The Reader | Baker Institute/EP Djerejian Center for the Middle East/Women’s Rights, Human Rights, and Refugees/Commentary
Eligible in-groups often rebuke the extremists who claim to represent them, throwing the extremist movement’s legitimacy into crisis. If the extremist movement can’t persuade the eligible in-group to enact harm on out-groups, it may try to change the composition of the in-group by declaring that dissenters have forfeited the right to their in-group identity. The ineligible in-group thus consists of people who possess the canonical qualifications for membership but whose actions put them at risk of expulsion. In white supremacist extremism, for example, the ineligible in-group usually includes white people who have sexual relations with non-white people and are therefore subjected to even harsher treatment than the out-group.