We found that individuals with extremist attitudes tended to perform poorly on complex mental tasks – they struggled to complete psychological tests that require intricate mental steps. People who endorse violence to protect their ideological group also possess poor emotion-regulation skills – they are more impulsive and seek sensations and thrills. This makes sense when we imagine the kind of individual who is willing to harm innocent others for the sake of an ideology.
White Americans have higher suicide rates than most other racial and ethnic groups. A rise in depression, Homicidal ideation and suicide points to Climate Migration as the cause.
Sometimes, the impacts of climate change are fairly direct. For instance, more than 1 million Somalis were displaced by drought in 2022. Other times, impacts are more indirect, as it can be hard to trace how rising global temperatures threaten jobs and livelihoods that compel migration and change a nations demographics.
Suicide is the 11th leading cause of death in the USA. Suicide rates vary across ethnic groups. Suicide ideation is most common among Non-Hispanic Whites (16.10%), least common among Asians (9.02%) and intermediate among Hispanics (11.35%) and Non-Hispanic Blacks (11.32%). Suicide attempts were equally common among Non-Hispanic Whites (4.89%), Hispanics (5.11%) but noticeably lower among Non-Hispanic Blacks (4.5%) and among Asians (2.55%).
According to an article in : Psychological Medicine, v. 42,These differences in the crude prevalence rates of suicide ideation decreased but persisted after control for psychiatric disorders, but disappeared for suicide attempt. Within ethnic groups, risk for suicidality was low among immigrants prior to migration compared to the US born, but equalized over time after migration. CONCLUSIONS: Ethnic differences in suicidal behaviors are explained partly by differences in psychiatric disorders and low risk prior to arrival in the USA. So to put it in layman's terms coming to America makes you more likely to kill yourself!
Outside of psychology labs, there's compelling evidence that the rising suicide rate of white America was linked, in part, to white anxiety about a changing world. In August 2008, the Census Bureau released a report that predicted a seismic shift in American demographics: By 2050, minorities would make up more than 50 percent of the population and become the majority. When Yale psychologist Jennifer Richeson heard about the report on NPR, she remembers thinking, “This is probably freaking somebody out.” By “somebody,” she means white people.
"Richeson’s studies on interracial interactions had taught her that when people are in the majority, the sense of their race is dormant. But the prospect of being in the minority can suddenly make white identity — and all the historical privilege that comes with it — salient. And, she guessed, the prospect of losing majority status was likely to make people (perhaps unconsciously) uneasy."(Vox National Journal Article, Resnick) Perhaps one day social scientists will figure out how to get people of different backgrounds to live among one another and not be afraid. But for now, the perceived “threat” of demographic change is making white people fearful and sometimes violent and suicidal.
A growing number of studies have documented significant links between online racism, anti immigration (e.g., racist interactions, contents promoting racial violence against immigrants) and depression associated with suicide risk. A recent study examined the direct relationship between online racism and suicide ideation among racial minority emerging adults, meaning whites who see themselves on the precipice of becoming a minority population in the USA, and the indirect relationships via the interpersonal factors (perceived burdensomeness and thwarted belongingness). Using data from a convenience sample, researchers conducted a path analysis with online racism predicting suicide ideation through thwarted belongingness and perceived burdensomeness.
Suicide deaths are most frequent for those in their middle adulthood (i.e., ages 40–60) among White individuals. Many who see the changing population embracing diversity and the loss of unearned privilege for whiteness as an attack on their personal safety. They start to feel constant anxiety and anger when confronted with change in culture, or even non white presence in the media as a reason to seek arms for protection.
Researchers found there was a close relationship between homicidal ideation and suicidal ideation as well. Based on the findings, participants considered homicidal violence as largely inappropriate due to moral concerns and its politically ineffective nature but also discussed how homicidal violence could be an appropriate defensive measure in RAHOWA (Racial Holy War) or through divine mandate. Capturing how white supremacists framed the permissibility of homicidal violence is a step toward better understanding the “upper limit” or thresholds for violence among members who are trying to construct and negotiate a collective identity that involves hate, murder, sedition, genocide and wholly violent , self destructive and aggressive worldviews.
Ironically suicide attacks are virtually absent in far-right terrorism. Even though white supremacist culture is almost exclusively violent, much of their world is focused on the promotion of violence. Being a member of a white supremacist group is intrinsically linked to doing violence in the name of the group and unconditionally supporting other extremist members no matter what crimes they commit. Violence promoted varies across the white supremacist movement. For extremists tied to vigilantism, “splinter cells” and “lone wolves,” their violence often involves carefully planned types of violence such as bombings and mass-shootings that are set in motion prior to the immediate encounter.
These individuals believe they are more effective working alone rather than within the framework of a group because they can be more mobile and work under the cloak of anonymity without infiltration from law enforcement. In addition to white supremacists who stockpile high-powered weapons and participate in terror plots, white supremacists are also closely tied to street violence, they are essentially conventional gang conflicts involving less sophisticated weaponry, such as knives, hand guns, physical assaults, drug feuds, and hate crimes.
A University of Oslo report by Daniel Kohler explains why the Far Right extremist youth embrace the concept of terrorist suicide attacks but not the reality : "Dying for one’s race, the nation, or as an honorable soldier in battle are omnipresent themes in extreme right music, clothing, literature, or other subcultural products. So why then, is right-wing terrorism and violence almost completely deprived of suicide tactics (in a narrow sense, whereby the death of the attacker is part of the attack design)?
One important explanation for suicide terrorism, the rational choice perspective, maintains that for such a tactic to appear in significant scale within a given extremist environment, there must be personal, social, and religious incentives. Of course, there is much more to it, but this is a good place to start. Even though the far-right is diverse in terms of age and homogenous milieu in terms of race (the main reason for their demographic decline), one can hardly find elaborate incentives in these categories. Right Wing extremism is a spectrum of political thought that tends to be radically conservative, ultra-nationalist, and authoritarian, and often also includes nativist tendencies. Thus, nativism has become a general term for opposition to immigration which is based on fears that immigrants will "distort or spoil" existing cultural values.
Religious support for suicide is not to be expected in the Christian fundamentalist parts. Much more present is the “fight till the end” notion praised among pagan far-rightists worshipping Norse gods and Viking warrior culture. The far-fight also has little to offer in terms of social or personal incentives. There is no known widespread practice of providing for families of those members who committed suicide, even during an act of violence against the enemy. Those who killed themselves during an attack are not even remotely celebrated as much in subculture (e.g. music, clothing etc.) as compared to those who survived. The contemporary far-right widely communicates to its members that death must be embraced as the consequence of fighting for the cause until the end, meaning until the “political soldier” is stigmatized, ostracized, and eventually killed by the enemy.
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