There's some good discussion going on here under this tweet. I just want to add that the effects of going to prison on rightwingers are a mixed bag and can go in a lot of different directions so I'm gonna talk about a range of different possible outcomes. https://twitter.com/donk_enby/status/1358601949671788546

Prison is a big economic hit and often knocks middle class people down to working class after they get out. However, race ameliorates this effect, and studies show even white men who go to prison and come out with a record have better job prospects than Black men who don't.

But past a certain income level prison can't knock people down an economic level, because their wealth and lawyers cushion them. Plus their connections of course. For an example look at Jared Kushner's dad's prison stint: the family kept their wealth and secured a pardon too.

Sometimes a big consequence like prison persuades people to stay out of activism when they get out. If they have a lot of family and community connections on the outside they have more to lose. They might not change their convictions but they moderate their actions.

Sometimes it further radicalizes them. If they have nothing left to lose and just stew over their grievances, or if they hook up with white supremacist prison gangs (depends on geography, income, etc.), they could definitely come out worse than when they came in.

They almost never change their attitudes about prison and law enforcement though. The possibility that a prison stint might make someone anti-prison doesn't apply to right-wingers. They typically adopt an attitude that they were the exceptional ones who shouldn't have been there.

If you do antifascist work a lot you see that and it's sadly funny: lots of rightwing street thugs who've done stints in prison loudly calling for LAW AND ORDER and BACK THE BLUE. They don't see any hypocrisy. The system just happened to be wrong about them.

If we segment prison radicalization by class I'd guess it has little effect on rich people, a little more effect on middle class people, huge effect on working class in terms of recruitment into white supremacist gangs... which are typically more focused on drugs than politics.

Prison might help raise the profile of a far right activist and win them more influence. Dylann Roof gets lots of fan mail, for example. But the far right is also notoriously bad at prison solidarity so this is an unpredictable effect.

The dominant attitude in the alt right inspired far right (as opposed to the old Nazi skinhead culture) is that if you got caught and go to prison you're a loser and it's your own fault. No solidarity. But the older attitude of "support political prisoners" is still around too.

If they can tap into that sentiment, when people get out of prison they can use their experience to promote a tough guy persona and win more influence. They will also often claim privileged racist knowledge about Black people learned in prison, and their audience believes them.

That's one of the worst effects and one which that terrible movie American History X obscures by having the main character learn in prison "oh this one Black guy is nice and these white supremacists aren't so I'm not gonna be racist anymore." I hate that movie so much.

So to wrap up, definitely don't believe any prison stint is gonna make someone better, American History X style. But it's also not guaranteed to make them worse (in the meaning of more damaging to their political targets) when they get out.

The carceral system isn't designed for the far right: it was designed around subjugating Black and Brown people. So they're not the main targets and the machine gears hit them in different ways, which is why it's so hard to generalize and project the effects of prison on them.