.jpg)
I was intrigued by the paper “’We had a lot of fun’: Psychological rewards of white supremacy group membership” by Munden and Morrison (2024) because it gives insight into the psychology of right extremists. Based on interviews with former members of violent extremist groups the authors find that being in the group provided members with psychologically rewarding experiences which they missed after leaving the group and trying to reintegrate with society. Thus, rather than ideology and their former beliefs, these members valued experiences of belonging, perceived importance, empowerment, and their emotional intensity. Although recognizing that whether genes influence political ideologies has been debated, I interpret Munden and Morrison’s findings in the context of ‘modular behavioral mechanisms’ that are common to all humans and have their roots in evolution.
The presence of an emotion often points to an instinct
As ethologists have shown in animals, evolution created behavioral patterns that have three phases, starting with unrest and longing, leading to a specific action, which, after completion, produces calm and satisfaction. Although basically instinctive, these behaviors can be complex. We experience this kind of sequence many times a day: we feel hungry – we eat – we are satisfied. Complex behaviors too have this three-phase structure with the corresponding emotions. Watching a one-year-old trying to stand up, one can see the initial unrest and discontent, followed by an attempt to stand up, which, if successful, produces obvious triumph and happiness. In fact, the presence of an emotion often points to an instinct. This interpretation explains the rewarding experiences that former members of right extremist groups remembered (and could not easily attain elsewhere after exiting the group). And, combined with cultural accounts, insights from evolution can elevate our understanding of far-right extremism.
Evolution has created a number of modular mechanisms that produce emotion-action-emotion sequences as described above. I call these ‘engenes’. Of special interest for understanding extremism are the society-forming engenes. Two examples are the ‘Family engene’ and the ‘Strife engene’. Both evolved during the stone age. The Strife engene emerged from competition between groups of early humans. Hunter-gatherers depended on critical resources, such as hunting grounds, caves, and access to clean water, and had to defend these against rivalling groups. In this competition, group structure was very important. A group whose members supported and defended each other and acted together under a strong leader had a better chance to prevail than groups that were less organized. The emotions corresponding to this engene explain the distress that people feel when isolated and the comfort of being in a group, the anguish when they perceive their group threatened and the rewarding experience of comradery and the feeling of empowerment provided by the group. The Strife engene drives people to protect what they perceive as the property of their group: homeland, possession, ‘purity of blood’, and their traditions; and drives them to defend these against perceived intruders. It produces hierarchical organization with a leader and loyal followers. We all have our Strife engene; it makes us distinguish between “us” and “them”, and it surfaces in many contexts, positively in team sports and patriotism, and negatively in chauvinism, xenophobia, and racism.
The expression of traits vary, and distributions have fringes
The evolutionary interpretation shows the phenomenon of right-wing extremism in a new light. ‘Engenes’ are based on genetic code, and that code varies across the population. No two humans (except the tiny fraction of identical twins) have the same genes. In fact, genetic variation within species is a necessary condition for evolution. It provides the material for natural selection. Of course, individual experience, upbringing, and education also contribute to the variation. Thus, the strength of each engene varies; it has a statistical distribution with ‘fringes’ of under- and overexpression. In this view, right-wing extremists may be individuals in which the expression of the Strife engene is unusually strong. In a way, extremism is normal, distributions have fringes. The Strife engene makes people feel love for their comrades and compatriots, but also produces rage, or even hate, against immigrants, people of different race, culture or religion, the “deep state” and those they perceive as “enemies within”.
Defending cultural and religious values is an important function of the Strife engene. It fuels today’s right-wing political factions. Disguised as “Christian Nationalism” it produces hate, in stunning contradiction to Christian values. In fact, defending one’s property against the poor is quite unchristian; Jesus did not have property and told people not to care about possessions.
Ignoring the evolutionary roots of political behaviour is a fateful mistake. Even at points in history when matters such as same sex marriage and immigration are widely accepted, that does not mean it necessarily “feels right”. This feeling could be partly due to ancient moral barriers to reserve sexual bonding for reproduction, and a genetic inclination to protect one’s group and its properties. Minorities deserve protection to live their chosen lives just like other people. In a tolerant environment those feelings adapt and most people become tolerant. However, to the extent that aversions towards minorities are a product of evolution, they are unlikely to adapt in general. Protection must come from a lawful state.
No question, schools should prepare the young generation to be tolerant, but tolerance does not mean acceptance. For example, it is common for schools to teach sexual diversity, expecting – as do many members of the U.S. Democratic Party – that education will gradually change the culture and the rejection will disappear. But a million-year-old taboo cannot be removed by a few years of schooling, and many parents got furious about the diversity education. The Republican Party happily exploited this in the last election. They also deliberately made a lot of noise about transgender athletes competing in sports, even though perhaps not more than one in a hundred thousand athletes is transgender. Republicans exploited a number of similar issues that evoke intuitive aversions which, according to the perspective posited here, contributed to Democrats losing the election.
As Munden and Morrison’s study shows, we need to consider more than just culture and ideology to understand the psychology of right-extremists. Understanding the genetic component, we see that re-educating former violent extremists is a difficult task. Education speaks to reasoning, but, as psychologist have shown, the human mind is made up of two systems; system 1, which is intuitive, emotional, effortless and fast, whereas reasoning is done by system 2, which is effortful and slow. The engenes are part of system 1. And, because they are fast and emotional, they can easily overwhelm the reasoning.
I want to show in this blog how the evolutionary aspect helps to understand right-wing extremism, and that this is not just theoretical, but relevant in politics and for preserving democracy.
A comprehensive introduction to concepts discussed here can be found in Joachim von der Heydt’s book Thirty Thousand Years of Loneliness: The Evolutionary Aspect of Being Human (2024).
Note: This guest contributor is not affiliated with C-REX. The views presented here do not necessarily reflect those of the centre.
