Extremism and Violence

Extremism and Violence

People (pundits, politicians) have been trying to figure out the origins of political violence. We are told that such violence stems not from the radical left or the radical right but from being too radical. We need more political moderation, less “radicalization”. The dictionary (OED) gives us the following for “radical”: “relating to or affecting the fundamental nature of something—innovative or progressive”. It is hard to see what could be wrong with that: surely, we can be concerned about the fundamental nature of something and be innovative and progressive in regard to it. Reading on we find as the third definition: “advocating thorough political and social reform; politically extreme”. The first part is again unexceptionable: sometimes thorough reform is desirable and welcomed (e.g., various forms of tyranny). It is the second part that people have in mind in speaking of being overly radical: we mustn’t be extreme. Extremism is the problem, the cause of violence. We must educate people to be less extreme in their opinions (perhaps also in their emotions)—more restrained, qualified, compromising. But is that right? Isn’t extremism sometimes warranted? Wasn’t Jesus pretty extreme? If something is very wrong, you need to be extreme about it—you can’t be mealy-mouthed, wavering, compromising. I myself am quite extreme about genocide: I think people who do it are behaving very badly (and are probably bad people—I would not hang out with such people). I am an anti-genocide extremist. Aren’t you? In fact, I am an extremist about many things: torture, animal cruelty, rape, murder, etc. I think these things are really bad and I am completely against them, extremely so. There is nothing wrong with extremism as such, obviously. It all depends on what you are extremist about. Racial discrimination is clearly bad, or the death penalty for naughty children, or a boss who works his employees to death—we should be extremely against such things. It is right to be an extremist in support of the good, but not in support of the bad. In other words, you can’t keep substantive moral values out of the definition of what should be discouraged. Obviously! There is no morally neutral definition of what kind of extremism should be tolerated. It isn’t how strongly you believe, it’s what you believe in. If you believe in evil things, you are apt to do evil things—and they are likely to be violent acts. If you falsely believe that all people of a certain ethnic group are murderers and rapists, you are likely to do harm to members of that group—you might even advocate deportation for anyone of that group. If you have false ignorant beliefs about the badness of innocent people, you will be apt to do violent things to them. Not so if your beliefs are true and rational. So, we need not teach moral and political moderation; we can teach instead moral and political rationality. Accordingly, if one side of a political divide has many irrational false beliefs, while the other side has mostly rational true beliefs, then the latter should be applauded and the former criticized. The right policy, then, is simply this: instill true beliefs and discourage false beliefs. Then you won’t get people acting on false moral and political beliefs, sometimes violently. We can’t avoid the hard work of truth and logical reasoning by simply banning any form of “extremism”. For sometimes extremism is good and anything short of extremism less than good, even bad (“Oh, I’m not so opposed to genocide in all cases, though I agree it can be quite bad sometimes”).

But this is not the end of the story. It isn’t just a matter of beliefs; we need to reckon with emotions, traits of character, streaks of insanity, criminal tendences. Some people are more prone to violence than others, with beliefs held constant—they just tend to hit out more. The roots of political violence, then, are not confined to moral and political beliefs, but include other psychological factors—and these need to be controlled too. What are these violence-inducing psychological dispositions? That is a hard question, but it is not to be answered by talk of being “radical” or “extremist”. These mantras are far too simple, papering over a complex psychological reality. But better to acknowledge this than offer threadbare formulas like “Don’t be a radical” or “Don’t go to extremes”. This is political punditry not genuine intellectual engagement with the issue.[1]

[1] It is sometimes said that the internet is the problem, but it can only be part of the problem. I read things on the internet but I don’t get hijacked by crazy or evil ideologies; the reason, presumably, is that I am too well-educated to be so easily fooled. So, better education must be part of the solution.