There is a kind of person in society who is direly misunderstood, the kind of person whom misunderstanding by others seems to be their essential condition. They have become so used to misunderstanding they even learn to wield it as a weapon against society for failing, in their mind, to comprehend their pain. Realizing at some point they aren't and won't be welcomed, they form a plan to tear down and destroy those they perceive as keeping them out of society. Their goals set on destruction, they care little for civilians or bystanders because, as they see them, they are only complicit in the structure of evil which has caused them and those they love so much pain. Such a man remains possessed of reason, but it is slaved to a will in despair, believing with certainty that the ills of the modern world require a harsh medicine. This person is an extremist, and I know their story because it was mine.
The extremist, like anyone else, starts out with good intentions. If they cause any harm or suffering, they view this as secondary to their primary end, which they believe to be aimed at something fundamentally good. Deep down, the extremist believes they are good and their extreme actions are only the logical consequence of fidelity to their convictions. Compared to himself, everyone else is tepid and lukewarm, a fault they will condemn with increasing fervor until, much like the HIV virus, they makes it a mission to create more extremists like himself. In this way, extremism contributes to a cycle of pain and rage drawing in young marginal men seeking to make their own impact on the world. The extremist finds himself torn between two choices of apparently equal radical departure: conform to their marginal conditions, or valiantly make a stand against the perceived cause of those marginal conditions. The former they see as surrender and submission to intolerable oppression, the latter as a chance to feel important and powerful because they are causing a real change. Or seeming to, at least.
The extremist can only be understood by recognizing the starkness of the choice before them. As they see and understand the world, the choice they are making is literally between good and evil. Failure to take extreme actions is as good as perpetuating the evil they see pervading their world. The extremist feels compelled to a radical orientation in service to their innermost convictions of good and evil, justice and tyranny, and love and hate. Their conscience will not allow them to rest for as long as they are forced to be witness to oppression. Only through fire and storm can they find absolution and the peace that comes with knowing they have done all they can to oppose evil.
Inside every person's soul lurks the potential to become an extremist. Those who do actualize their extremist tendencies often feel they are the same person as before, only now they can clearly see and recognize the evil which pervades all around them. There is a kind of enlightenment – a positive spiritual awakening – which manifests itself in the person when they set themselves against society. Before they were unaware and complicit with oppression, but now they view themselves as belonging to a vanguard of freedom and justice rightly opposing what is wrong with the world. If they are victorious, the extremists become heroes, harbingers of peace and prosperity, restorers of the rightful order. The line separating extremists from everyone else is fluid and changing circumstances can easily find someone suddenly on the other side – an ordinary citizen finding themselves an extremist, and vice versa.
How near the ordinary citizenry are to becoming sympathizers and beneficiaries, if not themselves extremists, is a crucial part of the world the extremist recognizes. One of the problems facing an extremist is the need for allies. They are a rogue element within a society designed to find and dispose of such troublesome individuals. The more widespread the injustice of those they oppose, the readier are the ordinary citizenry to support such individuals – and the more the enemy cracks down on this support, the more injustice and violence the extremist has to justify their radical message. This makes it imperative for the extremist to characterize all the actions of their enemy as unjust and oppressive. The result is a situation where any subsequent actions taken by the enemy only motivates the extremist and their sympathizers further, creating a self-reinforcing network of extremists impossible to root out with anything less than massively overwhelming force. Anything short of complete annihilation will only renew the harms originally motivating the extremist network.
The extremist cannot be understood without understanding the duality of man. Inside each of us is a force compelling us to good and a force compelling us to evil. What one person would recognize as evil – with respect to their own subjective and culturally conditioned understanding of its reality – might be recognized as good and pious by another according to their own subjective understanding. It could be argued that the extremist's sense of good and evil has been corrupted, but in turn they would argue the ordinary citizen's sense of good and evil has been corrupted. The extremist does not commit acts of violence and rage blindly, but in a way calculated to ultimately serve the good. Extremists are often adept reasoners of morality, their sense of justice honed by their serious intention of committing acts of serious moral gravity.
The nature of the extremist's actions depends on the nature of the oppression they are attempting to overcome. Not all forms of extremism engender violence, and indeed extremism can manifest itself through non-violent and pacifistic means. Some of the most respected people in history are extremists, their success making them adopted by the system they once opposed and proving how ambivalent is the line separating the extremist from the ordinary citizen. Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. were extremists in their own day and now they are widely heralded as heroes. There are extremists active today widely condemned who will, in the near future, become saints. There is an element of historical construction involved in making someone an extremist, extremists fluid icons proving the transience of the reality embodied by the popular phrase “The winners write history.”
Throughout history there has been a trend to label and castigate the enemies of one's interests as necessarily motivated by base purposes of hatred and barbarism. This propaganda is extremely effective, hardening the ordinary citizenry against an individual or group whose ideas and purposes could disrupt the prevailing order. This same vale of judgment cast over the world can be revised and circumscribed almost at will, redefining good and evil so that today yesterday's extremist is a hero, and tomorrow today's moral status quo is the paradigm of evil. The ordinary citizen caught up in this view of the world becomes, against their own intention, an instrument of the oppressor. The extremist, seeing through the spirit of the age, comes to regard themselves as witnesses to a generation unborn. The extremist makes their appeal to history, so that future generations would recognize in them an attempt to improve the world. An extremist cannot overturn popular opinion, but instead learns to channel it towards ends and purposes beyond the sight of those forming such opinions. The extremist counters propaganda with their own, inserting into the stream of cultural information iconography and motifs designed to encourage other extremists against their common enemy, weaken and divide the morale of their enemy, and bear witness to the holy justice of their cause.
It is foolish to believe extremism only properly characterizes the enemy. There are extremists on all sides, and it is often the extremists representing the “majority,” i.e. the ordinary citizenry, doing the most to motivate their minoritarian counterparts. Poverty, oppression, and marginalization are the conditions most often associated with extremism only because it is those in positions of wealth, influence, and prestige with the power to unilaterally assign the terminology of extremism. There are as many extremists on the “winning” side, occupying positions in the military, congress, media, academia, business, intelligence agencies, any position from which the legitimation of their power over the ordinary citizenry can be conditioned. History is not a series of conflicts between extremists representing the forces of chaos against government officials representing the forces of order, but a series of conflicts between extremists on one side and extremists on the other. Asymmetries of wealth and influence between the competing sides only obscure the reality that extremism is an attribute of the majority as much as it is of the marginalized.
The motivation of any individual extremist is always real pain and humiliation. Extremists are often people who feel they do not belong in ordinary society, or that they are not allowed to, and therefore seek to radically alter the framework of their society in a way that would make them belong even at the expense of others. The need to belong is a fundamental human motivation, and those who feel they do not belong address their energies to those aspects of society they sense preclude their belonging. Extremists are especially likely to suspect in others an intention to dispossess and marginalize their access to equal rights and protection under the law as they observe granted to other groups. Oppressive regimes have often shored up their own power by playing two or more oppressed groups against each other, so that the ordinary citizenry are corralled into their own collective dispossession. Narratives of intergroup domination and oppression are favorite tools of elite regimes, because they engender the feeling in “historically” oppressed groups the justice of becoming the oppressor, with the ultimate end that oppression of the ordinary citizenry is not actually eliminated but the roles of oppressor and oppressed have only been switched. Throughout history such a devil's bargain to become the oppressor has been hard to refuse, and this is why the motivation of the extremist must be traced to those personal experiences typifying the narrative in their own lives. From this can be read the subjective motivations underlying the extremist's otherwise objective-seeming moral worldview, revealing the posture of an ego and thereby the universal human concern of their status in society. The extremist's sense of good and evil attaches itself to ideologies in a way suiting their strengths and obscuring their weaknesses, but it is only an extreme example of a universal human trait similarly found, to lesser degree, in everyone else.
There is a naive tendency to understand others through a binary lens of good and evil, in which an evil person is someone who has only committed good deeds and no evil deeds, and likewise an evil person is someone who has only committed evil deeds and no good deeds. The truth is most people are both good and evil, being variously good and evil in a manner discriminating between those they like and don't like. Someone hateful to a stranger may be very loving to a friend, indeed hate is often a reaction someone has attempting to defend someone they love. An extremist who might be very cruel to the enemy might also be very loving to their sister or brother, and even understand their extremism in terms of the defense of those they love. Good and evil form a pattern of white and black in someone, rather than blending to a uniform gray.
The extremist would not be what they are without their strong sense of good and evil. Morally speaking they may be hot or cold but never lukewarm. An extremist finds nothing more distasteful than indifference, and would probably prefer to interact with an equally motivated enemy than an indifferent ally. On this point the extremist can be distinguished from the mere criminal, who may have a similar proclivity towards crime or flouting social convention but without the purpose of directing wider social change. Nor is it necessary for the extremist to commit any crimes, as they might operate entirely within the confines of the law – or even from above the law – but in a way which is thought odious or unpleasant to the wider population.
The extremist is necessarily an individual of exceptional character, for otherwise they would not be an extremist. There is no set of objective traits to which an individual's actions might be compared to determine whether they are an extremist. The 'extreme' exists relative to a norm embodied by the average of a population, from which it follows that every society must have its attendant 'extremists.' The fact we as humans are required to make our estimation of the seriousness of moral or social policies by evaluating relative measurements of opinion as they are expressed by our contemporaries or past authorities entails the possibility the norm of one society might be the extreme of another, and vice versa. The same opinion representing the norm of opinion in San Francisco might represent the unconscionable extreme of opinion in Tehran, and vice versa. This is why extremists cannot be identified by the opinions they espouse or esteem, but are recognized relative to the general consensus of those who would conventionally be taken as their peers. What identifies the extremist is, where the ordinary citizen would attempt to persuade someone's opinion nearer the norm, the extremist seeks to persuade someone from the norm.
Ironically, for all the virtues of the norm of opinion the ordinary citizenry maintain, what they take as the norm of the present day very often represents the extreme of their ancestors. This marks the goal and measure of an extremist's success: whether the opinion of one recognized as extreme becomes the norm defended by the ordinary citizenry. Today are blithely asserted dicta and slogans which were once tinged by violent revolutionary fervor, usually without any awareness of their true historical significance. For this reason extremists in the present must be recognized by the exception of their character compared to others, rather than by identifying some list of particular opinions. What makes an opinion extreme is not itself but its relation to the wider fabric of popular opinion. It is for this reason we can identify the properties and likely background of the extremist without requiring the assessment of the particular opinions they might hold. Analyzing extremists from the perspective of understanding their particular opinions overlooks the personal character of the harms suffered by this person which motivate them in their actions. But neither should the opinions of the extremist be treated as an afterthought, as the extremist likely has strong reasons for their particular opinions and the discussion of those opinions can be an opportunity to moderate the extremist's attitude towards wider society. Likewise, poor management of the discussion of their strongly cherished beliefs can become fuel increasing their dedication and commitment.
Extremists, despite their antipathy towards the ordinary citizenry, are also dependent on their attention. Without capturing the attention of the ordinary citizenry, it is otherwise impossible to stimulate dialogue – constructive or otherwise – among the ordinary citizenry and thereby influence the emerging consensus opinion. Popular opinion is always in motion, evolving in response to events both collective and individual. The ordinary citizenry tends to move within a tightly circumscribed sphere of 'moderate' opinions, more often utilizing their apprehension of the collective discussion for the sake of personal definition and interpersonal status competition. The extremist is often someone looking beyond the current sphere of popular discourse, anticipating and thereby seeking to resolve the synthesis of competing opinions in their own favor. The ordinary citizenry are oriented towards popular discourse with the understanding its purpose is the resolution of conflicts, even if they tend to cause damage due to shortsightedness and ideologically narrow conceptions of how and what resolution would require. In contrast, the extremist will sometimes seek to engender peaceful resolution of conflict, and other times to inflame conflict. Extremists must have a more complicated and flexible relationship with discourse, because they know it is not possible to persuade others to their perspective using only conciliatory and constructive means. A common goal of extremists is to destroy the possibility of complacency for the ordinary citizenry, in order that more will feel the sting of dispossession and become more open to ideas and practices that formerly seemed too extreme.
The response to extremists by authorities and the ordinary citizenry can strongly influence whether the conflict between a particular group of extremists and wider society is exacerbated or dissipated. Punitive responses have the tendency to deepen and increase antipathies, with the result that violent and vulgar attempts at overcoming the apparent extremist threat becomes a kind of recruitment advertising in the hands of the wily extremist. Violent reaction, even if it can be objectively justified, can still serve to vitiate and prove to those steeped in the extremist perspective the justice of their cause. What ordinary citizenry would be apt to perceive as an expected and understandable 'abridgment of extreme intentions' will be perceived as an affront and tyranny further motivating the extremist.
It is possible to formulate responses to extremists serving to dissipate the reservoir of rage and resentment driving them, but this is more difficult than most would expect. If there is an intention to avoid the punitive responses driving the proliferation of extremists, vitiated as they are by those punitive responses, then there must exist the opportunity to be rehabilitated back into wider society. This response would be fraught with contention for both sides, for the ordinary citizenry who may be reticent to forgive the extremist for past offenses or crimes and for the extremist who might be reluctant to accept conditions imposed on their rehabilitation. For example, if the ordinary citizenry required as a condition of rehabilitation that the extremist make an explicit adoption of their sociopolitical creed, it would only become further proof to the extremist that they have nowhere to belong in such a society. This is very dangerous, because it is the feeling of being marginalized – by one's own society or an invasive culture – driving every individual in their extremism.
The rehabilitation of extremists is the most likely course of action taken by a majority which can successfully mitigate and reduce the proclivity to extremism. When comparing the likely outcomes associated with the rehabilitation of an extremist to punitive actions, it is clear rehabilitation is the most effective for moderating extremism. First, the rehabilitation of the extremist robs other extremists of the opportunity for propaganda which could enliven current extremists and persuade ordinary citizens nearer extremism. Second, the rehabilitated – and now former – extremist can work to ameliorate the conflict between the majority and the group with which they used to belong, becoming a peacemaker by promoting understanding on both sides. Third, the former extremist can reach out to former allies and compatriots to persuade them to reconcile with wider society, further blunting and pacifying the threat of extremism. Fourth, the rehabilitated extremist's personal drive for justice can be turned towards positive and constructive purposes for, rather than against, wider society.
It is more important than ever to understand extremists. The conditions of marginalization which push many young men and women to extremism are proliferating throughout the world. In both the first and third worlds the number of people who feel excluded from participating in society and enjoying its benefits are increasing in tandem with the increasing concentration of wealth. Both of these trends are poised to accelerate through the next several decades and the response our society chooses will determine the character and qualities associated with extremism. Extremists considering the option of rehabilitation will be considering not only the opportunity provided by authorities, but also the response by the ordinary citizenry. If the ordinary citizenry were to prohibit the rehabilitated extremist from participating in society, then the personal problems motivating the extremist would only be renewed, and with it all the problems of extremism.
This examination of the extremist's character might seem overly sympathetic, but it must be if the motivations and drives of the extremist are to be accurately described. Extremism is a tendency inherent to human nature and it emerges at the margins of all societies. The most dedicated extremists do not always come from impoverished backgrounds, but are sometimes the children of a wealthy and powerful elite. Common stereotypes of extremists tend to be focused on the particulars of their worldview, overlooking the common nature shared by extremists across ideological boundaries. This analysis of the core features of the extremist's personality – their intensity, their strong sense of good and evil, and their drive to change the world – brings to light the best qualities of the extremist which might be appealed to in dissuading them from violent conflict. As Lao Tzu writes in the Tao Teh Ching, “The best way of conquering an enemy is to win him over by not antagonizing him.” In other words, by appealing to the good qualities in extremists, many might be persuaded to set aside their harmful intentions and contribute positively to the project of civilization.
