Local Party Growth Predicts Deportations

When a mass political party expands inside towns and workplaces, early adopters create social cascades (hysteresis) that draw in more members from the same networks; those local membership spikes can precede and predict state-led repression against targeted groups. The NBER study digitized NSDAP membership records and links local membership increases to subsequent deportations of Jews. — This frames radicalization not only as an ideological phenomenon but as a measurable, local social-process that can forecast when ordinary political organization turns into coordinated state violence.