Over the past year, white supremacists have been arrested, charged and put on trial for their part in the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol. Many who protested that day may not have identified as white supremacists, but they were, at a minimum, willing to make common cause with these groups, whose rhetoric, flags and symbols were hard to miss both in the preparation for the “Stop the Steal” rally and on-site.

Some people think of white supremacy as violent actions against people of color that reside in our distant history. But the past several years have seen a surge of white-supremacist violence such as the killings at Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, the Tree of Life synagogue, and the Unite the Right Rally. White-supremacist ideas also manifest in mundane public policies about such issues as policing, housing and more.

But despite increasing white-supremacist violence, including the Jan. 6 insurrection, our research finds that some Americans are less concerned about these kinds of attacks than similar activities from groups with different motivations. This seems particularly true for Republicans. We wanted to understand why.