Populist attitudes and radical activism in the USA

The often-presumed relationship between populism and radicalism remains understudied. The USA is a country with a great tradition of political activism, that exhibits a growing polarization and frequent clashes among its political elites over immigration and identity related issues. Since the rise of Donald Trump to power in 2016 many have signaled populism as a probable cause for the radicalization of American society. We use data of an original survey in the USA and a new populism attitudes scale to analyze the relationship between populist attitudes, nativism, right-wing ideology, radicalized network, and propensity to engage in peaceful and radical activism. We show that citizens with nativist views are more prone to exhibit populist ideas, but they do not display a higher than average propensity to engage in peaceful or violent activism. While having personal ties with people who support violence is a good predictor of radicalization, left or right ideology is not. Finally, our analyses show that populist ideas may not be conducive to radical behavior, but pluralist views may be useful to prevent it, and similarly useful to stimulate political engagement.