Recent years have seen Democratic politicians increasingly frame white supremacy in America as a domestic terror threat. In new research, Rachel Smilan-Goldstein and Kirill Zhirkov look at how white voters react to this new framing. Using tweets from Democratic and Republican politicians as examples, they find that for Democrats, seeing messages linking white supremacy to terrorism has the unintended consequence of increasing the perceived acceptability of tweets directed against Islam and Muslims.

In his first presidential address to Congress in April 2021, President Joe Biden described white supremacy as a domestic terror threat that the country could not ignore. Framing white supremacy as a national security threat is a relatively new phenomenon in Democratic politics. Scholars have documented multiple consequences of invoking the threat of terrorism in political communication, but until recently, American news media connected terrorist threat almost exclusively to Muslims.

How do white Americans respond to white supremacy as a security threat?

We wanted to know how white voters might react to this new rhetoric that frames white supremacy as a security threat. We started the study with two competing expectations. On one hand, given the degrees of affective polarization (where people feel more positive about the party they support and negative about the one they oppose) and negative partisanship (where dislike for one party fuels support for another) in modern US politics, Democrats and Republicans may simply reject any messages coming from the opposing party. On the other hand, racial identity may lead white respondents to reject messages about white supremacy as a threat—regardless of their partisanship.

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

To explore how white voters react to the two types of messages on terrorism, we conducted a survey experiment. We presented respondents with screenshots of real tweets by Democratic and Republican members of Congress (see Figure 1 for sample tweets). Tweets by Democratic representatives addressed white supremacy as a national security threat, whereas tweets by Republican representatives addressed radical Islam as a national security threat. Half of respondents saw a Republican politician’s tweet first, while the other half saw a Republican politician’s tweet after a Democratic politician’s. After seeing each tweet, respondents were asked two separate questions: the extent to which they found the tweet acceptable and their level of agreement with the tweet.

Figure 1 – Sample tweets from the experiment

We ran the experiment twice: once on a sample of college students and once on a sample of adults. In both cases, we limited our analyses to respondents who self-identified as non-Hispanic whites. 

Framing white supremacy as a threat fuels Democrats’ acceptance of anti-Muslim appeals

We find that messages linking white supremacy to terrorism increase the perceived acceptability of tweets directed against Islam and Muslims – but only for Democratic respondents (see Figure 2). Specifically, exposure to a Democratic tweet on white supremacy leads Democrats to rate a Republican tweet on radical Islam as more acceptable. The increase is substantial: approximately 0.8 on a 7-point scale in the student sample and 0.6 on the same scale in the adult sample. In other words, political messages framing white supremacy as a security threat increase the acceptability of anti-Muslim appeals, and this effect is driven by Democrats.

Figure 2 – Results of the experiment

We do not find, however, that framing white supremacy as a security threat increases respondents’ agreement with anti-Muslim tweets. Similarly, presenting a Republican tweet first does not impact perceived acceptability of Democratic tweets on white supremacy as a terrorist threat.

Partisan sorting based on race and racial attitudes is here to stay

Taken together, these results question the efficiency of a common progressive strategy: exposing Democrats to conservative messages, with the expectation they will find such messages unacceptable. Our experiment suggests this messaging can have unintended consequences.

Our findings also have important implications for American politics more broadly. Scholars of political communication have recently noted the growing acceptability of explicit group-based appeals in US campaigns. Our results suggest that this phenomenon may be at least partly explained as whites’ reaction against progressive messaging on race and religion.

Even exposure to messages mentioning white supremacy, a widely condemned ideology, makes white voters more accepting of rhetorical attacks against a minority group. The fact that this effect is produced exclusively by white Democrats indicates that partisan sorting based on race and racial attitudes is far from over.

• This article is based on the paper, ‘White partisans’ reactions to real politicians’ tweets framing white supremacy and radical Islam as terrorist threats’ in Politics, Groups, and Identities.
• Subscribe to LSE USAPP’s email newsletter to receive a weekly article roundup.
• Please read our comments policy before commenting. 
• Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of USAPP – American Politics and Policy, nor the London School of Economics. 
• Shortened URL for this post: https://wp.me/p3I2YF-eG9