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Do pandemics spawn extremism?

Spanish flu deaths and the Ku Klux Klan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 August 2022

Adam Chamberlain  and
Alixandra B. Yanus
Adam Chamberlain*
Affiliation:
Coastal Carolina University, USA
Alixandra B. Yanus
Affiliation:
High Point University, USA
*
Correspondence: Adam Chamberlain, Coastal Carolina University, P.O. Box 261954, Conway, SC 29528–6054, USA. Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

Scholars and journalists connect pandemics to a rise in support for radical political movements. In this study, we draw on this insight to investigate the relationship between the 1918–1919 Spanish influenza pandemic and political extremism—here, the rise of the second Ku Klux Klan—in the United States. Specifically, we ask whether U.S. states and cities with higher death rates from the Spanish flu also had stronger Ku Klux Klan organizations in the early 1920s. Our results do not provide evidence of such a connection; in fact, the data suggest greater Klan membership where the pandemic was less severe. This provides initial evidence that pandemic severity, as measured by mortality, is not necessarily a cause of extremism in the United States; power devaluation as a result of social and cultural change, however, does appear to spur such mobilization.

Keywords

Spanish fluKu Klux Klanpandemicextremismradicalism
Type
Research Notes
Information
Politics and the Life Sciences , Volume 41 , Issue 2 , Fall 2022 , pp. 289 - 297
Open Practices
Open data
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Association for Politics and the Life Sciences

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This article earned the Open Data badge for open scientific practices. For details, see the Open Scientific Practices Statement.

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