Men who identify as conservative are significantly more likely than other men to be fans of violent sports.
Americans love sports in general and professional sports in particular. When it comes to the more traditional pro sports—NFL, NBA, WNBA, MLB, and NHL, the fan bases are generally evenly divided between people of different political persuasions. Liberals, conservatives, independents, and folks of virtually every political stripe enjoy watching athletic competitions.
But there’s one notable difference. A study published in Public Opinion Quarterly found that men who identify as conservative are significantly more likely than other men to be fans of violent sports such as mixed martial arts (MMA). So, it might not be too surprising that “In an August 2020 study … researchers found that White conservative men were more likely than all others to support virtuous violence….”
Virtuous Violence
Virtuous violence—the notion that violence often is required to correct wrongs—is the plot of hundreds of our culture’s favorite novels and movies. A significant percentage of Americans seem to love modern revenge movies in which violence is the means used to restore justice and virtue. But the concept is as old Homer’s Odyssey and as banal as the ubiquitous black-hat-wearing Westerns of the 60s and 70s. However, real life is not as simple as those turn-the-tables-in-the-end Westerns in which the good guys wearing the white hats always eventually win. Sometimes the good guys wear the black hats, or the bad guys wear the white ones. And sometimes the bad guys win.
We live in a society in which many, perhaps a majority, believe things need to be set right on a grand scale. And the correction, many MAGA folks believe, simply requires authorizing the guys who make a show of wearing their metaphorical white hats—as in hugging the American flag—to fire away at anyone who appears to be wearing a metaphorical black hat. For many MAGA Republicans, violent retribution is the way to set things right. To them, firing—metaphorically or literally—at anyone perceived to be wearing a black hat seems like the virtuous thing to do.
So, it should surprise no one that more than twice as many Republicans (28 percent) as Democrats (12 percent) state that Americans need to resort to violence to fix the nation’s problems—to set things right. Conservatives, especially White male MAGA conservatives—often the same males who are obsessed with violent sports—tend to value violence as a means to achieve justice. Might makes right. Violent aggression molds macho men. And macho men—tough guys in white hats—make the world a better place, many MAGA members naively contend.
Five Violence-Producing MAGA Traits
According to Psychologist and UC Santa Cruz professor Thomas Pettigrew, the following five traits are common among MAGA devotees (mostly white conservatives):
Authoritarianism: Authoritarianism refers to the advocacy or enforcement of strict obedience to authority at the expense of personal freedom and is commonly associated with a lack of concern for the opinions or needs of others.
Social Dominance Orientation: Social dominance orientation (SDO)—which is distinct but related to authoritarian personality syndrome—refers to people who have a preference for the societal hierarchy of groups, specifically with a structure in which the high-status groups have dominance over the low-status ones. Those with SDO are typically dominant, tough-minded, and driven by self-interest.
Prejudice: It would be grossly unfair and inaccurate to say that every one of Trump’s supporters has a prejudice against ethnic and religious minorities, but it would be equally inaccurate to say that some do not. … Perhaps unsurprisingly, a new study has shown that support for Trump is correlated with a standard scale of modern racism.
Intergroup contact: Intergroup contact refers to contact with members of groups that are outside one’s own, which has been experimentally shown to reduce prejudice. As such, it’s important to note that there is growing evidence that Trump’s white supporters have experienced significantly less contact with minorities than other Americans.
Relative deprivation: Relative deprivation refers to the experience of being deprived of something to which one believes they are entitled. It is the discontent felt when one compares their position in life to others who they feel are equal or inferior but have unfairly had more success than them.
Combine these five traits and we have a recipe for deep resentment frequently leading to violent responses. Often those violent tendencies are satisfied vicariously through watching grown men—and, increasingly, women—viciously tackle their opponents on a football field, ruthlessly pound their rival in a ring or a cage, or blow their black-hat-wearing opponents away with several rounds from a Colt Peacemaker revolver in an old Western movie.
When Vicarious Means Are Not Enough
But increasingly, such vicarious outlets seem to be insufficient. According to the National Institute of Justice, “Since 1990, far-right extremists have committed far more ideologically motivated homicides than far-left or radical Islamist extremists, including 227 events that took more than 520 lives. In this same period, far-left extremists committed 42 ideologically motivated attacks that took 78 lives.” And of course, this nation barely survived a violent attack on its Capitol building on January 6, 2021, called for by MAGA’s violence-promoting supreme leader.
So, when the supreme leader tells his violence-prone followers to “stand back and stand by,” we have good reason to believe that many of them are doing just that. And when that supreme leader tells those same violence-prone followers to go forth and “fight like hell,” we have good reason to expect—and filmed precedence to remind us—that many of them will do just that.
Those who expect America to be just fine on November 6, 2024, will be rudely surprised. Kamala Harris almost certainly will win. And when her victory is announced, MAGA’s macho men—and some women too—will begin a reign of terror that they will think of as virtuous violence. The rest of us will see it as America’s unrighteous second civil war, a war that will destroy this nation.
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