You’re looking at this purely through your own lens, but I choose to look at this in terms of society as a whole. We have young people parroting extremist points of view. That’s a societal failure. Where did our education and child care systems go so wrong as to make extremism this attractive?
Carried through to its natural conclusion, we will end up in fascist states, young people will end up in prison or we’ll end up with more innocent victims. All options are bad, it’s just a question of worst.
This line of thinking leads to things like the Nazi youth. No, having freedom doesn't lead to a better society, it prevents dangerous extremism. So far, history seems to indicate that dangerous extremism is more problematic than being overly mediocre.
No, it's society that has become extremist. Tolerance of the dog-whistle racism and fascism that Ben Shapiro and others peddle is a big reason we our in our current situation.
Yet it is very conforting and comfortable if you are inside its echo chamber.
So all the output of those thought leaders are not to be applied to the letter, but should be part of a whole educational process that also evaluates all the limits of that thinking.
But that takes time to think. Which our modern society has almost outlawed, in its rush for "fastfood for thought" that enables selling more ads and hype
Given that I have no idea what definition of extremism you’re using, I’m going to sidestep that one.
But I can put this out there: I’m not particularly happy about my money going towards religious schools either, but I have known many people in my life who have gone to such schools who I am happy to have known and their educational upbringing has not been to their detriment to the point that I consider it a non-factor in my view of them so: money follows the child (or some variation thereof) and family picks the schooling. If my money is going to be taken from me to fund any amount of schooling, I am a lot happier with that compromise than I am with my money being used to continue the same kind of public schools I attended in a diminished and uncompetitive educational market.
I think it’s a little more complicated than that. It’s not inherently about the rise of extremist views, it’s more about how the establishment grew complacent with the 20th century media environment only to be caught wrongfooted when the 21st century media environment exposed them as being full of shit. Once everyone realizes that the mainstream media and the political establishment are full of shit, where do we have to go from there except to the extremes?
People always believe their form of extremism is justified. That's what makes it so dangerous. I think we put a little too much emphasis on people's intention, and not enough on the result of their actions.
This is not about some general vague problem with "extremism" of which supposedly all sides are guilty. This is about the emergence of a right-wing terrorist movement which has already committed several attacks. When your first reaction to this is to to bring in some unspecified crimes of the left, then this calls into question whether you understand the seriousness of the situation. There is a real chance that real, actual fascists kill many more people and perhaps even gain more political power. We can talk about this without engaging in some false equivalence.
I agree that it isn't really about 'left' or 'right', as both leanings are held by plenty of rational non-extreme people. Extremism itself seems to be growing in our culture, and as long as we're focused on putting a political label on it I think it will continue to grow. It is very tempting to believe that everyone you disagree with is part of the most extreme representation of that disagreement, because that makes it easy to dismiss them, and ultimately I think that just pushes people more to the extreme ends.
I don't know how we get out of this. I can't think of a good way to encourage empathy over outrage, as the former is often too painful and the latter often too enjoyable. In the information age it is far too easy to find the hedonistic outrage-dens, and there's a lot of money to be had running such places.
Speaking of likening echo chambers to opium dens, the Rat Park[0] experiments suggest that environment does play a significant role in drug-seeking behavior, and it does seem that a lot of this extremism can be traced back to things like the increasing wealth-gap, the hollowing out of rural America, systemic racism, rampant political corruption, and other societal ills. Therefore, maybe it isn't necessary to address the symptom of extremism directly --by, say, trying to teach people empathy-- but instead focus on treating the underlying illnesses. Of course, since our politicians are elected by the people they represent, and it would seem far easier to manipulate people's outrage for votes than to focus on actually fixing things, that might not be possible either.
Extremism is very rarely a solution to unsatisfactory status quo.
Being an extremist, you are vastly more likely to unite the country against yourself and roll back any progress on your cause than you are to advance it.
Wow, so much downvoting for just stating an obvious thing, that extremism is a bad thing, no matter the ideology behind it.
On topic, I can't talk about 2018 because I dont have hard facts about it, but from 1992 through August 12, 2017 the distribution sets that 92% of killings were extreme islamic related, followed by a 6% of extreme right groups.[0]
Again, I find it very inappropriate to try to classify this by ideology. No extremism is less bad than the next one. No matter if its right or left, religious or any other type (remember rajneeshpuram?).
Personally, as a non american I have suffered much more of left-wing terrorism (like bombs on subways; kidnapping, torture and killing), but again and again, it doesnt really matter.
Gotta agree with you wholeheartedly on your "horrifying" assessment of the situation. Extremists at the furthest ends of almost any spectrum you can name (especially political spectrums) seem to settle on the absolute worst ideas humanity is capable of coming up with.
There was a time that it was difficult for me to understand how it was possible that governments in the middle east were supporting domestic terrorism. It was difficult to imagine how normal people were supporting the killing of fellow citizens.
Now, that I see this same trend unravel in the USA it becomes easier to understand. I have seen for the past decades the shifting of what "conservative" means. Extremists were always there, that I knew. But, it has been scary to see how moving what normality is toward the extreme has happened. News, in USA case Fox News, have validated the extremist's views creating an equivalence between "both sides".
In Europe there are similar movements, but, it has not been televised so much. Except, maybe, for the rise of extremism in the United Kingdom.
As interesting it is from the political perspective, it is dishearting the amount of suffering that it is causing. The political discourse is not used to agree in a way forward for society but as a battleground. And, again, news outlets share its part of fault. Diminishing investment in education probably is even more to blame.
The response is not to be angry, but to be calm and help society to value well-intended discussions over sensationalist posts and news headers.
I hope that it is not too late, the last time that xenophobia was not stoped it cost over 80 million lives, this time it will be way worse.
Carried through to its natural conclusion, we will end up in fascist states, young people will end up in prison or we’ll end up with more innocent victims. All options are bad, it’s just a question of worst.
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