On Extremism: What it is and how to stand up to it.

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1. Extremism is based on a narrow ideology that is held as an absolute truth. An extremist can not accept that competing perspectives have any valid points.

2. An extremist is unable to accept facts that run contrary to one single narrative on any given topic.

3. An extremist believes people who disagree with them are ill-intentioned and evil.

This is how I am defining extremism. I am open to alternative definitions. Any definition of extremism must be independent of ideology or it has no value.

My thesis on this thread is that the US has split into two extremes. Neither the left or the right is able to see outside of a narrow ideology or consider facts that question their own narrative.

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Type: Question • Score: 2 • Views: 1,971 • Replies: 96

View best answer, chosen by maxdancona

hypocrite (noun)
a person who indulges in hypocrisy.

Hypocrisy is the practice of engaging in the same behavior or activity for which one criticizes another or the practice of claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which one's own behavior does not conform.

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False Equivalence

An argument or claim in which two completely opposing arguments appear to be logically equivalent when in fact they are not. The confusion is often due to one shared characteristic between two or more items of comparison in the argument that is way off in the order of magnitude, oversimplified, or just that important additional factors have been ignored.

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I accept your definitions on "hypocrisy" and "false equivalence", RealMusic. They don't seem related to the topic.

This is a thread about "extremism". Do you accept my definition of "extremism"? If not, then we can work on a definition that we can both agree on.

My thesis is not part of my definition of "extremism" but it is something I would like to discuss. However, we need to agree on a definition of the term before we can discuss it intelligently.

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"My thesis on this thread is that the US has split into two extremes."

That's about the stupidest goddamn thing I've ever heard.

How the hell can you call Joe Biden extreme? How can you compare him to Donald Trump in any manner? Just because one party is extreme doesn't mean that the other is. To the Republicans a moderate is extreme.

You've been listening to Donald Trump too much, a man who for all practical purposes has never told the truth while in office, not once, and if he did it was an accident. He's one of the world's greatest con men since Joseph Goebbels who said to tell big lies and repeat them over and over again. Then people will believe you. Trump never considers whether what he says is true or not because he doesn't care. The man is beyond being a narcissist, he's egocentric and sociopathic.

The reason he has gained such an enormous following is because these people are ripe for a cult leader, they're cultists. It seems as if they could pop out of this trance they're in and regain their common sense, but they won't because cultists don't leave cults that easily.

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@coluber2001,

I went back and checked. There is no place on this thread, nor on any other thread where I have said that Joe Biden is extreme. I think you are making that up.

For the record, I pretty much agree with you about Trump up until the last paragraph. I don't see how that is at all relevant to the thread. I am not the person making an "equivalency" between Biden and Trump.

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@coluber2001,

I disagree with the claim in your last paragraph.

You claim there is an "enormous following" of "cultists" with no "common sense".

Are you saying that all Trump voters are cult members with no common sense? I am not sure, but this claim is exactly what I am talking about. Ironically the far right says the exact same thing about liberals.

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@maxdancona,

There is no uniform definition of extremism.

I share this opinion:
Extremism rejects the democratic constitutional state and its values. It disregards human dignity and the rule of law - and often shows a willingness to use violence.
Extremists or extremist-oriented individuals are, for example, against the (respective) constitution, against democratic institutions and the free press.
Extremism threatens the free democratic basic order.

Accordingly, it is a term of demarcation and a negative definition - constitutive for the understanding is the rejection of the norms and rules of the democratic constitutional state.

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No, I take it back. That was the second stupidest thing I ever heard.

The stupidest was at a place I worked at around 1985. All of us met at a little table before we started working. This guy was just joyfully itching to tell us something. He said he was listening to the radio and heard a guy on a talk show describe a plan how we could win a nuclear war against Russia.

We were all stunned, I said that it was just insane. What else can you say to something like that? I made an enemy that day, and he eventually got me fired.

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Now, this director has a near-impossible job because this is Trump country so she was passing the buck, passing the heat to the teachers and said something incredibly stupid. She was just trying to cover her ass and showed it instead.

(quote)
A Texas school district has once again become the center of controversy after an administrator reportedly instructed teachers to provide students with "opposing" views of the Holocaust.

["Well, those extremist Jew communists were ruining Germany, so we had to do something."]

[Maybe the kids could have a debate.]

Gina Peddy, the executive director of curriculum and instruction for the Carroll Independent School District in Southlake, Texas, is alleged to have made the comments during a meeting last Friday, according to NBC News, which obtained audio of the meeting from an unnamed employee. Peddy was reportedly meeting with teachers to instruct them on how to stock their classroom libraries when the subject of recent statewide legislation, as well as the Holocaust, came up.

"Just try to remember the concepts of [House Bill] 3979," Peddy could be heard saying on tape, according to NBC News. "And make sure that if you have a book on the Holocaust, that you have one that has an opposing, that has other perspectives."

I'm sure there must be a book by Joseph Goebbels on the subject.

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@maxdancona,

maxdancona wrote:

1. Extremism is based on a narrow ideology that is held as an absolute truth. An extremist can not accept that competing perspectives have any valid points.

2. An extremist is unable to accept facts that run contrary to one single narrative on any given topic.

3. An extremist believes people who disagree with them are ill-intentioned and evil.

This is how I am defining extremism. I am open to alternative definitions. Any definition of extremism must be independent of ideology or it has no value.

My thesis on this thread is that the US has split into two extremes. Neither the left or the right is able to see outside of a narrow ideology or consider facts that question their own narrative.

In my opinion, your thesis is wrong. In my opinion, the US has not split into two extremes.

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@coluber2001,

I don't know how I got this posted twice. I was in the throes of a pulmonary edema relapse, but I just had a low-grade fever.

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@Frank Apisa,

Quote:

In my opinion, the US has not split into two extremes.

Agreed.

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@Frank Apisa,

Agreed. And yes, you can find extremism at either end of the political spectrum. You can also find extremist positions taken in an isolated context by individuals anywhere else on the political spectrum. A person can have a particularly narrow view concerning one subject while having moderate views in other areas. maxdancona's insistence that the US has split into two extremes is an extremist interpretation of the political divide. maxdancona's position that any mention of a political party and what it stands for is "partisan" is another example of an extremist definition.

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@hightor,

hightor wrote:

Agreed. And yes, you can find extremism at either end of the political spectrum. You can also find extremist positions taken in an isolated context by individuals anywhere else on the political spectrum. A person can have a particularly narrow view concerning one subject while having moderate views in other areas. maxdancona's insistence that the US has split into two extremes is an extremist interpretation of the political divide. maxdancona's position that any mention of a political party and what it stands for is "partisan" is another example of an extremist definition.

Yup.

I wish Max would put his considerable efforts into combating the kind of thing he often espouses!

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@hightor,

hightor wrote:

And yes, you can find extremism at either end of the political spectrum.

And - according to some - even in the centre: Extremism of the centre.

1 Reply

@Walter Hinteler,

Walter Hinteler wrote:

There is no uniform definition of extremism.

This doesn't seem to be about extremism, more like the use of rhetorical tools like ad hominem attacks. Call someone an extremist when you don't want to or are unable to debate them and they start defending themselves instead of their positions. It's like saying someone is being "politically correct" or "brainwashed" or part of "cancel culture".

Quote:

Ad hominem (Latin for 'to the person'), short for argumentum ad hominem, refers to several types of arguments, some but not all of which are fallacious. Typically this term refers to a rhetorical strategy where the speaker attacks the character, motive, or some other attribute of the person making an argument rather than attacking the substance of the argument itself. The most common form of ad hominem is "A makes a claim x, B asserts that A holds a property that is unwelcome (you're an extremist!), and hence B concludes that argument x is wrong".

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@Frank Apisa,

Frank, do you agree that the US has split into two distinct political sides?

It seems that you are arguing that one side is extreme and the other isn't.

1 Reply

@engineer,

engineer wrote:

Walter Hinteler wrote:

There is no uniform definition of extremism.

This doesn't seem to be about extremism, more like the use of rhetorical tools like ad hominem attacks. Call someone an extremist when you don't want to or are unable to debate them and they start defending themselves instead of their positions. It's like saying someone is being "politically correct" or "brainwashed" or part of "cancel culture".

When talking about extremism, a certain form of normality is assumed.
This "normality" is different here from there.
Therefore: there is no uniform definition of extremism.

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@Walter Hinteler,

Walter Hinteler wrote:

hightor wrote:
And yes, you can find extremism at either end of the political spectrum.
And - according to some - even in the centre: Extremism of the centre.

Walter! Good! I was going to bring this up, and was even thinking about making this a separate thread.

Part of my definition of "extremism" is the inability to consider facts or ideas as valid outside of your own narrow political ideology.

Centrism is not the opposite of extremism by this definition. And of course centrists can be extremists. I am not a centrist.

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