There’s this notion in politics that “extremism” is automatically a bad thing. But “extremism” is simply defined as whatever society considers unacceptable at the time.
180 years ago, the idea of freeing all the slaves and banning slavery in America would have been thought of as “extremist.” Back in the era of Nazi Germany, the notion that the Holocaust was wrong and should be stopped would have been thought of as “extremist.”
Far more important than whether something is “extreme” or not is whether it is right or wrong.
Well, if this is how the word is defined…then, no, it can’t be a good thing, at least within the values of that society.
In practice, sure, some forms of extremism are not harmful. The really dedicate sports fanatic is annoying, but is good for the local economy. The dyed-in-the-wool true-blue door-to-door evangelist, again, may be annoying as hell, but he isn’t really damaging anyone.
Extremism, in practice, is often more harmful to the extremist himself. The guy who only knows one way to prepare eggs is denying himself the joys of all the other ways. The guy who only reads John le Carre novels is missing out on a lot of other good literature.
Extremism is terribly limiting.
The place where it becomes dangerous is when the guy says, “I won’t eat eggs except sunny-side-up with pepper and tabasco sauce – and neither shall you!” Then we have a fight on our hands.
That is so completely wrong that I wonder if you know anything at all about history. Among the most important lessons learned from WW II is that no one anticipated just how extremist the Nazi regime would turn out to be until it was too late.
“Right” and “wrong” are pretty vague terms that can be manipulated into politically partisan objectives. A more reasoned approach is to agree on social values and objectively ask whether proposed policies will result in outcomes that are consistent with those values.
There are certainly policies being advocated today that certain groups would consider extremist. The NRA, for instance, would consider the gun control policies in effect in the entire industrialized world to be “extremist”. The rest of the world considers the NRA to be a bunch of lunatics and points to the extraordinarily high gun death rate in the US as evidence. Would you agree that this sort of “extremism” supported by an overwhelming body of evidence yet rejected by legislators fearing for their re-election is “a good thing”? If not, what point are you trying to make, really?
180 years ago, the institution of slavery was already abolished in the UK. Black slavery was made illegal for French territories even earlier, though, to be fair, they came back and made any sort of slavery illegal about 165 years ago. Slavery was already considered an uncivilized notion for most of the Western world at that point.
Certainly Americans were familiar with these developments and many Americans agreed with abolition. It was a fairly mainstream and not especially extremist viewpoint, albeit one that wasn’t especially popular in all corners of the country.
You mean in Germany itself?
The notion it was considered wrong wasn’t really an extremist viewpoint, as mentioned above.
Seems like you’re really reaching with both these examples to support your argument. I hazard that most people would agree that it takes more than very strong emotions associated with a particular view to make it extremist.
The OP seems to have confused “unpopular” with “extreme.” Extremism has nothing to do with how well an idea fits into the mainstream, it has to do with the methods you use to promote your ideas.
Take the Civil War, for example. Abolitionism in the mid-19th century could not accurately be called an extremist idea in general - it was, in fact, the majority opinion of most people in the US. Abraham Lincoln was elected president without receiving a single electoral vote from any of the slave states. In most of them, he wasn’t even on the ballot. It was this stark and undeniable evidence that slavery was on the losing end of the shifting demographics of the nation that prompted the South’s secession.
Yet, while abolitionism wasn’t, in and of itself, an extremist position, there were absolutely extremist abolitionists. John Brown is, undoubtedly, the most famous of them. He was ardently anti-slavery, and also a violent religious fanatic and general purpose nutbag. Lincoln opposed slavery, but was willing to work with the South to find a peaceful solution to the issue. Brown opposed slavery, and would hack you to death with a broadsword if you disagreed with him. One was an extremist, the other was not, despite agreeing on the fundamentals of the issue at hand.
Lincoln and the Republicans were not calling for abolition. They explicitly rejected that. The Free Soil Party was the abolitionist party and they ran a candidate against Lincoln in the 1860 election - and lost badly because most of the country was not in favor of abolition in 1860.
But your overall point is correct. Lincoln and the Republicans were the moderates in 1860. The abolitionists wanted to abolish slavery everywhere. The Southern radicals wanted to expand slavery everywhere. The Republicans were the moderates in the middle who where willing to allow slavery to exist where it was already established and prohibit its expansion into new areas.
Russell Hardin wrote of “The Crippled Epistemology of Extremism.” They know relatively few things and what they know is wrong. Part of it has to do with a restricted information set, part of it has to do with a fanaticism that balks at emotionally unpalatable facts. To the extremist, denials of the obvious by representatives of institutions they dislike can be counter-productive: of course they would say that, the extremist thinks.
We do know a little about extremist thinking. It tends to be conspiratorial. And the best predictor for whether somebody will believe a conspiracy theory is whether they believe in another conspiracy theory. Some of the examples get pretty interesting: those who believe Diana faked her own death are more likely to believe she was murdered. That these ideas contradict themselves doesn’t pose much of a problem for the modern extremist.
The previous discussion owes much to Chapter 2 of Cass Sunstein’s Conspiracy Theories and other Dangerous Ideas.
I agree. We could hypothesise though - for example, the future may regard environmentalist extremism as the only reasonable view - if they are struggling to survive in a world we screwed up, or because we allowed things to be irretrievably lost or squandered.
I can’t resist the old joke from the general Spanish Civil War milieu: “I belong to the Centre Extremist party. We believe passionately in tolerance toward all people and all ideas; and in dealing justly and humanely, with everyone. Anybody who dares to think otherwise, even in the smallest detail, will be liquidated without delay and without mercy.”
The idea of freeing slaves or banning slavery was never extreme. What John Brown did in his misguided attempts to make those things happen is extreme. His actions, while made with a worthy goal in mind, were wrong. The OP seems to be proposing that the end justifies the means.
It would have been considered “extreme” to promote freeing the slaves through violence, (as John Brown set out to attempt). But simply claiming that there should be no slaves was not an “extremist” position. It was one that many people felt was wrong, perhaps even far-fetched, but it was not extreme.
Similarly, as soon as the extent of the Holocaust was known, there was a great revulsion against it throughout the world. Arguing for a war against Germany, in 1938, to prevent the Holocaust might have been considered extreme by some people, but that is pure speculation since no one actually proposed any such thing.
Extreme has a meaning. It means a position that is dangerous, in and of itself, because it is so far removed from rationality and reality.
Throwing the label “extreme” at random ideas that are not inherently bad, (but are also not actually extreme), simply sounds as though one is attempting to rationalize an extreme suggestion in advance. It is poor logic and poor rhetoric.
I think we’re looking at two different definitions of extreme here: extremist acts and extremist beliefs.
Suppose I think we should have a public health care system. That’s not a particularly extremist belief. But I advance my belief by blowing up doctor’s offices. I’m committing extremist acts.
Now suppose I believe private ownership of motor vehicles should be banned. That’s an extremist belief. But I advance my belief by handing out pamphlets and organizing letter-writing campaigns. I’m not committing extremist acts.
Perhaps “radical” might be a better term for people who have ideas that are far outside the mainstream, but aren’t necessarily using violence to implement it? Banning all cars is a radical idea. Beheading people who don’t carpool is an extremist idea.
In contemporary society, resistance to the drug war is a form of moral extremism. Although I guess it isn’t that extreme because deep down a lot of people are realizing it doesn’t work even though nobody really wants to admit it.
There is a concept called the Overton Window the OP should look at. The public has a range of acceptable beliefs that vary by culture and time (what is moderate in 21st century america would be radical or unthinkable in 19th century US or parts of current Saudi Arabia as examples)
As an example, I’d say single payer health care went from ‘radical’ to somewhere in the acceptable/sensible range in the last 20 years.
If you have beliefs that are radical you want to make mainstream, then support groups even more radical than yourself. You will seem moderate by comparison. People tend to like not picking the most extreme option. That is why we need a communist party in the US, to make the progressives seem like the moderate party.