The Roots of American Extremism
People at extreme ends of viewpoints will eventually become violent when challenged. It takes the need to belong, attached a violent narrative and turns it into a community of hate.
Shortly after 9/11, there were two distinct movements, one was a unity of the American people, and the other a hatred of terrorism. The latter sometimes exhibited itself as a hatred of classes of people, sometimes middle-eastern people in general, sometimes specifically against Muslims. The curious thing is that one followed the other. The American people united against a common enemy, This turns into kind of a good news/bad news thing. The good news is the country was united in a way we hadn't been basically since World War Two. The bad news is that many people were deemed to be the enemy and many became victims of this perception, suffering stereotyping, discrimination, anger and even violence. I'm not proud of the bad acts committed again people who appeared to be middle eastern, but there were some lessons learned. A term was tossed around a lot, radicalization, claiming that regular Muslim people had been somehow convinced to embrace an extremist or radical view of their religion. I wondered for a long time how this was possible, how someone who had read the Quran and listened to the words of the prophets could be taught to interpret those words to mean that they should kill others and in some cases die themselves for an ideology based; in my opinion, on love and care for our fellow man. As I got older, I came to realize that not only was it possible, but it' happened many times before and to many other groups of people, including in the United States. Not only that, but I've started to realize that it's started happening now in our present day American political atmosphere. Gradually, the American political scene has gotten more polarized, resulting in the present climate of wildly swinging policies and general gridlock between the parties at a national level.
For a simple example, lets look at the last time that we as a nation faced a common enemy attacking us in an unforeseen manner that effected a huge number of people. The Covid-19 pandemic so far by conservative estimates has killed 5 million people worldwide, infected 250 million and single-handedly caused a major disruption to every economy in the world. This represents the single most likely cause of death for adults since it started in January of 2020. America had an opportunity to unite against a common enemy, to set aside our differences, if even for just a moment, and fight against an enemy that truly deserves our united force. Instead of this what occurred was (predictably) a lot of blaming, virtue signaling, wild claims, and just general inability to cooperate with each other to slow the spread, protect vulnerable populations, and develop immunity to eliminate spread. Much of the disagreement on topics like masks, quarantines, treatments and vaccines was along party lines, and instead of allowing proven science to dictate process and legislation, as a nation we let parties and in some cases individual leaders dictate our approach to fighting the virus. This inevitably caused backlash as it was unilateral action, a single person or party dictating policy. Doing exactly what the constitution was designed to prevent. The result is in the worst statistics of any wealthy nation, the united states has the worst adult vaccination rates, one of the highest per capita death rates of populous nations, higher inflation and jobless rates and even a higher infection and death rate as of the writing of this post. This leads me to believe that the partisan approach to governing doesn't work and in fact leads to greater problems.
The good news this post isn't about Covid-19, or even 9/11. It's about the cause and the soon-to-be-realized effects of partisanship, polarization, extremism, radicalization, and terrorism. Arie Kruglanski, a research psychologist at the University of Maryland, did extensive research into how believers become terrorists, and found three ingredients necessary for this to occur. (link) The first is very common, it's the need in humans to believe they matter, that they have significance. This is very common even among non-extremists, and is usually fulfilled by simply having a family, a job that satisfies you, volunteering, etc. To become extreme it needs the other ingredients to go with it. The next is a narrative, this can come from a variety of sources, but always involves an enemy, real or imagined on which to focus. This gives the group identity, and fulfills that need to belong, that first ingredient. Once you have a narrative, the third and final ingredient is community. It takes the need to belong, attached a violent narrative and turns it into a community of hate. This could be aligned along political, racial, religious, national, geographic, or ideological lines. Humans have an innate need to stereotypicalize the incoming sensory information. We can't deal with too many unique stimuli so we start putting things into buckets to make it easier to process. But once we do this with the behavior or even the appearance of other humans it becomes dangerous because humans are also fiercely individualistic and will frequently not adhere to the "buckets" that people put them in. Once a unified community is established, they become an echo chamber for their own ideas, they continually reinforce their own ideals and increasingly isolate themselves from opposing viewpoints and from people who hold those viewpoints. The internet has exacerbated this by tailoring content to our interests to generate revenue by fighting for more of our attention. The news media also plays a part in this one-sided view, one channel shows a view off to one extreme and nothing on the other side or even in the middle to temper and provide context. This fuels the echo chamber and strengthens the community. The inevitable result of this is violence, on an increasingly wide scale at both ends of the spectrum.
People at extreme ends of viewpoints will eventually become violent when challenged. There is a fine line, the people who declared independence from Britain and built the united states were committing treason and would have been executed if captured, and from a British perspective were considered violent revolutionaries and extremists in their own right I believe that history has borne out that they were fighting for a more fair government. This means that depending on where you sit on an issue, extremists can either be freedom fighters or traitors. Once a movement reaches the point of escalating to violence or breaking major laws, and has ceased any attempt at solving it's perceived injustices through traditional legislation or non-violent activism then they must be dealt with through equally forceful means. Resulting from increased community bonding and isolation from opposing viewpoints a group would feel externally threatened even when that threat is an invented one. The last two years or so have seen violent outbursts from both extreme political viewpoints, at times causing major threats to communities and certain groups. The violence on both sides was unwarranted and any decent citizen should see these outbursts as equally abhorrent, regardless of what party they typically vote for. Such violence only serves to promote further violence and distance from the moderate center.
So what is to be done then in all of this? Obviously the answer is to love one another. Listening with love to those who have opposing views and loving them in spite of your differences. If this seems to be a bridge too far for you individually, then there are a few things the I think will help. First, don't silence voices that differ from your chosen view. Most of us generally speaking are (or should be) somewhere in the middle, even if we have strong feelings on certain subjects towards one side or the other. Knowing your values and keeping your values is fine, but seeking out different perspectives is only going to help you. It's okay to be red on some issues, blue on others and in the middle on some others, there aren't just two types of people, there shouldn't be just two political parties. Next, when the time comes, vote. In local or national elections, we should vote for platforms, not people or parties. Research the values held by the people on your ballot and don't just vote for the one that is a member of your party. Feel free to go and learn about other viewpoints, don't feel like you have to change your opinion, but listen to people who agree with you and people who don't. Stand up for what you believe but do it in a respectful way, looking for ways to learn from them and truly understand their point of view. Above all, don't shut people out of your life just because they disagree with you, this further isolates you and them, potentially leading to all those bad things I wrote about above. Finally, don't give credit to or encourage violent extremism in any form, even if you agree with a value a group holds, that should never justify violence or destruction of property. I believe there are also ways to restructure our government to make elections more fair and discourage two party politics, making way for more collaboration and a more unified government, but my focus here is on what we can do as individuals.
I'm not saying that if we do these things that extremism will just go away, but maybe it will create a dialogue that will allow us to get less polarized as communities and maybe even as a nation and world. There will always be differences between groups and there will always be real or imagined injustices that we feel need to be righted, but approaching those things from a point of cooperation and shared desire for the values this country was built on, justice, equality, freedom, etc will give us a way forward as a nation.