Genocidal movements attract followers through utopian promises, not hatred alone.

Evidence

Although past theorists focused on the destructiveness of scapegoating, a utopianism that promises the fulfillment of people’s basic needs is an equally important feature of scapegoating movements (see Staub, 1989). For example, Friedländer (1997) argued that Nazi anti-Semitism was “redemptive” – the Nazis promised Germans a “Thousand Year Reich” in which the problems of the present would be solved by eliminating their source, the Jews. Similarly, Fritzsche (1999) contends that most Germans were more directly attracted by the Nazis’ promise to satisfy their current needs and provide a better tomorrow than by their hostility toward the Jews per se (though the former was inextricably intertwined with the latter in Nazi ideology). — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 1596