On Extremism

[krinndnz]

Oh look, Krinn venting. This is an angry post that is unlikely to be read by anyone who it attacks - but it needed writing.

I finally realized why it rankles me when people say “oh all extremists are alike.” The part I already knew was that generally, “oh the extremists on both sides are equally bad,” is
Not Even Wrong (or possibly wronger

Comments

[heron61]

Well said. It's also not a neutral statement in that it doesn't just favor centrists. Since the far right is so much larger and more powerful than the far left, making them morally and conceptually equivalent is also an attempt to convince the general public that the "far-right" is a small fringe and not a dangerously powerful movement that is supported by at least one sixth of people in the US.

The extremists all want to upset your comfort, and there the similarities end.

That's an excellent point and one of many reasons that I'm not one - instead I seem to merely be someone with values and ideas that are center-left in northern europe and am instead living in a nation where the dominant opinions range from those I consider to be overly conservative to those I consider to be barking mad.

[krinndnz]

I do mean this in more contexts than American politics - but that area is particularly rich with examples, such as the ones you point out.

As for me personally, I have with a surly and graceless mien basically accepted that I am a radical - I believe all kinds of lunatic things. Which is not the most comfortable life to live, but I think I'd feel even more uncomfortable consciously abandoning it.

[postrodent]

You get hugs for this. *hug hug hug*

[krinndnz]

Awwwh, thanks.

[neonneptunian]

It's hard to confront something that threatens your status quo. It's hard to see someone's opinion that differs dramatically from yours and not follow the gut-impulse to dismiss it;it's even harder to keep attention on it- to take it and pick it apart and understand the structure of it, of their thought-process.

It's painful and frustrating and worrisome and it's absolutely necessary.

You have a lot of respect from me for trying to get people to take that first step. Enlightenment is hard. *bow, hug*

[krinndnz]

Thanks for the encouragement!

You also make a good point: I'm unnecessarily demonizing some people. It is very hard to challenge the status quo, especially when your life seems to be going pretty well with things just the way they are. The desire for stability and safety is a powerful and normal desire.

[fengi]

Again, I think right wing extremists aren't challenging the status quo at all, they are attempting to enforce their own self-serving version of it. Someone who wants a plutocracy or a theocracy in which wealthy dudes hold all the power isn't going anywhere but backwards. The also aren't out to upset anyone's comfort, just punish people for challenging their own. The Tea Party is angry and radical because they resent even having to notice people unlike them, let alone think about them getting money they don't deserve.

[fengi]

And indeed many of the extremist movements I do agree with aren't necessarily challenging the status quo in order to upset it, but out of the desire for stability and safety. They become extremist because the status quo isn't stable or safe for them. Right now one of the things driving the protests and riots in other countries is poverty and hunger or fear of such things. People become extreme because they want security they can't have.

[fengi]

"that one status-quo-threatening point of commonality among extremists all means that they’ve actually thought about the way the world is - and the way it could be"

I dispute this - a lot of extremists are actively, violently opposed to thinking about the way the world is. In fact their entire point is their version is the way the world is and anyone who suggests otherwise, let alone suggests how it should be, needs to be eliminated. They are extremist because they think they are the status quo and everyone else is trying to destroy it. There's no enlightenment in fundamentalism, just a retreat into a reactionary past definition of normal which never really existed.

[krinndnz]

I think that's a separate mental tendency than "extremism," actually, and can exist side-by-side with it. In the case that you're talking about, someone has still measured reality-as-they-perceive it and found it wanting. That sort of person is still worth talking to because they believe in something - forgive the cliché, but it's pretty much the Beast/Smiler thing from Transmet. Would you rather try to deal with someone who's a True Believer with vile beliefs - or with someone who has no beliefs, no sincerity, no solid ground?

What makes part of the American authoritarian movement so toxic, of course, is that they combine all of the things we just spoke of: extremism, detachment from reality, and bad faith. I think it's important to be clear that those are three different forces, though, and that they are much more problematic together than in isolation.

[paka]

It's a difficult thing to talk about, really. I agree with you; the worst things that liberals want largely consist of well intentioned, clumsy, and insensitive refusal to consider freedom of speech and expression at a relatively modest financial cost; the worst thing conservatives want to do by comparison is genocide and complete long term fiscal disaster. I do think there's some claim though that when liberals do really stupid bullshit, it's worse in a way because theoretically we know what a dead-end this stuff is; we've seen and been on the receiving end of it, and that's no fun at all.

And I also agree about "extremism." It's a little like using terrorist, Zionist, freedom fighter, or hipster - at some point the use of the word gets to be so subjective it's ridiculous. There's got to be a way around it.

[krinndnz]

That's another thing that bothers me - losing words. Having to have debates like this, or other similar ones over recent decades, amounts to losing chunks of expression-ability. I weep and gnash my teeth over this loss of ideas. The loss of ideas is really hard to recover from, and there are people actively fighting for the cause of meaninglessness, who are willingly making themselves into warriors of Newspeak. They wish language to mean nothing but what the people in power allow it to mean. Bloody hate that.

And yes: people calling themselves "liberals," "leftists," and so on, ought to be held to a somewhat higher standard - should know better.

[paka]

I suspect this may just be natural process - some sort of language shift. Like "multitasking" and "team player" sound good, so every job post will list these (I've been at a company where the salesmen weren't team players, probably needed to be, but their role was different from the necessity of my administrative job interfacing with two different departments) and boom, a specific word or phrase becomes meaningless. I think we can all accept this with stuff which starts out vague - freedom, capitalism, patriotism - but it gets grating when you're referring to specific stuff. (Godwin's Law is an example of reaction - don't refer to anything as Nazi-like, unless it really is reminiscent of actions taken by the German government in the 1930s through mid 1940s.)

But the name-calling nature of American politics - and once again I blame the Reagan years for really starting it off - just makes more of the same.