Right-wing populism is threatening pluralist underpinnings of diverse democracies around the world by staking claims of privilege for dominant ethnic groups and undermining minority rights. Existing scholarship has evaluated these threats in terms of the majoritarian vision peddled by charismatic politicians seeking electoral victory and the enactment of discriminatory policies through the dismantling of institutional constraints by those already in power. This article looks beyond these macro consequences of right-wing populism and examines vigilante violence as the mechanism through which these movements articulate and enforce their vision at the grassroots level. It compares the experience of India and Indonesia to evaluate factors that have enabled right-wing populists to deploy vigilantism for dismantling democratic protections against majoritarianism. I argue that the intrinsic properties of vigilantism as an efficient and transformative form of violence make it a valuable tool for right-wing populists. However, its use for political ends in two of the world’s largest democracies is enabled by three factors. First, because pluralist constitutions make it difficult to curtail minority rights through top-down legislation in India and Indonesia, vigilantism has become an appealing extra-legal strategy for undermining these rights from the bottom up. Second, widespread social legitimacy associated with everyday forms of vigilantism allows right-wing populists to scale up local templates of violence for national goals. Third, similar pathologies of state-building in both countries enable right-wing vigilantes to act with impunity. I conclude by arguing that while vigilantism has long been thought of as a way in which disempowered citizens cope with dissatisfactory provision of order by the state, right-wing populists are transforming vigilante violence into means for engineering social dominance.

右翼民粹主义正在威胁着世界各地不同民主国家的多元化基础，通过为占主导地位的族群争取特权和破坏少数群体的权利。现有的学术研究从寻求选举胜利的有魅力的政治家所兜售的多数主义愿景以及通过消除已经当权者的制度限制来制定歧视性政策的角度来评估这些威胁。本文超越了右翼民粹主义的这些宏观后果，并将私刑暴力作为这些运动在基层表达和执行其愿景的机制。它比较了印度和印度尼西亚的经验，以评估使右翼民粹主义者能够部署警惕主义以破坏反对多数主义的民主保护的因素。我认为，作为一种有效且具有变革性的暴力形式，警戒主义的内在特性使其成为右翼民粹主义者的宝贵工具。然而，它在世界上两个最大的民主国家中用于政治目的是由三个因素促成的。首先，由于印度和印度尼西亚的多元宪法难以通过自上而下的立法来限制少数族裔的权利，因此警惕性已成为自下而上削弱这些权利的一种有吸引力的法外策略。第二，与日常形式的警戒主义相关的广泛社会合法性允许右翼民粹主义者扩大当地暴力模板以实现国家目标。第三，两国国家建设的相似病态使右翼民兵能够逍遥法外。我的结论是，虽然长期以来一直认为治安维持是被剥夺权利的公民应对国家不满意的秩序提供的一种方式，但右翼民粹主义者正在将治安维持者的暴力转变为设计社会支配地位的手段。