Department of Politics, School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2023 Feb 14;120(7):e2212757120. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2212757120. Epub 2023 Feb 6.
Hate crime is a pervasive problem across societies. Though perpetrators represent a small share of the population, their actions continue in part because they enjoy community support. But we know very little about this wider community of support; existing surveys do not measure whether citizens approve of hate crime. Focusing on Germany, where antiminority violence is entrenched, this paper uses original surveys to provide systematic evidence on the nature and impacts of hate crime support. Employing direct and indirect measures, I find that significant shares of the population support antirefugee hate crime and that the profile of supporters is broad, going much beyond common perpetrator types. I next use a candidate choice experiment to show that this support has disturbing political consequences: among radical right voters, hate crime supporters prefer candidates who endorse using gun violence against refugees. I conclude that a significant number of citizens empower potential perpetrators from the bottom-up and further legitimize hate crime from the top-down by championing violence-promoting political elites.
仇恨犯罪是一个普遍存在于社会各个层面的问题。尽管犯罪者在人口中只占很小的比例，但他们的行为之所以能够继续，部分原因是他们得到了社区的支持。然而，我们对这个更广泛的支持群体知之甚少；现有的调查并没有衡量公民是否赞成仇恨犯罪。本文以德国为重点，德国的反少数民族暴力根深蒂固，利用原创调查为仇恨犯罪支持的性质和影响提供了系统的证据。通过直接和间接的衡量标准，我发现相当一部分人口支持针对难民的仇恨犯罪，而且支持者的特征很广泛，远远超出了常见的犯罪者类型。接下来，我使用候选人选择实验表明，这种支持具有令人不安的政治后果：在极右翼选民中，仇恨犯罪的支持者更喜欢支持使用枪支暴力对付难民的候选人。我得出结论，大量的公民自下而上地赋予潜在的犯罪者权力，并通过支持鼓吹暴力的政治精英，自上而下地进一步使仇恨犯罪合法化。
