Structural inequalities and identity processes are pivotal to understanding public response to COVID‐19. We discuss how identity processes can be used to promote community‐level support, safe normative behaviour, and increase compliance with guidance. However, we caution how government failure to account for structural inequalities can alienate vulnerable groups, inhibit groups from being able to follow guidance, and lead to the creation of new groups in response to illegitimate treatment. Moreover, we look ahead to the longitudinal impacts of inequalities during pandemics and advise government bodies should address identity‐based inequalities to mitigate negative relations with the public and subsequent collective protest.

We aim to explain the dynamics enabling spikes in hate crimes by examining the underlying social‐psychological processes behind it. We see these as captured in empowerment processes among racists who see themselves as “victims” and their position strengthened by majority support from the public for their actions. Building on previous research, we investigated the role social norm misperception (false consensus and pluralistic ignorance), following elections plays as a possible, generally occurring mechanism, with particular focus on Republican Party supporters. In a two‐wave panel study, we surveyed Democrat and Republican supporters on social norms misperception, as well as collective empowerment, and xenophobic behavioral intentions. While we could replicate and strengthen our arguments and establish robust group‐dependent effects for social norms misperception and illustrate that an unexpected outcome of the election led to disempowerment among Republicans, we found null effects for changes in social norms misperception, and behavioral intentions. Our study contributes to understanding social norms misperception as associated with group membership. Deriving from that, the study results indicate that the perception of a majority agreeing with one's approval is potentially less influenced by external factors, in contrast to feelings of joy and group efficacy—collective empowerment. Practical implications of group differences regarding post‐election collective actions are discussed.

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The far-right recruits from the public with detrimental consequences for target groups and democracy. Therefore, undermining mobilisation and public support is crucial. Previous research suggests that perceptions of movement or system efficacy are associated with corresponding support. This suggests a novel hypothesis about how disruptive protests might reduce support for far-right movements by reducing perceived efficacy and legitimacy. In a pilot study and two pre-registered experiments using vignette designs, we present evidence for a serial process by which disruption (counterprotest) to the mobilisation of a far-right social movement is associated with a reduction in support intentions among moderate and high identifiers via reduced perceived efficacy and legitimacy. In Experiment 1, we introduced participants to a bogus far-right social movement which campaigned for stricter treatment of refugees. We found that disruption (vs none) was associated with a decrease in support intention among participants via perceiving the group as less organisationally efficacious and legitimate. There was some evidence that among high identifiers, the direct effect of witnessing disruption was associated with an increase in support intention, further emphasising the importance of the mediators. In Experiment 2, we used a neutral movement to test for generality and found the same indirect serial effects. However, since we found no significant direct effects here, the (increasingly rhetorically inflated) issue of asylum policies may explain the significant direct effect in Experiment 1. We also examined whether mockery aimed at decreasing legitimacy would have an even stronger effect but found no evidence for that. Practical implications of our findings for societies where counterprotest is often punished are discussed.

Far-right collective action has previously been explained in terms of collective grievances. However, this does not adequately explain mobilisations after ingroup-relevant successes. Based on the broader collective action literature, we suggest that analysing experiences of subjective power before and during collective action may significantly complement existing explanations of far-right mobilisations. We used secondary data (predominantly videos from YouTube and ProPublica) from the 2017 Charlottesville “Unite the Right” rally and the 2021 Washington Capitol insurrection to qualitatively examine the extent to which attendees reported experiencing collective psychological empowerment alongside the perception of collective grievances. The events were connected by the effort to unify the far-right yet were shaped by different immediate contexts. We find that at Charlottesville, attendees arrived already feeling empowered and gained further empowerment from the rally itself. While the Capitol insurrection seemed to be driven by collective grievances, there were some indicators of empowerment experiences mainly deriving from the event itself. Our analysis has implications for disempowering far-right collective action.