*Several experts who study extremism report that people of color are often drawn to white nationalism.
Some examples noted by LAist.com are white-nationalist live-streamer Nick Fuentes, who is of Mexican descent, and Enrique Tarrio, a far-right extremist and former leader of Proud Boys, who is Cuban American and Afro-Latino. In May a Hispanic neo-Nazi named Mauricio Garcia opened fire at an outlet mall near Dallas, killing eight people, including children.
Most recently, Indian American Sai Varshith Kandula, 19, made headlines after crashing a U-Haul truck into a security barrier at the White House. Kandula “allegedly told authorities that he admired Nazis and Adolf Hitler, and was trying to seize control of the U.S. government,” LAist.
Researchers say it’s not uncommon to see people of color drawn to far-right extremism. Experts say this is primarily fueled by “factors as diverse as the Internet, toxic masculinity, colonization, and slavery,” per LAist
Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at Cal State San Bernardino, said it typically starts with “Social isolation, a psychological distress perhaps in many instances, but also misogyny and a sense of fraternity,” he said, LAist.com reports.
“Today, it’s not like you’re joining a terrestrial group that you would 30 years ago,” Levin said. “If you share enough of the common hatreds, starting with misogyny and a sense of fraternity, you don’t have to worry about the bouncer at the front door of the virtual meeting hall.”
Antisemitism, racism, and antigovernment ideologies are also “common hatreds,” according to Levin.
Tanya Katerí Hernández, a law professor at Fordham University, noted that many immigrants arrive in the U.S. with racial prejudices.
“You’re already coming in with your body of racial attitudes, right? And then you come into a U.S. society that wants to view you as less-than,” Hernández said. “Even if you look white in a conventional sense … your Spanish surname, your Spanish language makes it sort of not the same kind of white … and so your whiteness doesn’t count in the same kind of way. You come into the United States and you get knocked down a peg.”
As a result, Hernández suggests, one may be driven to prove one’s whiteness.
READ MORE: Hip-Hop Podcast ‘No Jumper’ Becomes Hotbed for White Supremacy | Video2023
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