The Monkey Cage

Clearly, there are attitudinal foundations, in particular Roeder’s vehement opposition to abortion. Other research on extremism and hate crime finds that its perpetrators are distinct from the general population. For example, this paper by Don Green, Robert Abelson, and Margaret Garnett interviewed 25 hate-crime perpetrators or white supremacists — gleaned from the archives of North Carolinians Against Racial and Religious Violence and then questioned via phone under the guise of a survey. These two groups were more likely than the general public to favor decreased immigration, to favor a law against interracial marriage, and to be uncomfortable with those who seek to ban the Confederate flag. We would expect Roeder to be similarly different from the population.

But attitudes alone aren’t enough. Obviously, Roeder has expressed extreme attitudes for some time. (Other of his features, such as his personality, are similarly stable.) And Tiller’s clinic has been open for decades. So why commit this act now?

What about the economy? A popular theory of violent action (whether crime, hate crime, etc.) is that it’s aggression born of frustration. So an economic downturn leads to unemployment, anger about job prospects, or some combination of these and other factors, and the frustrated persons take out their anger through violence. This theory — which, to be clear, I haven’t seen propounded re: Roeder — is probably less relevant here. One piece of evidence comes from the Green et al. study: hate crime perpetrators and of the economy were a bit worse, but not much. See also this post.

Is there some other situation cue? Green et al. suggest possibilities:

…no psychological explanation can make sense of hate crime without considering the mechanisms by which people are spurred to action. A great many social psychological forces come to mind: pressures to go along with, or prove oneself among, a group of bigots looking for action; the blandishments of a charismatic leader; community norms concerning attacks against minorities; to name but a few.

To date, there is no evidence of a charismatic leader driving Roeder’s actions. However, there is evidence that he was a member of one militant group, the Montana Freeman, and also frequented anti-abortion rallies and websites. This may not mean that he was “pressured” or felt he needed to “prove himself.” But it may be that these networks of like-minded individuals helped sustain and nurture his feelings — even, in some sense, normalizing them, at least in his view. Research on genocide and terrorism emphasizes the important role of social networks. Perhaps additional evidence will turn up that such networks directly encouraged his actions against Tiller.

Is there some salient new “threat” that would have heightened Roeder’s concern about Tiller? Lots of research suggests that threat is a crucial motivator of violence. Above I link to Scott Straus’s work on the Rwandan genocide. Among the Hutu genocidaires that he interviewed, few had highly prejudicial view of Tutsis (cockroaches, etc.), but many perceived them as a threat. This other paper by Glaser, Dixit, and Green also finds that violent language in chatrooms is a function of threat:

We conducted semistructured interviews with 38 participants in White racist Internet chat rooms…We experimentally manipulated the nature and proximity of the threats…respondents were most threatened by interracial marriage and, to a lesser extent, Blacks moving into White neighborhoods. In contrast, job competition posed by Blacks evoked very little advocacy of violence.

However, I’m not sure what the threat is in the case of Roeder and Tiller. Some have suggested that Bill O’Reilly’s criticism of Tiller is to blame. Again, the timing seems off. O’Reilly has been criticizing Tiller for several years. And we don’t know whether Roeder even watched O’Reilly. And if he did, what was O’Reilly saying that Roeder didn’t already believe?

Others have suggested that Tiller became newly salient because he was a controversial part of Kathleen Sibelius’ nomination at HHS. That seems tangential at best. If one is as single-minded as Roeder apparently was about this issue, it’s probably not the case that he needed to be reminded of Tiller’s existence.

Again, explaining Roeder’s actions is difficult. There may never be a clear answer. And, ultimately, we would want to base our understanding of this kind of violence on a systematic inquiry, not on a single case. But we can perhaps identify factors that are likely to matter more, or at least ones that are likely to matter less.