Methodological lessons from four decades of close-up research on racial extremism

Abstract This article discusses methodological issues in my close-up interviewing and observational research on how participants joined, acted in, and broke away from racist groups in four waves of extremist white supremacism in the US: the 1920s Ku Klux Klan, the resurgence of racial extremism in the 1990s, and organized racism in the 2010s and 2020s. Rather than offer a smooth roadmap, it describes the mistakes and problems that hindered, and sometimes, advanced my research and some possible solutions.