What factors contributed to the rise in right-wing extremism in the US after 2020?
Executive summary
Right‑wing extremism in the United States increased after 2020 for a mix of proximate triggers and deeper drivers: amplified online recruitment and coordination, the political turmoil around the 2020 presidential election, and pandemic-era grievances and polarization all played measurable roles [1] [2]. Independent researchers and NGOs also point to long‑running causes—resurgent white‑supremacist tactics, anti‑government movements, and social change anxieties—that combined with new media dynamics to raise both incidents and lethality [3] [4].
1. The new digital ecology: recruitment, coordination and echo chambers
Extremist networks exploited mainstream and fringe social media to disseminate propaganda, coordinate travel and training, raise funds and recruit, transforming dispersed sympathizers into mobilized actors at scale, a dynamic explicitly identified by CSIS and other analysts as central to the post‑2016 surge and intensifying around 2020 [1]; academic and think‑tank work links platform amplification and polarization around election seasons and national crises to spikes in radicalizing online content [5].
2. The 2020 election as an accelerant: fraud narratives and legitimacy crises
Claims that the 2020 election was “stolen” created a powerful grievance narrative that several federal reports and analysts tie to increased willingness to act violently, and the January 6 attack became emblematic of how election fraud conspiracies turned political frustration into mass mobilization and targeted violence [2] [6]; research and reporting show the belief in fraud became a recruitment and justification tool for diverse right‑wing currents [7].
3. Pandemic politics, public health measures and economic resentments
The Covid‑19 crisis and government responses were explicitly cited by CSIS as factors likely to increase terrorism threats, with pandemic restrictions and economic dislocation providing both specific grievances and broader narratives of government overreach that feed anti‑state recruitment [2]; broader social science work situates such economic and societal stressors alongside cultural changes that challenge perceived status hierarchies as long‑term drivers of right‑wing violence [4].
4. Ideological convergence: white supremacy, militia revival and diverse grievances
The post‑2020 environment saw overlapping currents—white supremacist violence, revived militia and sovereign‑citizen anti‑government strains, misogynistic “incel” elements and QAnon conspiracism—creating a multi‑headed movement that scholars and NGOs warn is both racially motivated and anti‑authority, with white supremacist shooting sprees emerging as a particularly deadly tactic in recent years [3] [1].
5. Enforcement, deplatforming and unintended dynamics
Attempts to disrupt groups through law enforcement actions and platform bans had mixed effects: targeted enforcement and deplatforming slowed some movements (for example helping to blunt boogaloo growth), but other actors migrated to encrypted apps and alternative platforms where radicalization and plotting continued, illustrating how countermeasures can fragment movements without eliminating networks or the grievances that sustain them [3].
6. Data, debate and what remains uncertain
Multiple datasets and government assessments converge on the conclusion that most domestic political violence in recent years has come from the right—estimates frequently place right‑wing actors as responsible for the majority of incidents and fatalities—yet scholars caution about methodological differences across studies and the difficulty of attributing causality to single factors; debates persist about the relative roles of economic versus cultural drivers and about whether political rhetoric by leaders amplified violent language [8] [9] [10].