Analysis of participants in the 1/6 coup attempt

In this 18 minute interview, the people who had been arrested were analyzed for why they participated in the 1/6 attack on the US Capitol. A dominant reason was that the attackers were driven by fear of the Great Replacement (the Great Replacement Theory). The person interviewed was Professor Robert Pape, director of the University of Chicago's Project on Security and Threats. Pape is an expert on political violence, insurrections, coups and the like. His research found that fear of the Great Replacement was a dominant driver among the people who had been arrested, nearly all of whom supported the ex-president. Pape defines fear of the Great Replacement as a perception among some White people that rights for non-White people are increasing and outpacing the rights of White people.

Pape's research indicates that of the 420 arrested at the time of the interview, 45% were professionals, including business executives and attorneys, nearly all of whom were White males in their 40s and 50s with families. These people came mostly from urban areas that voted for Biden, but that had significant increases in the proportions of non-White people living in their areas. 

Pape's analysis indicated that an increase in the county non-White population was the single most important predictor for counties where the attackers came from. Only 7% of the 420 were unemployed, which matched the national unemployment rate at the time. Thus, unemployment or low wages was not the main driving force for most of the 420. And, only about 10% of the 420 were affiliated with right wing militant groups. Rural counties were less likely to be where the attackers came from.

  

Pape's team also did a national survey asking people if the election was stolen and if so, whether they would participate in a violent protest against the steal. About 4% said yes. That data extrapolates to about 10 million Americans who would agree to participate in a violent protest against the steal. The common factor among those people was fear of the Great Replacement.[1]

It's not racism, it's fear of unequal rights

An important point was that the fear was not about non-White people, but about rights of non-Whites outpacing White rights. That is not an expression of racism or bigotry, unlike the core belief among most Christian nationalists that God chose the White race to rule over all others. Thus, even though Republican Party policy often is racist, some of its support is race-related, but not racist as such.

To me, that indicates that as non-Whites exercise their rights, there will inevitably be conflicts and Whites fear those conflicts will be resolved in favor of non-Whites. Intentionally divisive propaganda can exacerbate those fears, and it probably is. 

All of this research indicates that if ways to communicate that rights will be equal, while conflicts still need to be resolved. White people need reassurance that their rights will not be subordinate to rights of others. The problem is that when rights collide, there will usually be a person(s) who feels their rights were subordinated to the perceived winner. For example, Christians who refuse to serve a same-sex couple in commerce feel that they have been terribly persecuted when forced by law to serve them. That the same-sex couple was persecuted by being publicly discriminated against is of little or no concern in the weighing of rights, especially when those rights are preordained by a God.

What about the Republican Party?

These results indicate that in addition to special interest money and Christian nationalism, fear of the Great Replacement is another dominant force in the GOP, and idea that was suggested by PD, a commenter here. That could be true. If so, one can look at the dominant influences in Republican Party as a Venn diagram with three overlapping forces, money, Christian nationalism and great replacement fear. The thing is that Christian nationalists cannot be reasoned with and they will usually not listen or compromise. The money is also intransigent, especially Christian nationalist money. Maybe some or most the fearful Great Replacement crowd can be talked to and reassured somehow.

Question: Is the Republican Party probably mostly driven by some combination of those three political forces, or is the situation more complicated than that? 

Footnote: 

1. In a 2018 research paper, Status threat, not economic hardship, explains the 2016 presidential vote, researcher Diana Mutz wrote: 

Results do not support an interpretation of the election based on pocketbook economic concerns. Instead, the shorter relative distance of people’s own views from the Republican candidate on trade and China corresponded to greater mass support for Trump in 2016 relative to Mitt Romney in 2012. Candidate preferences in 2016 reflected increasing anxiety among high-status groups rather than complaints about past treatment among low-status groups. Both growing domestic racial diversity and globalization contributed to a sense that white Americans are under siege by these engines of change.  

The 2016 election was a result of anxiety about dominant groups’ future status rather than a result of being overlooked in the past. In many ways, a sense of group threat is a much tougher opponent than an economic downturn, because it is a psychological mindset rather than an actual event or misfortune. Given current demographic trends within the United States, minority influence will only increase with time, thus heightening this source of perceived status threat.  

Most critically, these results speak to the importance of group status in the formation of political preferences. Political uprisings are often about downtrodden groups rising up to assert their right to better treatment and more equal life conditions relative to high-status groups. The 2016 election, in contrast, was an effort by members of already dominant groups to assure their continued dominance and by those in an already powerful and wealthy country to assure its continued dominance.

To a significant extent, that accords with the kind of fear that Pape found among the 1/6 attackers, but that is also at least compatible with some core Christian nationalist dogma.