The Annex: 5,501 people, one sentence about violence, and why powerlessness matters more than distrust

The document. “From Grievance to Endorsement: Political Alienation as a Conditional Catalyst, Not a Cause, of Support for Political Violence”, by Tahir Abbas of Aston University, published in Psychology of Violence¹. It draws on an EU-funded online survey run between 2021 and 2023 with 5,501 adults: 2,535 in the United Kingdom, 1,963 in the Netherlands, 635 in Denmark and 368 in Norway¹. On the morning after a long night of American counting, it is a useful thing to read slowly.

The line. Participants were asked whether they agreed that “Sometimes people need to use violence to achieve their goals.” About 8.5% strongly agreed¹. The study split people into two broad groups found in every country. The 59% who reported relatively little exclusion and alienation strongly endorsed violence at a rate of 0.5%. Among the other 41%, about 20% did, and roughly four in five did not¹. Desk arithmetic: 59% × 0.5% plus 41% × 20% comes to about 8.5% of the whole sample, which matches the headline figure.

The lines around it. Feeling that your group is excluded, humiliated or treated unfairly went with more endorsement in all four countries¹. Political alienation on its own did not, once exclusion was taken into account. It changed the strength of the link instead, in two opposite directions. Among people who felt powerless, with lines like “people like me have no power” or “I have no future”, exclusion and endorsement were much more closely tied. Among people who distrusted institutions, the tie was weaker, though still there¹. Abbas calls alienation “a conditional catalyst, not a cause or a brake”¹.

The caveats. The design cannot show cause and effect. Endorsement was measured with a single statement about attitudes, not behaviour, and most people who hold such views never act on them¹. All answers were self-reported, the pattern was clearest in the Netherlands, and the results may not travel beyond established democracies¹.

The constructive reading. Distrust, it seems, tends to lead people to walk away rather than lash out. Powerlessness is the more dangerous feeling, and the author suggests that work on people’s sense that they can change outcomes may do more than campaigns for trust alone¹. He also warns that security measures which make whole communities feel stigmatised could deepen the exclusion at the root¹. A ballot that gets counted, slowly and in public, is one of the oldest answers to powerlessness we have.