meaningful and embodied identities can be experienced as a struggle against addiction, with continuing cognitive, emotional, and physiological responses that are involuntary, unwanted, and triggered by environmental factors. Using data derived from a unique set of in-depth life history interviews with 89 former U.S. white supremacists, as well as theories derived from recent advances in cognitive sociology, we examine how a rejected identity can persist despite a desire to change. Disengagement from white supremacy is characterized by substantial lingering effects that subjects describe as addiction. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of identity residual for understanding how people leave and for theories of the self.

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https://doi.org/10.1177/0003122417728719

American Sociological Review

1 –21

Association 2017

DOI: 10.1177/0003122417728719

journals.sagepub.com/home/asr

The U.S. white supremacist movement repre-

sents one of the most enduring political sub-

cultures in American history yet is surpris-

ingly one of the least understood. Following

the recent presidential election and the “alt-

right’s” efforts to rebrand white supremacy to

appeal to a younger and more tech-savvy

generation, the movement has received greater

attention (Futrell and Simi 2017). Yet the alt-

right’s veneer of normalcy conceals a much

deeper culture of hate and violence, in which

adherents build a collective identity and par-

ticipate in an all-encompassing movement

lifestyle (Blee 2002; Simi and Futrell 2015).

The hardcore and overt elements of the white

supremacy movement make it one of the most

radical, deviant, and stigmatized social move-

ments in the contemporary United States.1

Progress has been made to understand how

individuals come to enter the white suprema-

cist movement (Blee 2002; Simi, Sporer, and

Bubolz 2016) and the socio-spatial contexts

where collective identity is sustained (Futrell

and Simi 2004), but much less is known about

individual experiences following disengage-

ment from the white supremacist movement.

What happens after people leave such an

intensive and marginalized lifestyle is a diffi-

cult question to answer because scholars tend

to focus primarily on identity transformations

prior to or at the time of mobilization while

neglecting how people may remain tethered to

728719ASRXXX10.1177/0003122417728719American Sociological ReviewSimi et al.

2017

aChapman University

bUniversity of Pittsburgh

cResearch Triangle Institute

dUniversity of Nebraska Omaha

Corresponding Author:

Pete Simi, Chapman University, Department of

Sociology, One University Drive, Orange, CA

92866

E-mail: simi@chapman.edu

Addicted to Hate: Identity

Residual among Former White

Supremacists

Pete Simi,a Kathleen Blee,b

Matthew DeMichele,c and Steven Windischd

Abstract

The process of leaving deeply meaningful and embodied identities can be experienced as a

struggle against addiction, with continuing cognitive, emotional, and physiological responses

that are involuntary, unwanted, and triggered by environmental factors. Using data derived

from a unique set of in-depth life history interviews with 89 former U.S. white supremacists,

as well as theories derived from recent advances in cognitive sociology, we examine how a

rejected identity can persist despite a desire to change. Disengagement from white supremacy

is characterized by substantial lingering effects that subjects describe as addiction. We

conclude with a discussion of the implications of identity residual for understanding how

people leave and for theories of the self.

Keywords

addiction, symbolic interactionism, identity, culture, racism

2 American Sociological Review 00(0)

a movement identity even after leaving. More-

over, scholars have emphasized activists’ cog-

nitive and relational transformations in terms

of how individuals embrace new ideas and

build new social networks, but research has

neglected transformations involving deeper

consequences, such as neurophysiological

changes that may operate in more automatic

ways and reflect alterations in bodily and

emotional expressions that endure over time.

To address this gap, we ask the following

question: Why do individuals who have already

rejected white supremacist ideologies and left

the movement (i.e., “formers”) have such a dif-

ficult time shaking their former thoughts, feel-

ings, and bodily reactions, and, in many cases,

come to think of themselves as being addicted

to white supremacism? The issue of addiction

raises central issues in sociology, especially

regarding the relationship between agency and

deterministic forces embedded within biologi-

cal and environmental processes (Emirbayer

and Mische 1998; Hitlin and Kirkpatrick John-

son 2015). Addiction is a concept that repre-

sents a variety of complex, overlapping

processes that implicate social, psychological,

and biological forces. As such, when both lay-

persons and clinicians use the term addiction,

they are essentially referring to a bundle of dif-

ferent characteristics or symptoms. In this

respect, we are less concerned about whether

our subjects are actually addicted to white

supremacy and more concerned with their

descriptions of involuntary and unwanted

thoughts, feelings, bodily responses, and

behavior. To be clear, we are not suggesting

that hate should become a new addiction diag-

nosis, but rather pointing to the ways social

experiences can become so engraved in our

interactions, psyche, and body that the parallels

between identity residual and addiction become

an interesting point of exploration.

This article relies on extensive life history

interviews with 89 former U.S. white suprem-

acist activists who were members of the over-

lapping networks (Burris, Smith, and Strahm

2000) of racist groups in the movement’s four

major branches: Ku Klux Klan, Christian

Identity, neo-Nazi, and racist skinheads

(Barkun 1997; Dobratz and Shanks-Meile

2000; McVeigh 2009). Organizational and

doctrinal differences exist across these net-

works, but all share fundamental ideas such

as the impending catastrophe of “white racial

genocide” and the view that a multicultural

society is antithetical to the interests of European-

Americans (Zeskind 2009).

On the one hand, conventional wisdom

suggests white supremacists are entirely con-

sumed by hatred and thus the prospect of

change seems unlikely (“once a hater, always

a hater”). In this sense, being addicted to hate

might make sense. On the other hand, previ-

ous studies note the high burn-out rate among

members of the white supremacist movement

and the substantial retention efforts initiated

by various groups to sustain participation

(Blee 2002; Simi and Futrell 2015). The ques-

tion is not whether people can leave white

supremacist hate groups, as they clearly do,

but rather what happens after they leave?

White supremacist identity provides an

important case to examine several broader

theoretical concerns. Many treatments of iden-

tity change focus on either the stages of trans-

formation (Athens 1995; Ebaugh 1988;

Prochaska et al. 1991) or the conscious, inten-

tional dimensions of self-change (Giordano,

Cernkovich, and Rudolph 2002; Kiecolt 1994).

Less is known, however, about the neurocogni-

tive dynamics related to involuntary and

unwanted aspects of identity residual. Identi-

ties are constructed and performed through

situational occasions, so when situations are

routinized, insular, and involve extreme hatred,

the persistence of these identities may be much

greater than previously thought. In this sense,

disengagement is not really the end of that

identity. Instead, a whole other layer of

unwanted and involuntary thoughts, feelings,

bodily reactions, and behaviors may persist

and continue to shape a person’s life.

DISENGAGEMENT, RESIDUAL

AND ADDICTION

Scholars use the term “disengagement”

(Ebaugh 1988; see also Vaughan 1986; Wright

1991) to describe physical and psychological

withdrawal from particular identities or roles.

Simi et al. 3

The continuing influence an identity or role

may exert following disengagement is what

Ebaugh (1988) refers to as “residual” or

“hangover identity.” More than 50 years ago,

Anslem Strauss (1959:97–98) observed that

disengagement from an identity may generate

reactions similar to addiction: “The fuller

meaning of temptation is this: you are with-

drawing from an old psychological status and

coming into a new, and in doing so something

akin to the withdrawal symptoms of drug

addiction occurs.” But not all identities or

roles involve residual. As Turner (1978:1)

explains, “Some roles are put on and taken off

like clothing without lasting effects. Other

roles are difficult to put aside when a situation

is changed and continue to shape the way in

which many of the individual roles are per-

formed.” Yet, this point tells us little about the

characteristics associated with identities that

result in substantial residual, and few sociolo-

gists since Strauss have considered the addic-

tive qualities that highly salient identities may

produce. As such, our goal here is to analyze

the social processes that produce qualities

similar to addiction after leaving a highly

salient identity. We do so by applying DiMag-

gio’s (2002) typology of cognition to the

experiences of identity residual among for-

mer white supremacists and analyzing how

these individuals develop self-talk strategies

to resist such consequences.

A growing number of studies examine the

factors that prompt the initial point of disen-

gagement, but what happens following a per-

son’s disengagement from a highly salient

identity such as white supremacism has

received little scholarly attention. Existing

studies of disengagement from political

extremism tend to focus on the disengage-

ment process as a discrete end point. Beyond

this end point, individuals are assumed to

begin another phase of life (post-extremism)

that involves a new process of identity forma-

tion with new social roles and networks. In

short, the person starts a new life. But life

does not unfold in this type of linear fashion

with clear-cut phases of beginning and ending

(Wacquant 1990). Rather, as we analyze, a

core identity sometimes lingers in a person’s

life after the person no longer holds that iden-

tity. As such, a former identity never truly

disappears; we thus conceptualize becoming

and disengagement as contiguous and emer-

gent processes deeply tied together and ulti-

mately inseparable.

Our focus is not why white supremacists

disengage,2 but rather the habitual and unwanted

thoughts, feelings, physiological responses, and

behavior that can follow exit. Although we can-

not definitively conclude whether involvement

in hate produces a form of addiction, the empiri-

cal evidence we present provides a strong start-

ing point to further consider the sociological

significance of addiction and the extent to which

social processes are embedded in psychological

and physiological ones. Although the sociologi-

cal literature is rife with references to the addic-

tive qualities associated with identity (e.g.,

hangover, residual), surprisingly few studies

extend beyond the metaphorical to investigate

the empirical overlap between residual and

addiction. We use the term addiction cautiously

in order to avoid older tendencies that patholo-

gized deviant behavior (Lemert 1951). Socio-

logical critiques of psychopathology, however,

sometimes suggest an artificial distinction

between broader social processes and suppos-

edly individual-level phenomena. In contrast,

we consider identity residual and addiction as

reflecting the intersection between psychologi-

cal, biological, and sociological processes.

The possibility of social processes having

addictive qualities is supported by burgeoning

neuroscience research that identifies how the

consumption of licit and illicit drugs activates

certain neural pathways that increase dopamine

in the reward circuit (Goldstein and Volkow

2011). As Reinarman (2005:309) notes, studies

have identified similar neurological conse-

quences for a number of non-drug activities,

such that people will like and thus tend to

repeat ‘‘anything you can do that turns on these

dopamine neurons.’’ This is not a trivial realiza-

tion, but rather points to the possibility that

under certain conditions (e.g., strong ties, high

levels of commitment, long-term exposure)

social environments and related identities may

generate neuro-physiological changes that over

time mimic addiction.

4 American Sociological Review 00(0)

IDENTITY AND COGNITIVE

SOCIOLOGY

A long tradition within sociology focuses on

the development of different types of identity,

including distinguishing between personal and

collective identities (Burke 1980; Cooley

1902; Mead 1934; Snow 2001; Stryker 1968).

Identities are defined as part of a person’s

overall sense of self—“the meanings one has

as a group member, as a role holder, or as a

person” (Stets and Burke 2003:132)—and

involve “self-cognitions tied to roles and thus

to positions in organized social relations”

(Stryker 2000:28). Identities function at con-

scious levels, through deliberate action, and at

unconscious levels, as individuals process

stimuli without awareness (Burke and Stets

2009; Erikson 1959). One’s degree of commit-

ment to an identity-related role specifies its

salience. Identities, roles, and behavior are

inextricably intertwined. Role behavior is the

basis for identity, and identities strongly move

people to actions that express these meanings

(Stryker 2000). When an identity cuts across

multiple dimensions (personal, social, and col-

lective) and involves a deeply meaningful and

emotion-laden set of associations and commit-

ments, disengagement from that identity is

likely to involve substantial residual (Thoits

1992). These are the kind of identities formed

in marginalized insular groups that cultivate

strong emotions such as extreme hatred.3

Cognitions, Emotions, and Residual

To provide a deeper analysis of residual

related to rejected identities, we turn to recent

developments in cognitive sociology that

integrate advances from the neurosciences

(Cerulo 2010, 2014; Ignatow 2009, 2014).

We rely on several concepts to explain differ-

ent types of cognition and emotion and their

relationship to identity residual. In particular,

automatic cognition characterizes rapid, unin-

tentional thoughts or fast cognition, whereas

deliberate cognition refers to more reflective,

planned thinking, or slow cognition (Cerulo

2010, 2014; DiMaggio 2002). The speed of

cognition has been an area of recent

sociological interest (Moore 2017; Vaisey

2009) and underscores the potential socio-

logical relevance of dual process models from

the cognitive neurosciences (Lizardo et al.

2016). Dual process models argue that

humans rely on two types of cognitive pro-

cessing: system 1 is fast and largely uncon-

scious, and system 2 processing is slower and

conscious (Kahneman 2011; Moore 2017).

Neuroscientists have also described another

dimension of cognition, called hot and cold,

which refers to the extent that emotional affect

is part of a particular cognition. Hot cognition

involves a heightened response to stimuli, one

that is saturated with a high degree of emo-

tion. In contrast, cold refers to unemotional,

calculating thought (Cerulo 2010; Ignatow

2014). The consideration of emotion distin-

guishes the hot–cold continuum from the

automatic–deliberate continuum.

As an effort to synthesize these various

aspects of cognition, DiMaggio (2002) pro-

posed a typology that contrasts four cognitive

combinations across two dimensions: hot–

cold and deliberate–automatic. Cognition that

combines automatic and hot orientations cor-

responds with impulsive, stereotyped action,

such as adherence to a strong and rigid ideol-

ogy, that we argue is most likely to character-

ize experiences with identity residual. Within

the realm of politics, cognitive sociologists

have also examined how the strength of a

person’s ideology can influence cognitive

style such that strong ideologies have “pre-

organized the world so as to make effortless,

efficient associations” (Martin and Desmond

2010:9). Individuals with strong ideologies

hold more available schematic information

than do those with weak ideologies, and thus

they are more likely to engage in automatic

cognition and avoid deliberate cognition. This

characterization is consistent with extreme

hatred, which typically involves rigid bound-

aries of “us” and “them” and various types of

dehumanization (Sternberg 2005). Hot and

automatic cognition related to a strong ideol-

ogy are especially important for understand-

ing potential similarities between addiction

and the persistence of a rejected identity

(Gladwin and Figner 2014).

Simi et al. 5

The strength of ideology is an important

dimension to add to the hot–cold and

automatic–deliberate typology. Related to

ideology, we think two factors are especially

important for understanding when identity

residual is most likely to involve addiction-

like qualities. First, when identities are highly

salient a large portion of a person’s life is

organized around that identity (Burke 1980).

When a highly salient identity involves par-

ticipation in an insular social movement, the

person may develop a dense set of social ties

while simultaneously becoming isolated from

nonmembers (McAdam 1989; Polletta 1999).

The diminished presence of nonmember rela-

tionships magnifies the intensity and influ-

ence of relationships within the movement.

Second, identities that involve extreme

hatred related to group-based prejudices, or what

Fromm (1973) called “character-conditioned

hate,” are likely to produce identity residual.

Part of white supremacism includes a central

focus on hate, which can be defined as a strong

cognitive and emotional disposition toward

particular objects, groups, or individuals

(Sternberg 2005). When directed at a social

group, hate often refers to extreme dislike

associated with prejudice that provokes aggres-

sive impulses (Allport 1954), a process that is

social-interactional as well as neuro-cognitive

(Blee 2004; Zeki and Romaya 2008). Emotion

is an important dimension of social move-

ments more broadly (Berezin 2001; Goodwin,

Jasper, and Polletta 2001; Jasper 1998), but not

all movements focus on extreme hatred in this

respect. Movement identities that do involve

high levels of extreme hatred are thus likely to

produce different types of personal conse-

quences for those activists.

THE SOCIOLOGICAL

SIGNIFICANCE OF

ADDICTION AND HABIT

The addiction concept remains somewhat

peripheral within sociology (for exceptions,

see Denzin 1993; Graham et al. 2008; Hughes

2007; Lindesmith [1968] 2008; Ray 1961;

Weinberg 1997, 2000, 2002, 2011), but habit

has received renewed interest (Bennett et al.

2013; Crossley 2013), including recognition

of its long-standing significance within clas-

sical social theory (Camic 1986). The habit-

ual dimensions of behavior are generally

understood as durable generalized disposi-

tions that permeate an entire domain, or even

the entire course, of a person’s life (Bennett

et al. 2013; Camic 1986).

Addiction, on the other hand, can be

defined as thoughts, emotions, bodily experi-

ences, and unwanted behavior of a chronic,

relapsing, and compulsive nature that occur

despite negative consequences and are charac-

terized by episodes where people feel they

have lost control (Boshears, Boeri, and Harbry

2011; Dingel et al. 2012; Marks 1990). Addic-

tion implies an element of unwanted and

negative consequences that are present in

some (but not all) types of habitual behavior.

Although addiction can be understood as a

form of habitual behavior (Graybiel 2008;

LaRose, Lin, and Eastin 2003; Lindesmith

[1968] 2008; Weinberg 1997, 2000, 2002,

2011), the line between habit and addiction is

currently unclear. In colloquial terms, an

addiction is often referred to as a “bad habit”

or a “hard habit to break.” More recently,

neuroscience studies suggest a substantial

overlap between the transition from goal-

directed to habit-driven behavior and addic-

tion (Bergen-Cico et al. 2014; Goldstein and

Volkow 2011; Graybiel 2008). Following

Everitt and Robbins (2005) and Marlatt and

colleagues (1988), we argue that addiction is

a type of habit. Not all habit can be described

as addiction, but all addiction involves habit-

ual behavior. At the same time, it is unclear

how broadly the term addiction should be

applied to habitual behavior, as evidenced in

the controversies over the growing number of

behaviors now referred to as “behavioral

addictions” (e.g., game-playing, Internet use,

excessive sexual behavior) (LaRose et al.

2003; Marks 1990; for a critique of expanded

definitions, see Akers 1991).

6 American Sociological Review 00(0)

Embodying Addiction

To understand how the addictive qualities of

white supremacism are experienced through—

but also projected outward from—the bodies

of participants, we turn to two strands of

scholarship on the social body (Crossley

1995; Howson and Inglis 2001; Turner 1997).

The phenomenological writings of Merleau-

Ponty (1982) are the foundation for one line

of research on the intertwined nature of the

corporal body and subjectivity. In one exam-

ple, he describes how soccer players absorb

the lines of the field into their sense of self

until players and the field in which they play

become indistinguishable. The ways the body

intersects with personal identity, experience,

and perception are similarly described in

scholarship on how physical limitations con-

dition how people see themselves and the

outside world (Turner 1997).

A second line of scholarship considers the

body as a site from which cultural symbols

are projected—for example, in the bodily

performances of various athletes. Although

the two research trajectories are distinct,

Turner (1997) argues that they intersect in

Bourdieu’s concept of habitus, in which the

body is understood as both socially con-

structed to hold cultural representations and

lived within a complex web of social relation-

ships and interactions. Recent sociological

studies of the body draw from both traditions,

such as Wacquant’s (2004; see also Wacquant

2014, 2015) “carnal ethnography” that con-

siders bodily construction and practices in a

boxing gym, or Crossley’s (2001, 2006) work

on “embodied reflexivity” that positions the

body as mediating social practices and per-

sonal intentionality.

This dual theoretical perspective is partic-

ularly useful for understanding the construc-

tion and residual effects of a white supremacist

identity that individuals continue to experi-

ence. Moreover, research on the body is use-

ful for thinking about how addiction to hate

becomes etched in physicality and perfor-

mance while simultaneously serving as a per-

ceptual lens to which people return after

leaving white supremacism. Indeed, addictive-

like qualities are embedded within a broad

range of human behavior, in part because

environmental features are processed through

social (e.g., interaction, networks, situational)

and biological (e.g., physical capacity, size,

attractiveness of stimuli) mechanisms to pro-

duce habitual behavior. Previous studies

highlight the social aspects involved in the

formation of addiction, but less attention has

been given to the possibility that social pro-

cesses themselves may have addictive

qualities.

RESEARCH DESIGN

Sample

Sociologists studying deviance use innova-

tive approaches to gain entry into any subcul-

tural environment, but two factors make

access to former members of organized hate

groups particularly difficult. First, former

white supremacists are often loath to be iden-

tified as such. They fear that information

about their prior affiliations or activities will

expose them to violence by current extrem-

ists, to legal prosecution, or to sanctions by

current employers, neighbors, family mem-

bers, child protection agencies, and others.

Second, unlike current members, former

extremists cannot be found through network

ties or spatial locations, since most seek to

sever all connections to their previous lives.

Because there is no way to compile a list of

former members to serve as a sampling

frame, we identified interviewees by snow-

ball sampling from multiple starts to ensure

variety in the location and type of extremist

group (Wright et al. 1992). We developed

initial contacts for the snowball chains

through a variety of means, including our

research team’s extensive prior research with

active and inactive far-right extremists, iden-

tifying former extremists with a public pres-

ence (e.g., media, book authors, lecture

series), and using referrals from our project

partners.4 Because we used multiple individu-

als to generate unique snowballs, only a small

Simi et al. 7

segment of the participants were acquainted

with each other.

Our sampling method resulted in life his-

tory interviews with 89 former members of

U.S. white supremacist groups. Participants

were interviewed in the places they now live,

with 85 located in 24 states across all regions

of the United States and four in Canada. Par-

ticipants ranged in age from 19 to 61, and

included an unusual gender diversity with 68

men and 21 women. Among respondents, 11

described their current socioeconomic status

as lower class, 42 as working class, 31 as

middle class, and five as upper class. They

had participated in white supremacism from

three to twenty-one years. A large portion had

extensive histories of criminal conduct,

including property offenses such as shoplift-

ing, vandalism, and other forms of property

destruction, and a variety of violent offenses

such as murder, attempted murder, street

fights, violent initiation rituals, and bomb-

making. Of the 89 participants, 69 reported a

history of violent offending, 77 reported a

history of delinquent activity, and 39 had

spent time in prison.

To be clear, the individuals in this sample

no longer identify as “white power” and are

no longer affiliated with organized hate

groups. All of the individuals currently see

themselves as “formers” or something equiv-

alent to a former (e.g., “I’m not involved

anymore,” “I moved on”). In some cases,

individuals have been disengaged for more

than a decade and have experienced substan-

tial changes in their social and cognitive

orientations (e.g., interracial marriage; con-

version to Buddhism). In this sense, the

residual we identify does not reflect individ-

uals moving from a high level of extremism

to a lower level of extremism, but instead

characterizes individuals who experienced

substantial transformation.

Procedures and Data Analysis

We established rapport prior to interviews

through regular contact with participants via

telephone and e-mail. Interviews were con-

ducted using a semi-structured interview

protocol and in private settings such as hotel

rooms and residential homes and public set-

tings such as restaurants and coffee shops.5

Most of the interview was spent eliciting an

in-depth life history to produce narratives that

reflect the complexities and intersectionality of

identity, ideology, and life experiences (McAd-

ams 1997). Subjects were asked to describe

their childhood experiences as an initial start-

ing point. The interviews included questions

about broad phases of the subject’s extremism,

such as entry, involvement, and disengage-

ment, with probes to encourage subjects to

elaborate on aspects of their life histories.

Subjects were periodically asked direct ques-

tions to focus on specific topic areas, but the

interviews relied on an unstructured format

intended to generate unsolicited data embed-

ded in their personal narratives. We view the

elicited narratives as instructive in terms of

assessing how individuals make sense of their

lives (Blee 1996; Copes, Hochstetler, and For-

syth 2013; Giordano et al. 2015; McAdams

1997). Each interview concluded with more

structured questions and scale items to collect

comparable information across interviewees in

terms of risk factors (e.g., history of child

abuse, mental health problems), demographic

information, and criminality. Interviewing for-

mer extremists as opposed to current ones

allowed us to elicit information on highly sen-

sitive issues such as previous involvement in

violence, crime, and substance abuse.

The interviews lasted between four and

more than eight hours and generated 10,882

pages of transcripts, which indicates the level

of detail provided by the life histories. We

used modified grounded theory (Charmaz

2006; see also Berg 2007; Glaser and Strauss

1967; Miles and Huberman 1994), in order

to combine a more open-ended, inductive

approach while also relying on existing litera-

tures and frameworks to guide the research

and help interpret the findings.6 The constant

interaction with data also involved a virtual

ongoing analysis and identification of social

processes that affected each new round of

interviews. The initial data coding began by

reading entire interview transcripts line-by-

line to determine differences and similarities

8 American Sociological Review 00(0)

within and across our subjects. Subsequent

coding techniques helped identify and extract

relevant empirical and conceptual properties

and organize the data into similar concepts.

Inductive codes emerged from the initial

phase of line-by-line analysis (Berg 2007;

Charmaz 2006; Lofland et al. 2006). Deduc-

tive codes were extracted from scholarly lit-

erature on white supremacism, group

affiliation, disengagement, and related topics.

After developing the initial codes, we com-

pared and contrasted data themes, noting rela-

tions between them, and moving back and

forth between first-level data and general

categories (Glaser and Strauss 1967; Miles

and Huberman 1994). Analysis of these inter-

views also required balancing between

accepting and decoding the subjects’ narra-

tives. For example, narrated statements about

addiction may reflect a larger cultural ten-

dency to frame deviant behavior in medical

terms (Conrad 1975; Schneider 2015) and

actors’ tendency to adopt readily available

discursive models that absolve them of

responsibility for past and current behavior.

Yet it is also important to consider the possi-

bility that addictive qualities may actually

characterize certain types of identities. We

return to this issue in the conclusion.

Several limitations of this study are impor-

tant to mention. First, the retrospective nature

of the life history interviews raises questions

about validity and reliability due to memory

erosion, distortion, and selective recall (Bad-

deley 1979). The practice of remembering is a

reconstructive process where memories of

events are typically reinterpreted during each

recall (Bridge and Paller 2012). Despite these

concerns, the rich life history accounts pro-

vide important insight from the subjects’ per-

spective. Second, due to the relatively hidden

nature of this population, we derived the sam-

ple through snowball techniques, which means

it is not representative and we cannot general-

ize from these findings. The goal of a grounded

theory approach, however, is to develop a

conceptual explanation that closely fits the

data (or incidents) the concepts are intended to

represent. Grounded theory is not intended to

provide generalizations, but the hypotheses

developed can be tested in future studies.

RESULTS

Hate as a Totalizing Commitment

Involvement in the white supremacist move-

ment includes a complete identity transforma-

tion, in much the way Lindesmith ([1968]

2008) describes opiate addiction. In addition,

an extensive set of commitments characterize

organized hate groups, similar to communes

and various new religious movements (Kanter

1972), although there is substantial variation

among these groups in terms of adherence to

extreme hatred. White supremacist groups

socialize members by outlining collective

expectations for membership that strongly

emphasize hate-directed beliefs, feelings, and

behavior. Expressing or acting on the basis of

hatred toward non-whites, homosexuals, and

various other perceived “outgroups” is the

primary marker that white supremacists use

to establish group boundaries and ideological

coherence, and they provide the basis for a

broad range of cultural practices that include

everything from violent acts to ordinary life-

style preferences (Simi and Futrell 2015). In

turn, these cultural practices help develop the

solidarity and commitment necessary to sus-

tain a collective identity (Fantasia 1989).

Being a white supremacist is comparable

to holding a “master status” (Hughes 1945):

white supremacy cuts across a person’s mul-

tiple identities, is typically at the core of

one’s self-concept, and occupies a central

position in one’s daily life (Simi and Futrell

2009). The group context of hate, in particu-

lar, offers powerful experiences, which Dur-

kheim ([1915] 1965) called “collective

effervescence,” in which individuals begin

to feel outside of themselves and part of a

larger being (i.e., the group context) (Collins

2004). Indeed, white supremacism involves

vitalizing and reactive emotions (Jasper

1998) and bodily engagement (e.g., ritual-

ized dances, salutes, uniforms, and paramili-

tary training). In turn, disengagement from

Simi et al. 9

white supremacy requires separating from a

central aspect of one’s identity and finding

new friendship networks, systems of sup-

port, music, clothing, and a variety of other

lifestyle changes.

We begin by illustrating how a white

supremacist identity involves a totalizing set

of experiences that permeate all aspects of a

person’s thoughts, emotions, body presenta-

tion, and actions. Doug7 explained the pro-

cess of becoming a white supremacist and the

related lifestyle:

Your whole life is not just an ideology but

when your whole life. . . . We call people a

surfer why? Because they’ve taken on that

image. It’s usually because they embrace

that to a greater degree than somebody

who’s just a casual surfer. I think with an

ideology of skinheads the whole person is

being consumed by the idea of what they’re

embracing and espousing. It is an addiction

because you order your life according to

what you believe or think . . . your life is

ordered according to that pattern. . . . You’re

presenting an image and that projection is

something that’s in your heart. It’s deep-

seated. Not to say something that is deep-

seated can’t be dislodged but it’s about

recreating a new life. (Interview, June 7,

2015)

Doug referred to a social evaluation process

in which others come to define the person in

particular ways, a critical component of self-

identification (Cooley 1902; Felson 1985;

Matsueda 1992). For Doug, becoming a white

supremacist formed an identity of how “you

order your life.” White supremacy is about

more than just adhering to certain ideas; it is

an entire way of life that includes parenting,

recreation, and entertainment. In this way,

white supremacism has the deep physical

embodiment of specialized practices that

require strict regimes of rehearsal and mas-

tery; it is akin to ballet dancers, for example,

who feel unable to stop even when their bod-

ies revolt (Aalten 2007).

The intensive nature of white supremacy is

also illustrated by participants’ references to

the lengthy period of time necessary to

remove themselves from this disposition.

Carter, a former member of a paramilitary

compound, described the difficulties he expe-

rienced when leaving the pervasive lifestyle

of white supremacy. As Carter underscores,

hate required substantial time to learn and

even more time to unlearn:

I’ve said before that it took me less than two

years to learn to hate and it took me nine

years to unlearn it. You don’t just stop hat-

ing just like that. There is still a lot of pollu-

tion in there. . . . Since we were religious

[Christian] based, I had to learn to look at

those scriptures differently. That was

hard. For years, I didn’t even pick up a

Bible anymore. I couldn’t read it without

only reading it from the bad point of view. I

just couldn’t see another interpretation of

that. I didn’t want to read it. I was putting

myself under a pressure. . . . Getting that out

of me took . . . I think it was ’92 [nine years]

before I got rid of it all. (Interview, May 20,

2012)

Carter’s talk of “pollution in there” is a meta-

phor for both the destructive effects of white

supremacism on his very being and his physical

embodiment of this destruction. The reference

to pollution symbolizes the depth of Carter’s

experience and how profoundly he was affected

by his years as a white supremacist.

Despite clear differences, both Doug’s and

Carter’s statements underscore how much a

person’s life is affected by adopting a white

supremacist lifestyle. Even their relationships

to institutions, such as religion, and their peer

relations became completely defined by this

worldview. Carter, for example, practiced

daily Bible studies and sermons that expressed

a white supremacist interpretation of Chris-

tian doctrine. He was completely enmeshed in

daily rituals and basic living practices organ-

ized around the group’s racist ideology. Cart-

er’s role commitments were so intense that

even after he no longer identified as a white

supremacist, his previous white supremacist

interpretation of the Bible remained involun-

tarily salient. Doug’s experiences represent a

10 American Sociological Review 00(0)

more street-based involvement in white

supremacist activities and included routine

acts of violence to express his commitments.

Whereas Doug and Carter focused on cogni-

tive and emotional aspects of the addiction to

hate, Teddy, a former Hammerskin (racist

skinhead), detailed his bodily sensations:

Being a part of something and having an

ideal and thinking I believed and grabbed a

hold of a certain type of truth, you know,

meaning of life truth. What we’re all seek-

ing for, I guess. . . . It was a high. I’d get

chills and everything when I listened to

Skrewdriver [white power music].8 (Inter-

view, June 26, 2015)

To Teddy, racial hate was not simply what he

believed; it was what he was:

I really believed that I was in the truth. . . . I

liked it because it was my heritage, my

grandma was from Finland and she came

over here and that’s, you know, part of what

I am, you know, all the symbols, the Vikings

and stuff. (Interview, June 26, 2015)

Teddy’s point that he believed he was “in the

truth” is especially revealing in terms of the all-

encompassing and totalizing character of involve-

ment in the white supremacy movement.

The Addictive Qualities of Hate

Because of the intense nature of white

supremacist involvement and the difficulties

associated with disengagement, some formers

described the time period after leaving as a

“recovery process” from an addiction to hate.

In this section, we examine interviews in

which former members explicitly or implic-

itly described addictive qualities of hate. A

small portion of our interviewees reported

that disengagement was “not that hard” (n =

15), but a majority described it as “substan-

tially difficult” (n = 74). Approximately one-

third explicitly described hate as a form of

addiction (n = 35), and a much larger number

recounted urges to return to hate or described

some type of relapse (n = 62).

Formers who described their struggles in

terms of addiction narrated an involuntary

lingering of white supremacist thoughts, feel-

ings, physical responses, and, in some cases,

unwanted behavior. Their residual involved

more than a sense of longing for comradery

and other aspects related to group dynamics;

it was also a deeply ingrained default to hate

that could be overridden or repressed but not

completely erased. In this way, their narra-

tives evoke Merleau-Ponty’s (1982) descrip-

tion of soccer players for whom the rules and

motivations of the game are so deeply inter-

nalized that they seem to operate on auto-

pilot. Melanie, a former member of the

American Nazi Party, talked about racial hate

as something fused into her brain:

Somebody needs to do a study . . . subject us

to the [white power] music, to the literature,

to the racial slurs and watch what fires in

our brains. I guarantee you it’s an addiction.

I can listen to white power music and within

a week be back to that mindset. I know it.

(Interview, October 13, 2015)

Melanie’s comment suggests the automatic

and hot dimensions of cognition related to

white supremacist involvement and the extent

to which these qualities endure over time.

Alicia, a former member of the World Church

of the Creator, also talked about the role of

music in terms of creating enduring thoughts,

feelings, and bodily sensations that remained

years after having listened to the music:

I haven’t listened to Skrewdriver [white

power music band] or any of that crap in so

many years. And even today I have snippets

of songs [in my head]. Odd moments then I

wonder, well it makes one wonder and think

more about hate as an addiction because

there can be so many different aspects of it.

(Interview, June 23, 2012)

Alicia went on to speculate that the types of

affirmation individuals derive from hate

groups, such as pride and respect, reinforce

the lifestyle and worldview. The process is

recursive: white supremacists express their

Simi et al. 11

lifestyle and worldviews through cultural

markers such as white power music and, in

turn, these cultural practices offer powerful

social and psychic rewards. Alicia’s specula-

tions have been confirmed by neuroscience

studies that underscore the broad-based and

intensive nature of social influence on the

human brain (Blakemore 2008; Cozolino

2004; Gazzaniga 1987).

In the next sections, we expand our focus

by examining two types of residual: each type

initiated by a triggering event and, in turn,

characterized by an auto-pilot quality the

interviewees described as “it just happens.”

During the first type of residual, the person’s

previous thoughts, feelings, and bodily reac-

tions related to white supremacy are reacti-

vated, but not necessarily in terms of any

concrete unwanted behavior. The second type

of residual, however, involves a complete,

although relatively short-lived, relapse or

return to their previous identity. In this respect,

the second type of residual is characterized by

a more clearly visible embodiment of their

previous identity, although it is experienced

and described as involuntary and unwanted.

Type 1 Residual: Momentary Flashes

Teddy discussed how watching certain mov-

ies triggers his previous feelings and beliefs

related to white supremacy, and also produces

an involuntary physiological response in the

form of “goose bumps”:

I can’t watch like the old war movies or like

say Inglorious Bastards or, or something

like that, you know, and they show like a, or

like a, the History Channel has the World

War II in HD and they, you know, even

though they’re showing the Germans get-

ting slaughtered and stuff, I still see that,

that, you know, the swastika in the back-

ground, you know. I get a little goose

bumps. I can’t lie, you know. (Interview,

June 26, 2015)

Teddy discussed powerful but relatively short

flashes in which his previously held beliefs

and feelings resurfaced. Flashes and goose

bumps can be understood as expressions of

automatic and hot cognition that characterize

Teddy’s involuntary reaction of pride and

pleasure when encountering images related to

white supremacy. Another participant, Brent,

a former member of Volksfront, reflected on

his taste in music now and in the past:

I don’t have the same thoughts I don’t have

the same feelings but I can’t stop listening to

the music [meaning neo-Nazi rock music]. . . .

It’s pretty catchy fucking rock-n-roll you

know what I mean? You know. Kind of cool.

So I’m reliving some glory fucking days,

this and that. You know, it’s like fucking

good music and except for the lyrics, it’s

some pretty good fucking music man, for the

most part. (Interview, July 27, 2014)

Brent described his persistent attraction to

neo-Nazi music as an involuntary action, and

one he was unable to stop. Although he expe-

rienced this listening as beyond his control, it

served as a pleasant reminder of his past,

despite his current disavowal of the ideas

represented in the lyrics. As Schwarz’s (2015)

fascinating study of “ghetto sounds” illumi-

nates, what and how we hear reflects deeply

held cultural values; environmental sounds

can stimulate a variety of related (and unre-

lated) thoughts and feelings (see also Bryson

1996). At a neurological level, studies have

long shown that different areas of the brain

process music differently than other stimuli

(Davidson et al. 1976; Molfese, Freeman, and

Palermo 1975). Such studies suggest a direct,

lifelong link between music and emotions.

Given this neural differentiation, it is quite

likely that music provides a complimentary

process that facilitates the ability to learn and

associate music with ideology and related

actions (Levitin and Tirovolas 2009). Brent’s

statement suggested that Skrewdriver’s music

evokes feelings and activates memories that

he still finds enjoyable. Memory activation

triggered through distinct musical sounds,

along with the lyrics, allows former extrem-

ists, like Brent, to recall their past selves in

12 American Sociological Review 00(0)

some type of embodied fashion that includes

listening, singing along, and dancing. In turn,

these bodily experiences evoke visceral reac-

tions that can be pleasurable or unpleasurable

as individuals relive their former selves. The

power of these experiences is particularly

evident in Brent’s case, as he continues to

experience residual from his past identity

despite his current marriage to an African

American woman.

Type 2 Residual: Situational Relapse

The second type of residual involves substan-

tial relapses, where individuals fully embody a

return to their previous identity as a white

supremacist. For example, Bonnie described a

recent incident at a Jack in the Box restaurant:

I go through the drive-thru and what’d they

do? They fucked up [my son’s] order and

they didn’t give me tacos or I don’t know.

So I go back in there and his burger’s like

tiny. I’m like, I’m like, “That burger was

$5.00, why is this little?” Okay, well, the

lady, she was, they’re all Mexican. They

hardly speak English and she’s like accusing

me of coming back for free food and I got

pissed off and she was like ignoring me, like

and I’m trying to talk to her and, and she

wouldn’t listen to me and is talking to other

people and accusing me of, “I put them in

your,” “No, you didn’t. I wouldn’t drive all

the way back here if you gave me my food.”

I’m like, “You didn’t give me this, this, and

this.” And so I don’t remember what she

said because I barely understood her. She

wouldn’t give me her name, you know. She

wouldn’t stand close enough where I could

see the, her thing, and she wouldn’t tell me,

I asked for the manager. “Oh, there’s no

manager.” She was really rude and so I told

her, “Fuck you, you fucking Beaner, get the

fuck out of my country,” and I told her,

“White power,” and I walked out and I

threw a heil up [Nazi salute] and I don’t usu-

ally do that shit anymore but I was so angry

and it’s because of everything that’s going

on now. . . . I did it as I was walking out. . . .

I don’t even remember everything I said. I

was so angry. . . . No, all I saw was red and

I saw her and I wanted to fucking beat the

piss out of her. (Interview, July 20, 2015)

The Jack in the Box incident was an unex-

pected and involuntary response to an irritat-

ing but relatively mundane situation. Bonnie’s

reaction, however, reflected an automatic and

hot cognitive style that she described as

highly emotive (“all I saw was red”).

At the conclusion of the incident, Bonnie

reported she was overcome by shame and

disbelief at what had transpired, further illus-

trating that Bonnie experienced the situation

as unwanted and involuntary. Yet, her

response to the momentary relapse did not

seem any less automatic or hot. Bonnie sim-

ply knew and felt that what she did inside the

restaurant was “wrong,” and she was over-

come with sadness by even discussing the

incident. Whereas other individuals reported

responding to residual with deliberate cogni-

tion by initiating different types of self-talk,

we found little evidence in Bonnie’s inter-

view that suggested more deliberate cognition

to offset the residual. In this sense, Bonnie

was still very much wrapped up in her past

identity and unable to find much, if any, emo-

tional distance, which helps explain the sub-

stantial amount of residual she continues to

experience. People are at greater risk of strug-

gling with residual when they are unable to

find an alternative source of self-worth and

affirmation (Vaughan 1986). Bonnie’s case

exemplifies this. Her interview was filled

with markers of shame (e.g., “I feel ashamed

talking about this”; “I don’t leave the house

now without covering the [swastika] tattoo on

my foot”) and a diminished self-worth such

that she did not consider herself “important

enough” to be interviewed.

Bonnie’s exit from hate group involve-

ment was recent, but other individuals whose

disengagements were more distant in time

also reported similar types of relapse. Jack-

son, for example, who left the white suprema-

cist movement more than 15 years ago,

discussed how his daughter’s recent relation-

ship with a Latino person not only made him

angry but forced him to evaluate how much

Simi et al. 13

he had actually changed since exiting the

white supremacist movement:

I reacted like Archie Bucker you know what

I mean? “One of my friends told me my

daughter is getting with a Mexican,” I went

right to her, “Hey is he partly Hispanic?”

“Yeah a little bit.” Oh man I came unhitched.

I was just, I was like, “You are not getting

with him he is this and you can’t because

there is a bloodline,” I was freaked the fuck

out like, “This can’t happen.” I said, “What

the fuck do you think you are doing? Why

did you get with him? You can’t. I swear to

God if you fucking do,” but I made her cry

and all that shit . . . just took me about half-

hour to realize what I did. I mean all this

weird shit comes out, all of this weird

thoughts to counter what you had done.

Because I know I’m not a shallow person

but that’s shallow. That was a shallow

thought process . . . that was shallow think-

ing. It’s Archie Bunker shit. That’s total

fucking ignorant. It was ignorant and then I

was just like don’t fucking think that you

are all cured of fucking racism Mr. Fucking

Racist. I was like damn. (Interview, April

17, 2014)

Jackson’s initial response reflected his pre-

vious beliefs regarding “racial purity” and

“white genocide.” The fear and anger that

accompanied his earlier racist beliefs were

reactivated after Jackson learned about his

daughter’s new romantic partner. Like Bon-

nie, Jackson described his initial reaction in

terms consistent with automatic and hot cog-

nition, but, unlike Bonnie, Jackson’s thinking

transitioned to a more deliberate cognition

style characterized by a careful reconsidera-

tion of his initial reaction. As this transition to

deliberate cognition occurred, the degree of

emotional affect seemed to lessen somewhere

between hot and cold. Compared to Bonnie,

Jackson’s shift to a more deliberate cognitive

style may reflect the relatively lengthy period

of time that has lapsed since his disengage-

ment from white supremacy and the extent to

which he has developed a new identity

focused around civil rights activism. Both

time and a new political orientation may have

helped Jackson develop a more flexible cog-

nitive style that provides censors in terms of

identifying and responding to residual.

Finally, Jackson’s shift from automatic to

deliberate cognition provides support for

models that treat system 1 and system 2 cog-

nition as integrated rather than completely

distinct (Moore 2017).

Self-Talk Strategies to Resist Residual

We now turn to DiMaggio’s (2002) typology

to explore the self-talk strategies former

white supremacists develop to deflect the

involuntary thoughts, feelings, bodily reac-

tions, and unwanted behavior that accompany

the experience of residual. We conceive of

these strategies as “agentic moves” (Giordano

et al. 2002), in which actors willfully influ-

ence their response to situational circum-

stances. As opposed to residual, self-talk

reflects deliberate cognition that ranges

between hot and cold. Darren, for example,

trained himself to “let it go” and “step back”

to prevent himself from slipping into the per-

son he once was:

For me, I still find myself, I’ll start kind of

thinking, you know what I’m a truck driver

and most of the truck drivers in New Mex-

ico are Mexicans. I’m driving down the

road and I got some guy that obviously I

look at his truck and it’s, all right that guy

number one, doesn’t have a license. Number

two he’s illegal in general or whatever, then

he cuts me off. Then the wheels start spin-

ning. And I’ve got to catch myself, no. Let

it go, that’s not how . . . maybe he’s just

having a bad day behind the wheel. I mean

it still happens. . . . Yes, it does. You just

kind of step back and all right. . . . I con-

stantly remind myself, you’re not that guy

anymore, don’t do it. The tendency is

always there. It is very easy to get back into

that mindset. I think that is one of the things

that a lot of people, especially the old timers

that get out, they have a hard time with it,

14 American Sociological Review 00(0)

because you get drawn back into it just by

everyday things that you see. (Interview,

November 6, 2012)

Darren’s self-talk involves reminders to take

the role of others (Mead 1934) to empathize

with the object of his initial anger (“maybe

he’s just having a bad day”). Darren is clearly

trying to avoid the kind of dehumanization

that is a core component of white supremacist

ideology. For Darren, learning new ways to

act requires reminders that his past self need

not be his current or future self. It is not sim-

ply a matter of changing his ideas or acting in

new ways. He had to remember that he was

“not that guy anymore” through repeated self-

coaching. The reminders are an effort to sup-

press certain memories while reinforcing his

new self-image.

In Teddy’s case, Christ is the key to affirm-

ing to himself that he is no longer a white

supremacist:

It’s a struggle, you know. It is but, you

know, I just got to turn to Christ and if I get

them, I just drop on my knees and I just start

praying, you know, and it works but, you

know, you take a, you take a heroin addict

for 30 years, he may be clean and sober 10

years but you dangle a bag of powder, you

know, he’s going to do that little mentality,

so it’s the same, you know. I may not be a

drug addict but I was addicted to that, you

know. I just exchanged one idol for another,

you know. It was and yeah, I can’t, I can’t

lie and say that I don’t, you know, but I just

got to, now I know how to subside all that.

(Interview, June 26, 2015)

The lure of returning to his white supremacist

self is visceral and too powerful for Teddy to

resist on his own. It dangles like “a bag of

[illegal drug] powder,” exciting his bodily

urges to pull him back into an identity and

self that he battled to leave. Even when suc-

cessful at maintaining physical distance from

white supremacy, the effects lingered. Teddy

considered the allure so powerful that he no

longer imagined having an independent, self-

directed self. Instead, Teddy saw himself as

permanently marked by his former role. At

best, he had “exchanged one idol [extremism]

for another [Christ].” Religious conversions

are well-documented sources of self-change

related to criminal behavior and substance

abuse (Maruna, Wilson, and Curran 2006;

Sremac and Ganzevoort 2013). In this respect,

Teddy’s new religious framework became a

substitute of sorts that provided him with the

same type of automatic and hot cognitions

that white supremacy previously did. Although

the content of Teddy’s thinking changed, the

form or structure of his cognitions remained

quite similar.

These former extremists used self-talk as a

strategy to respond to the sudden resurfacing

of thoughts, feelings, physiological responses,

and unwanted behavior associated with their

previous identity as a white supremacist, but

they had mixed results. Self-talk represents a

concrete instance of human reflexivity, or a

dialogue between the more spontaneous “I”

and the more socially constructed “Me”

(Mead 1934; see also Callero 2003). Its stra-

tegic value is multiple. The very act of self-

talk buffers involuntary residual, allowing

formers to suppress manifestations of a self

they no longer embrace. At the same time,

instances of self-talk may contribute to indi-

viduals’ sense of self-efficacy by cumula-

tively demonstrating their ability to “initiate

self change” (Thoits 2003:192; see also Ban-

dura 2001). However, residual may persist

despite self-talk and surface as overt expres-

sions of white supremacy.

Because the process of internalization is

both conscious and unconscious, individuals

can exert agency in varying ways and in vary-

ing capacities (Hitlin and Elder 2007; Hitlin

and Kirkpatrick Johnson 2015; Lizardo 2004).

Emirbayer and Mische (1998; and more

recently Hitlin and Elder 2007) provide impor-

tant theoretical insight about how agency var-

ies according to whether a person is acting

within a set of highly constrained routines or

during a period when routines have been dis-

rupted and opportunities to innovate are more

available. The disruption of a highly salient

identity provides opportunities for a person to

exert agency during an unsettled period of

Simi et al. 15

time (Vaisey 2009). However, if a person’s life

remains unsettled for an extended period of

time, residual may become more persistent

and pervasive as the attraction to return to old

habits may gain prominence.

DISCUSSION AND

CONCLUSIONS

In this article, we relied on in-depth life his-

tory interviews with a sample of former U.S.

white supremacists to examine the complexi-

ties and difficulties related to exiting a highly

salient identity and the ensuing residual an

actor may experience. Specifically, we high-

lighted the embodied qualities associated

with residual that subjects describe in terms

of addiction. The results suggest that impor-

tant lingering elements continue to manifest

long after a person leaves white supremacy.

Hate groups appear to generate a “phantom

community” (Athens 1992) with persistent

influence on thoughts, feelings, physiological

responses, and behavior.

Residual effects are experienced on multi-

ple levels that are cumulatively described as

addiction. First, residual effects intrude on

cognitive processes, as thoughts from indi-

viduals’ previous extremist lives reappear in

certain situations. Second, residual effects

also involve emotional processes. Unexpected

situational cues may provoke anger and other

negative emotions that coincide with previ-

ously held beliefs about the inferiority of

various outgroups. Furthermore, individuals’

memories of enacting hate and trauma pro-

voke feelings of shame for the harm, damage,

and violence they inflicted. Former extrem-

ists also experience fear about a permanently

damaged self that refuses their efforts to

change and feels involuntarily tethered to

hate. Third, long-term effects are experienced

on a physiological level, as former extremists

describe involuntary and impulsive bodily

sensations that stem from the habitual aspects

of their previous identity. Finally, some

instances of residual involve formers experi-

encing a complete relapse, if only momentar-

ily, where their white supremacist behavior

returns. These instances go beyond fleeting

thoughts or feelings and extend into overt

behavior and affect how individuals conduct

themselves in certain situations.

This study changes how we understand

disengagement from violent extremism spe-

cifically, and residual more broadly, by

emphasizing the long-lasting consequences of

certain types of identities. Our findings indi-

cate that disengagement from white suprema-

cism is much more encompassing than simply

disengaging from its activities or physically

removing oneself from the group. Indeed, in

such cases, leaving can be a very ambiguous

process with no clear demarcation about when

it begins or ends. As our research shows, this

ambiguity is at least partially due to deeply

held and felt aspects that reside outside con-

scious control, elements that are overlooked in

most existing studies of disengagement, defec-

tion, and deradicalization from extremism.

Such omissions reflect a larger sociological

bias that privileges conscious aspects of

human behavior (Hitlin and Kirkpatrick John-

son 2015) while neglecting the physical nature

of social reality (Wacquant 2015). Following

Wacquant (2015), we suggest a holistic under-

standing of identity that goes beyond how one

thinks or feels to include physical embodi-

ment of identities. Such a formulation has

practical implications: effective interventions

may require much greater attention to the

enduring qualities of extremism in order to

offset residual-related issues.

To be clear, we are not arguing that all

forms of deviance are addictive. Instead, we

argue that the distinction between addiction

as an experience with “real” symptomology,

as opposed to the “idea” of addiction as meta-

phorical rhetoric that provides actors with a

frame to understand residual experiences, is

misleading. This type of distinction is unnec-

essary, because the symptoms of addiction are

not experienced outside of linguistic pro-

cesses used to make sense of our experiences

retrospectively. Addiction is often assessed,

in part, by asking individuals about their

experiences in terms of how much they con-

sume a particular substance or whether they

16 American Sociological Review 00(0)

ever feel urges to consume the substance or

engage in a particular behavior (Adams et al.

2004). Although some addictions (e.g., her-

oin) may involve physical symptoms such as

vomiting or tremors, even those experiences

are partially understood through a series of

linguistic devices and involve important psy-

chological and social dimensions. In short,

the idea that interviewees may be using addic-

tion purely as a rhetorical device reifies an

overly rigid distinction between “real” and

“discursive” (Hughes 2007).

This article provides an important first step

toward examining the addictive qualities of

identity residual. The case of white supremacist

identity residual raises a number of intriguing

questions future research should address. First,

what are the differences between individual

trajectories of disengagement that involve sub-

stantial residual compared to those that do not?

In particular, it would be useful for future stud-

ies to more carefully trace how individuals’

network embeddedness during involvement

shapes their experiences following disengage-

ment. Additional analyses are also necessary to

more closely examine the situational dynamics

related to specific episodes of residual and to

focus more on the neurocognitive qualities

of identity residual. Toward this end, we sug-

gest incorporating neuroimaging experimental

designs as a means to gather neurophysiologi-

cal data that can be integrated with self-report

interviews or survey data. Finally, future

research should compare former activists across

a broad range of social movements, including

other movements that may also emphasize

extreme hatred (e.g., violent jihadists) as well

as former members from other violent but less

political subcultures (e.g., conventional street

gangs).

Recognizing the addictive qualities of

identity has substantial theoretical implica-

tions. Identities may be constructed and per-

formed through situational occasions, but

when these situations are routinized, insular,

and involve extreme hatred, the persistence of

these identities may be much greater than pre-

viously thought. In this sense, disengagement

is not really the end of that identity. Instead, a

whole other layer of unwanted and involun-

tary thoughts, feelings, bodily responses and

behaviors may persist and continue to shape a

person’s life. We do not endorse the idea of

“once a hater, always a hater,” but there may

be shreds of truth in this statement: any kind

of powerful identity will leave traces on the

remainder of a person’s life. The point is not

that change is impossible, but rather transfor-

mation is never complete nor total and some

past identities linger while continuing to shape

future selves. Individuals need to understand

how these past identities may continue to

shape their lives, rather than remain unaware

of these influences.

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to the ASR editors and anonymous

reviewers for their insightful comments and suggestions.

Funding

This project was supported by Award No: 2014-ZA-BX-

0005, the National Institute of Justice, Office of Justice

Programs, U.S. Department of Justice, the Harry Frank

Guggenheim Foundation, and the National Consortium

for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism

(START) project, “Recruitment and Radicalization

among US Far-Right Terrorists,” as well as the Depart-

ment of Homeland Science and Technology Directorate’s

Office of University Programs through Award Number

2012-ST-061-CS0001, Center for the Study of Terrorism

and Behavior (CSTAB) 2.1 made to START to investi-

gate the understanding and countering of terrorism

within the United States. The opinions, findings, and

conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publi-

cation/program/exhibition are those of the author(s) and

do not necessarily reflect those of the Department of

Justice, the Department of Homeland Security, START,

or the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation.

Notes

1. The current political moment complicates the issue

of white supremacist marginalization. Clearly a

long history of institutional white supremacy has

been part of the United States since the founding of

the Republic; however, the post-WWII era has been

characterized by a growing trend toward multicul-

turalism, with widespread social changes spurred

by a broad constellation of progressive social move-

ments. During this period, a white backlash has

consistently been present and, in varying degrees,

influential. In the most recent presidential election,

Simi et al. 17

however, this backlash became more overt and less

coded than in previous decades.

2. Previous studies have found multiple social fac-

tors that contribute to disengagement from white

supremacist groups, including the positive role

of significant others (Aho 1994; Gadd 2006), the

inability to maintain employment (Bjørgo 2011),

violence (Blazak 2004; Gallant 2014), and incar-

ceration (Bubolz and Simi 2015). Activists may

experience less “biographical availability” due to

factors such as marital responsibilities and raising

children (Bjørgo 1997; Bjørgo and Horgan 2009),

or they may “mature out” of the movement and

desire a more conventional lifestyle (Bjørgo 1997,

2011). Disengagement has been tied to psychologi-

cal factors such as burnout or disillusionment that

stem from differences between expectations and

reality (Aho 1994; Bubolz and Simi 2015; Kim-

mel 2007), as well as dissatisfaction with a group’s

activities, lack of loyalty among members, and the

way younger members are manipulated by veterans

(Bjørgo 2011; Gadd 2006), or moral uneasiness with

movement ideology and activities (Bjørgo 1997).

3. In the terrorism and extremist literature, scholars

conceptualize the processes of exiting as disen-

gagement and deradicalization. The former refers to

disassociating with extremist groups or individuals

by ending behaviors related to extremism, whereas

deradicalization refers to a more complete cogni-

tive shift or transformation (Bubolz and Simi 2015;

Horgan 2009).

4. We benefited from advice from three prominent

human rights groups: the Anti-Defamation League,

the Simon Wiesenthal Center, and the Southern

Poverty Law Center; and from an outreach organi-

zation, Life After Hate, that assists individuals leav-

ing far-right extremist groups.

5. There was a high degree of overlap between the indi-

vidual interviewers, as each interview was conducted

with the same interview protocol and a subsample of

interviews were conducted by multiple interviewers,

which increased our ability to maintain consistency

among interviewer behaviors. To increase inter-

viewer consistency, the research team met in person

for interview training and logistics planning prior to

the initiation of any data collection. During the pro-

cess of data collection, the research team regularly

debriefed via telephone conference calls and in-

person meetings that included detailed discussions

related to research methodology and design.

6. All interviews were audio recorded and transcribed

with only minor edits.

7. Pseudonyms are used for all interviewees. To hide

the identity of interviewees, we did not refer to them

by name during interviews. If a name was mentioned

inadvertently, this was stricken from the transcripts.

8. A vibrant and influential “white power” rock

music element provides powerful social rituals that

reinforce far-right-wing ideology and belonging.

Skrewdriver is one of the most prominent of these

music groups.

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Pete Simi is an Associate Professor in the Department of

Sociology and Director of the Earl Babbie Research

Center at Chapman University. He has published widely

on the issues of political violence, social movements,

street gangs, and juvenile delinquency. His co-authored

book with Robert Futrell, American Swastika: Inside the

White Power Movement’s Hidden Spaces of Hate,

received a 2010 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Book

Award. His research has received support from the

National Science Foundation, Department of Justice,

Department of Homeland Security, Harry Frank Gug-

genheim Foundation, and Department of Defense.

Kathleen Blee is Distinguished Professor of Sociology at

the University of Pittsburgh. She has written extensively

about organized white supremacism, including Inside

Organized Racism: Women in the Hate Movement and

Women in the Klan: Racism and Gender in the 1920s, as

well as methodological approaches and the politics and

ethics of studying racist hate groups and strategies for

combatting racial hate. She has also studied progressive

social movements, including Democracy in the Making:

How Activist Groups Form, and, with Dwight Billings,

the origin of regional poverty in The Road to Poverty: The

Making of Wealth and Hardship in Appalachia.

Matthew DeMichele, a Senior Research Sociologist in

the Center for Justice, Safety, and Resilience, has con-

ducted criminal justice research for over 15 years focus-

ing on correctional population trends, risk prediction,

community corrections, and domestic extremism. He uses

mixed methods approaches to investigate complex prob-

lems facing criminal justice systems within the United

States and abroad. He is currently Principal Investigator

for two Department of Justice (DOJ) funded studies and

for a validation study of the Arnold Foundation’s pretrial

risk assessment instrument, and he is the Project Director

for a MacArthur Foundation initiative evaluation.

Steven Windisch is a 3rd year doctoral student in the

School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the Uni-

versity of Nebraska Omaha. His research interests

include domestic terrorism, extremist radicalization,

violence, street gangs, collective behavior, social move-

ments, and qualitative research methods. Currently, Ste-

ven is working as a research assistant on two National

Institute of Justice research grants and is an awardee of a

terrorism research award through START at the Univer-

sity of Maryland. Steven is also the current editorial

assistant at Dynamics of Asymmetric Conflict: Pathways

toward Terrorism and Genocide.

Truth or Dare? Exploring the Importance of Factual Accuracy in Different Deradicalization Counseling Approaches

Article

Full-text available

Sep 2023

Family Responses to White Supremacist Extremism: Report to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security

Technical Report

Full-text available

Jan 2021

"We Have to Stop Islam, or Say Goodbye to Civilization": A Critical Discourse Analysis of the Pegida Canada Facebook Page

Article

Full-text available

Jan 2022

The Western world has witnessed an enormous rise of exclusionary populism; some of it expressed by politicians, and much of it promoted by online extremist groups. The Internet can be seen as a suitable medium for delivering hate speech anonymously and without penalty. Such hate speech encourages fear and hatred towards Muslims. Contemporary anti-Muslim racism has its roots in colonialism and Orientalist ideology. Although hate crimes are thought of as being physical and in-person, they often involve public speech, much of which now happens online. In the Canadian context, hate speech has gained public expression with the emergence of the People's Party of Canada (PPC) and through the growth of online groups that advocate the exclusion of non-white or non-Western people, especially Muslims. Using critical discourse analysis, we analyze the expressions of such sentiments on the Facebook page of Pegida Canada. We consider how the group's Facebook presence contributes to anti-Muslim racism and what this tells us about the rise of exclusionary populism. Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West-PEGIDA Pegida Canada is a group of like-minded Canadians that are bringing awareness to the people in regards to threats to our great country. We want to preserve our culture. We are labelled by the leftists as a white supremacist or neo-Nazi-based movement, and that is so far from the truth. We respect the First Nations cultures that were here before colonisation. We also respect Veterans and those men and women who still serve to protect our great country.-Pegida Canada, Disclaimer

Out of Hiding: Extremist White Supremacy and How It Can be Stopped

Book

Nov 2023

Understanding and Countering Fascist Movements: From Void to Hope

Book

Nov 2023

Joan Braune

Explaining Recruitment to Extremism: A Bayesian Hierarchical Case–Control Approach

Article

Nov 2023

Who joins extremist movements? Answering this question is beset by methodological challenges as survey techniques are infeasible and selective samples provide no counterfactual. Recruits can be assigned to contextual units, but this is vulnerable to problems of ecological inference. In this article, we elaborate a technique that combines survey and ecological approaches. The Bayesian hierarchical case–control design that we propose allows us to identify individual-level and contextual factors patterning the incidence of recruitment to extremism, while accounting for spatial autocorrelation, rare events, and contamination. We empirically validate our approach by matching a sample of Islamic State (ISIS) fighters from nine MENA countries with representative population surveys enumerated shortly before recruits joined the movement. High-status individuals in their early twenties with college education were more likely to join ISIS. There is more mixed evidence for relative deprivation. The accompanying extremeR package provides functionality for applied researchers to implement our approach.

Book Review: Red Pilled: The Allure of Digital Hate

Article

Sep 2023
NEW MEDIA SOC

Kat Fuller

Cognition, Emotion, and Organized Racism

Chapter

Sep 2022

Marshall A. Taylor

Cognition and emotion are foundational for many of the mechanisms proposed behind racist movement recruitment and mobilization. Cognition and emotion are, of course, incredibly general terms that capture a range of psychological and social‐psychological phenomena. Cognition refers to the set of mental processes behind knowledge acquisition, storage, and usage; and emotion refers to the range of sudden, short‐term neurobiological reactions to environmental stimuli as well as to more durable affective dispositions that one might call “moods” or “feelings.”

White Power Music

Chapter

Sep 2022

White Power music (WPM) expresses the ideology of white people who see themselves as an embattled minority at risk of extinction in the increasingly multicultural societies of Europe and North America. WPM is an important cultural resource used to promote, spread, and fund a decentralized and loosely coupled movement and is best identified by its lyrical content. WPM emerged in the late 1970s among radical right‐wing political parties in Great Britain and has expanded globally since. Originating from a small scene tightly connected to larger youth movements, particularly punk and skinhead, it has developed a distinct identity that facilitates and disseminates supremacist thinking and tactics. To understand WPM's relationship to the larger far‐right movement, scholars often studied it as a loose collection of geographically differentiated local music scenes. WPM scenes are collections of events and experiences bridging varying social contexts, yet strategically designed to promote the resilience and longevity of the White Power (WP) movement. WPM events are defined by the performance of musicians whose song lyrics express movement‐specific ideologies and promote WP goals and behaviors. The supremacist messages of WPM are authenticated by the social activities of the community surrounding the music. Related events, such as shows or festivals, serve as venues of recruitment, socialization, and commitment, as well as generators of material resources.

The antiracist educator’s journey and the psychology of critical consciousness development: a new roadmap

Article

Aug 2023

The [Un]Surprising Alt-Right

Article

Full-text available

May 2017
Contexts

Robert Futrell and Pete Simi on the simmering sentiments and political fortunes of White supremacists.

Fast or Slow: Sociological Implications of Measuring Dual-Process Cognition

Article

Full-text available

Feb 2017

Rick Moore

Dual-process theories of cognition within sociology have received increasing attention from both supporters and critics. One limitation in this debate, however, is the common absence of empirical evidence to back dual-process claims. Here, I provide such evidence for dual-process cognition using measures of response latency in formal data collected in conjunction with an ethnographic study of atheists and evangelicals. I use timed responses to help make sense of evangelicals' language that frames 'religion' as negative but 'Christ-following' as positive. The data suggests that despite these Christians expressing a concept of the self that rejects 'religion,' deep dispositions remain associating religion as a positive entity, not a negative one. I further argue that the significance of dual-process theories to sociology is in untangling such complex webs of identity discourse by distinguishing between immediate responses primarily due to fast cognition and those that are further mediated by slower, more deliberate cognition.

What Are Dual Process Models? Implications for Cultural Analysis in Sociology

Article

Full-text available

Dec 2016

In this paper we introduce the idea of the dual process framework (DPF), an interdisciplinary approach to the study of learning, memory, thinking, and action. Departing from the successful reception of Vaisey (2009), we suggest that intradisciplinary debates in sociology regarding the merits of “dual process” formulations can benefit from a better understanding of the theoretical foundations of these models in cognitive and social psychology. We argue that the key is to distinguish the general DPF from more specific applications to particular domains, which we refer to as dual process models (DPMs). We show how different DPMs can be applied to a variety of analytically distinct issues of interest to cultural sociologists beyond specific issues related to morality, such as culture in learning, culture in memory, culture in thinking, and culture in acting processes. We close by outlining the implications of our argument for relevant work in cultural sociology.

Introduction: Why Emotions Matter

Chapter

Oct 2001

This introductory chapter begins with a discussion of how emotions have played almost no role in theories of social movements and collective action since the end of the 1960s. It then suggests that although emotions are not explicitly theorized or even recognized, they are nonetheless present in many of the concepts that scholars have used to extend our understanding of social movements in recent years. Mobilizing structures, frames, collective identity, political opportunities — much of the causal force attributed to these concepts comes from the emotions involved in them. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.

The Social Body: Habit, Identity and Desire

Book