Initial findings on Extremism and Democratic Resilience

More in Common is collaborating with the Hofenung Foundation on a project examining extremist attitudes in the UK. Rather than seeking to identify where extremism currently exists, and which is hard to isolate using public opinion research, this project aims to map which groups within the population show sympathy for more extreme attitudes on the left and right,  and where the conditions for extremism could take hold in the future.

Key early findings:

• Around one in seven Britons find political violence acceptable in at least some circumstances, rising to one in six for verbal harassment. Younger people, men, and those consuming news through social media are significantly more tolerant of both. Two distinct permissive groups emerge – a core of the progressive left, who justify confrontation in defence of marginalised groups, and a portion of the radical right, who justify it in defence of national or cultural identity.
• Sympathy for more extreme left-wing views are concentrated among progressives who are young, Green-voting, non-white, and who feel the social contract is broken.  Higher  formal education correlates with stronger progressive views on identity and social liberalism, while economic radicalism has a somewhat broader base, driven more by financial insecurity and institutional distrust than ideology. Non-white Progressive Activists and Green voters hold the strongest views on the issues of race and Gaza.
• Far-right sympathies cluster around two distinct audiences: a larger, older, whiter, non-graduate group concentrated in the political right,  whose concerns centre on migration, national identity and cultural change, and a smaller, younger, more online group whose views are shaped more by financial hardship, anti-establishment grievance and social media consumption, and who are more likely to hold explicitly racist beliefs. Support for Reform UK and a sense that the social contract is broken are consistent predictors across both.
• The latter, heavily online group represents a distinct and underappreciated risk in the extremism landscape, because they do not hold a coherent ideological worldview,. Defined by low institutional trust, heavy social media consumption and exposure to conspiratorial content, they surface consistently across far-right, far-left and conspiracy belief indicators, without fitting neatly into any camp. They are more tolerant of political violence and confrontational politics than most segments, more likely to hold racist views, more sympathetic to Tommy Robinson, and more receptive to conspiracy theories – yet often without the specific grievances or ideological framework that would explain these views in others.

You can read the full report by the UK Extremism and Democratic Resilience Centre below: