Ressentiment and discontent: political orientations and emotional roots of violence in times of crisis

Abstract

This article examines ressentiment – a chronic, moralised sense of powerlessness, envy, and injustice that transforms frustration into hostility toward perceived offenders – as a psychological driver of support for violent and anti-democratic preferences in times of crisis. While ressentiment transcends ideological boundaries, our empirical focus is on the far-right context in Greece, where these dynamics are especially salient. We introduce a multidimensional typology of political orientations that integrates affective and temporal dimensions and identify ressentiment as a key emotional mechanism linking grievances to political violence. Drawing on five focus groups conducted during Greece’s financial crisis, we analyse how ressentiment and orientations intersect in shaping anti-democratic attitudes. Findings show that reactionary and radical orientations most strongly predict support for violent action, whereas retrogressive and conservative orientations foster latent anti-democratic tendencies marked by powerlessness, victimhood, envy, and injustice. Progressive orientations, characterised by hope and efficacy, mitigate violent impulses and sustain democratic engagement. We conclude that ressentiment and political orientations operate as interpretive frameworks for understanding the emotional foundations of anti-democratic preferences, illuminating how enduring grievances fuel far-right and nationalist ideologies. The study contributes by conceptualising ressentiment cross-ideologically, advancing a multidimensional orientation typology, and demonstrating how hope and efficacy moderate support for political violence.

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ORCID for Tereza Capelos: orcid.org/0000-0002-9371-4509

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