One possibility is that when people act like this they perceive a threat to themselves. Even though an objective bystander would say it's not self defence, the person who's in that mindset in that moment may feel like they're acting in a kind of self defence. If your identity and day-to-day, taken-for-granted reality are constructed in terms of privilege and status dominance, what that can mean is that when your dominance is threatened, your identity is threatened. Your sense of self is threatened. A person could experience that on an emotional level as a threat to themselves, even as a kind of survival threat, even though that's not rational in a detached, objective sense.

Further, there's been unsteady economic growth for a very long time now. There's been deindustrialization and people who are experiencing loss of their livelihoods. How many people lost their houses and homes in that [2008 recession] fiasco? Home ownership is a major symbol of personhood in American culture. To be a successful human being you have to be economically successful, and home ownership is one of the most tangible symbols of that. And I think even more than in Canada there's a very strong culture where esteem and shame are attached to class position. So if you're poor you're supposed to be ashamed of that and blame yourself for it.

One of the things that people do when they're faced with some kind of humiliation is they try to compensate for it. This might be an experience we can all relate to, you get into a confrontation with somebody that you think is completely in the wrong and you expect them to see the error of their ways. You expect to come out of the confrontation victorious, but that doesn't happen. They refuse to be ashamed, and so then you come out humiliated. We'll probably all experience that at some point, and I can imagine that being part of the emotional landscape of a white supremacist, but in a deeper way.