How extremist conspiracy theories about immigration and demographic change can fuel violence

The recent series of shootings and attempted bombings across the globe show how fears about racial and ethnic change can motivate violence. In El Paso, a gunman killed twenty-two and injured twenty-four others. He appears to have been motivated by the belief that there is an active plot to exterminate […] Read more »

Univision News poll: Democrats surge in Texas, no longer a safe state for Trump in 2020

President Donald Trump could be defeated in Texas, a conservative state which has not elected a Democratic presidential candidate for over 40 years. Days away from the third Democratic debate in Houston and over a year from the 2020 presidential election, an exclusive poll by Univision News found that 40% […] Read more »

The Year’s Racial Flare-Ups: Signs of the Future or Signs of a Last Gasp?

This year has seen disturbing flare-ups around issues of race, immigration, and white nativism generally. … Does the rising tide of worry mean that the nation is descending into a maelstrom of racial conflict? More likely, we are seeing the kind of fearful and angry reaction that major social change […] Read more »

Patriotism’s Reshaping of the Parties and the 2020 Election

The meaning of patriotism in the United States was raised during a tense moment this summer, when President Donald Trump accused four ethnic minority women in Congress of “hating America” and inviting them to “leave it” if they “aren’t happy here,” after they challenged their Democratic Party leaders on immigration […] Read more »

Lies about Migrants and the Rise of the Extreme Right

… Forged in the furnaces of hot cognition and tribal epistemology, hardened opinion dominates cool, fact-based knowledge and provides fertile ground for the spread of falsehoods through social sharing. People in general are biased toward confirmation: they wish to believe that which endorses what they already believe to be true, […] Read more »