General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: What fueled right wingers, fathers rights, mens' rights, gun rights & teabaggers into existence? [View all]quaker bill
(8,263 posts)I think you are getting at the nature that underpins the observed reality. Kin selection has a real basis in evolutionary biology. The notion that we may have evolved some in-group / out-group selective behavior is fairly well founded in the math as well as social / psychological literature.
There is a difference between that natural potential and political movements that manipulate this natural kin bias to whip it up into a political force.
The blaming of out-groups for failed crops and other disasters is as old as recorded history. Hitler was using a very ancient playbook when he blamed the Jews for a failed economy, and also bolstering a belief in an Aryan master race. The fact that there are aspects of humanity that make such things an easy political play is no justification for going there.
These political forces can be made very powerful. They had the Rwandans hacking each other to pieces with machetes.
Nature may well underpin our tendency to go there when stimulated. This does not obviate the need to study the process that makes this base instinct to somewhat favor the familiar into a violent, dangerous, and occasionally deadly political force.