Thoughts on Extremism
A couple of days ago, I watched an HBO documentary entitled Right America: Feeling Wronged. The film follows the 2008 John McCain campaign and interviews dozens of his supporters as he travels through some of the most conservative parts of America.
The filmmaker, Alexandra Pelosi, clearly has an agenda and the film is what you’d expect on that front – it exposes some of the Republican Party’s most mindless and extreme supporters. For example, when one man wearing a shirt that said something along the lines of “Obama is a Socialist” was asked what a socialist was, he literally had no earthly clue. Another woman said that when she looked into Barack Obama’s eyes she saw “666.” When a trucker complained that Obama was going to take his wealth and give it to people who don’t want to work, Pelosi replied: “Actually, what I think he wants to do is take money from only the richest 1% of the population and give it to you.” The trucker’s response is not even worth mentioning. Let me just say that I really wish requiring voters to pass a basic civics test before they vote was constitutional.
I’m still trying to figure out where I am on the political spectrum. As far as I’m concerned, I’m smack in the middle. Of course, this means that friends on both sides of the aisle accuse me of being either liberal or conservative. But in my mind, I don’t think that either side has a monopoly on extremism. The radicals in Pelosi’s film are mirrored by those on the left and both of these camps are equally off-putting. To say that one party is always right and the other always wrong is such a gross misconception of reality that it amounts to a form of self-imposed intellectual exile.
Yet, unfortunately, in many different contexts around the world, fringe elements have enormous influence on public policy because they are often that very vocal and active minority with which governments must deal. What’s more is that extremes on opposite sides often have as many similarities as they do differences. For example, I see little difference between elements like Hamas and radical Israeli West Bank settlers – both stand in the way of peace and progress and both do their respective people a disservice.
But another question is how to deal with extremism. We often write-off people who have extreme views or views contrary to our own. In so doing, we tend to discredit the ideas because of their source. Some of what I’ve written above suggests that I do that myself. But, as far as discourse goes, it’s important to deal with the idea being put forth rather than focus on who’s stating it. In other words, address the idea, not the person. Separate the idea from the person. When the claim is that “Obama is a Socialist,” the fact that the person doesn’t know what a socialist is doesn’t shed light on whether the claim is true or false. To take it a bit further, groups like al-Quaeda just might have some legitimate grievances about the world that we might overlook because of the means they choose to address those grievances. Now, of course, al-Quaeda’s basic idea is to pursue its aims through killing innocent people. But underlying that is a fundamental beef that can be addressed on an intellectual level rather than writing them off completely because of their tactics. I’m not saying this is sound policy for the United States to pursue as far as national security goes, but it seems wise for it to be at least a component to the policy-maker’s arsenal.
Extremism is not only dangerous in and of itself, but it’s dangerous because it provokes, in almost a reactionary way, further extremism. This, in my mind, is its most dangerous component.
