Exposing Extremism in Elections | Fall 2024

EEP_Hero_Main_1800x1012

Executive Summary

The Exposing Extremism in Elections report documents how extremist narratives, once largely relegated to the fringe, are making inroads into mainstream politics, specifically electoral campaigns. The report highlights campaign communications that employ narratives and rhetoric crafted by extremist movements and the political hard right. While some candidates in the dataset may have connections to SPLC-designated hate and antigovernment groups, this report does not seek to classify them as extremists at this time. Instead, it shows how extremist rhetoric and narratives have seeped into mainstream politics and are now being peddled in electoral campaigns.

In the fall update, we analyze a snapshot of campaign communications from candidates at all levels of office issued from August to Nov. 5, 2024. In total, we analyzed 58 campaign communications from 27 candidates. The communications represent about 69 extremist narratives, which is consistent with our previous reporting that shows extremist ideologies frequently overlap and reinforce one another in campaigns. Data collected was observed as part of the regular SPLC monitoring and research of hate and antigovernment hard right entities and movements in the U.S.

Because federal candidates are most commonly on the ballot during the fall election cycle, the data skews toward this level of office, with about 17% of candidates in the fall dataset representing state or local campaigns. Of the 33 campaigns to represent a specific geographic district, candidates from the Southeast represent the largest percentage of campaigns in the dataset, followed by candidates from the Midwest and West.

The analysis of campaign rhetoric from fall 2024 shows:

  • The emergence of three new extremist subnarratives in the general election season. The narratives centered on:
    • Racist tropes about Black women’s professional advancement through DEI programs.
    • Racist tropes about immigrants’ cultural inferiority.
    • Rhetoric laying the groundwork for challenging the 2024 election as stolen in the event Donald Trump lost.
      • Including antisemitic tropes about manipulation of public opinion.

While the report covers a broad spectrum of electoral rhetoric, it is not exhaustive. The goal is to capture a sample of narratives and demonstrate the influence extremists had in the 2024 election cycle. The narratives tracked are tied to extremist ideologies monitored by the SPLC’s Intelligence Project and correspond with rhetoric weaponized against marginalized peoples and communities. In turn, this data shows a notable footprint of extremist narratives being perpetuated by candidates in American elections and the threat posed to multiracial, pluralistic democracy.


Fall Campaign Communications

Comparing the dominant extremist narratives from spring to fall 2024 shows that in the fall campaign season, three new extremist narratives emerged.

Perpetuating anti-Black racism with attacks on Kamala Harris

About one in 10 campaign communications (11.1%) in the fall dataset represent narratives derived from white nationalist ideology. Of those, about half (50%) represent rhetorical attacks against Vice President Kamala Harris that played on anti-Black stereotypes about Black intelligence and work ethic to suggest the first woman of color to accept a major party’s nomination for president was incompetent or only achieved the accomplishment because of socially imposed racial preferences that disadvantage white people in hiring and promotion.

The subnarrative explicitly used the term “DEI” or “diversity, equity and inclusion,” which, like the term “woke,” has become a byword among the hard right for any program or policy that affirmatively recognizes the contributions of people of color and LGBTQ+ people.

What was said

“Intellectually, just really kind of the bottom of the barrel. … I think she was a DEI hire. And I think that that’s what we’re seeing, and I just don’t think that they have anybody else.” — Harriet Hageman, then candidate for U.S. House of Representatives (WY); “One hundred percent she is a DEI hire.” —  Tim Burchett, then candidate for U.S. House of Representatives (TN-02). 

Fomenting an anti-immigrant moral panic in Ohio

Anti-immigrant narratives, again, represent the largest single category of extremist rhetoric in the campaign communication data. About one-quarter of the campaign communications (23%) in the fall dataset represent anti-immigrant narratives.

Of these, more than half (56%) of the campaign communications used “great replacement”-style rhetoric, a white nationalist conspiracy theory which suggests immigrants are intentionally replacing white people in majority-white countries.

Extremist campaign rhetoric and in-person hate group mobilizations reached a fever pitch in the early fall of 2024 as racist claims about legal Haitian immigrants in the community of Springfield, Ohio, stealing and eating pets broke into the mainstream. About one in five (18%) campaign communications that used anti-immigrant narratives spread this false claim. Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tennessee) capitalized on the racist trope by printing “they’re eating the cats” on stickers her campaign distributed at the University of Tennessee football game against the University of Kentucky (Wildcats).

The claim was repeated by Donald Trump during the only presidential debate with Kamala Harris and defended by vice presidential candidate JD Vance, the junior senator from Ohio, who told CNN in September, “If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do.”

What was said

“These Haitians are wild. Eating pets, vudu [sic], nastiest country in the western hemisphere, cults, slapstick gangsters … but damned if they don’t feel all sophisticated now, filing charges against our President and VP. All these thugs better get their mind right and their ass out of our country before January 20th.” — Clay Higgins, then candidate for U.S. House of Representatives (LA-03), X, now deleted
“Write down all the addresses of the people who had her [Harris] signs in their yards! Sooo … when the Illegal human ‘Locust’ (which she supports!) Need places to live … We’ll already have the addresses of the their New families… who supported their arrival!” — Bruce Zuchowski, then candidate for Portage County, Ohio, sheriff, Facebook.
“In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs, the people that came in, they’re eating the cats, they’re eating the pets of the people that live there.” — Donald Trump, then candidate for U.S. President (R)
“I believe this [murder], it’s in their [immigrants’] genes. … We got a lot of bad genes in our country right now.” — Donald Trump, then candidate for U.S. President (R)

Pivot to rhetoric laying foundation to claim 2024 election was stolen

From spring to fall 2024, we tracked a sharp increase in campaign communications that perpetuated election-related conspiracy theories. Whereas election conspiracies were represented in about 8% of campaign communications in the spring, by the fall, election conspiracies were represented in 22% of campaign communications.

About 60% of campaign communications which perpetuated election conspiracies in the dataset asserted that the 2024 presidential election would be “stolen.” The increased frequency of this specific narrative suggests that candidates were telegraphing their response to a potentially unfavorable electoral outcome by claiming the election was already stolen.

Examining the specific mechanisms of the supposed fraud shows that election conspiracies attempted to sow distrust in mail-in balloting, suggested that artificial intelligence would be used to both directly and indirectly affect the outcome of the election (e.g., using AI-generated images to sway public opinion or using AI-assisted technologies to change ballots), and that the nomination of Kamala Harris was a “coup” perpetrated against the sitting president, Joe Biden.

In addition, antisemitic tropes were represented in about 15% of the campaign communications in the fall dataset. Of these, about one-quarter (25%) demonized philanthropist George Soros, suggesting the billionaire personified Jewish influence on American elections, while another 25% perpetuated the generic antisemitic claim that Jews are “puppet masters” in American elections.

What was said

“Pennsylvania is Cheating, and getting caught, at large scale levels rarely seen before …” — Donald Trump, then candidate for U.S. President (R), October 2024, Truth Social 
“The Democrats are talking about how they’re working so hard to get millions of votes from Americans living overseas. Actually, they are getting ready to CHEAT! They are going to use UOCAVA to get ballots, a program that emails ballots overseas without any citizenship check or verification of identity, whatsoever. (Foreign interference?) Remember they say, we have the ‘most secure elections in history,’ and anyone can get a ballot emailed to them! They want to dilute the TRUE vote of our beautiful military and their families, who Comrade Kamala has totally disrespected and abandoned.” — Donald Trump, then candidate for U.S. President (R), Truth Social
“I think there is going to be some cheating in this election. I think non-citizens are going to vote. It’s the actions of the Biden-Harris administration and some of these states.” — Mike Johnson, then candidate for U.S. House of Representatives (LA-04)
"He [George Soros] wants to destroy this country, and that’s exactly as a money changer of the worst kind, and he will destroy this country and the economy with it, and this is why, more so than ever, we need Donald Trump in the White House. This kind of nonsense needs to stop.” — Tim Burchett, then candidate for U.S. House of Representatives (TN-02)

Illustration at top by Ben Jones.