New data from Pakistan published in the American Journal of Political Science suggests that the middle class there is more likely to support violent extremism than those who are less well off. The factor proposed for this difference is interesting:

the contextual factor that matters appears to be exposure to the externalities of militant violence. Leveraging a new dataset of violent incidents, we find first that violence is heavily concentrated in urban areas and second that dislike of militant groups is nearly three times stronger among the urban poor living in districts that have experienced violence than among the poor living in nonviolent districts. It is not that people are vulnerable to militants' appeals because they are poor and dissatisfied. Instead, it appears that the urban poor suffer most from militants' violent activities and so most intensely dislike them.

In other words, the people who have to deal with the consequences are those who don't like the violent extremism. It's not a surprising causal relationship, but it is emblematic of the habit among the better-off classes the world over to casually form hardened opinions over matters that have nothing whatsoever to do with them.

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