Kindle Notes & Highlights
the reason that methods extremists turn to violence is that they don’t have the popular support that would be needed to succeed without violence.
in the case of some violent methods extremists, the need for violence is not, or not just, a reflection of lack of public support but also a reflection of the nature of the objective. Some extremist political objectives are so outlandish that it is perfectly true that extreme violence is the only conceivable means of achieving them.
the need for violence is not, or not just, a reflection of lack of public support but also a reflection of the nature of the objective.
In most cases, for an act that causes harm to be justified, it must be instrumental to the achievement of some valuable goal against which the harm can be weighed and assessed. If the assessment is favorable, the harm is proportionate; if it is unfavorable, the harm is disproportionate.
it must be instrumental to the achievement of some valuable goal against which the harm can be weighed and assessed. If the assessment is favorable, the harm is proportionate; if it is unfavorable, the harm is disproportionate.
The problem is that they have a perverse or unrealistic concept of proportionality and that in reality their violence tends not to be proportionate.
His account implies that a person is liable to harm as long as they are ‘implicated in some way’ in the problem to which the extremist is reacting with violence.
Extremists don’t just have an expansive view of when violence is necessary, they also have an expansive view of who is liable to be harmed by their violence.
Like Ismail’s response to the prospect of innocents being harmed by car bombings, their view of the likelihood of harming innocents by their actions is, in effect, to say: shit happens.
His insight is that extremism is not, or not just, a set of doctrines but a state of mind, an outlook, or way of being.
Finally, psychological extremism is defined not by what one believes but by ‘the way in which ideas are believed’ (Hofstadter 2008: 5).
Alternatively, psychological extremists are people who believe uncompromisingly, where this is understood as a statement about their dispositions to believe rather than about their feelings.
Empirical studies also support the idea that extremists have characteristic attitudes and preoccupations. For example, they tend to have a negative attitude towards compromise and a preoccupation with their own victimhood. Some studies also point to extremist thinking patterns, that is, modes or styles of thinking that are closely associated with, and partly constitute, extremism in the psychological sense.
militant extremist mindset (MEM).
A total of 16 components or ‘themes’ were identified:
16 components?
extremist militant mindset consists of three main ingredients: (1) Pro-Violence; (2) a vile world (the belief that there is something seriously wrong with the world we live in); and (3) divine power (the belief in an all-powerful divinity who sanctions violence).
These elements of MEM are linked to, and predicted by, psychopathy, sadism and disintegration, that is, ‘a proneness to see and feel connections among factually unrelated phenomena’ (Medˉedovic and Knežević 2019: 93).
not all extremism is militant and a satisfactory analysis of the extremist mindset must take account of this. A person can have an extremist cast of mind but not be Pro-Violence. At the end of American Pastoral, Merry is an extremist but against violence.
Preoccupations can be more or less intense, and those at the most intense end of the scale are obsessions.
Changing a person’s beliefs about something does not necessarily change their attitude towards it.
Resentment and self-pity also play a key role in the extremist mindset, and it is the strength of these feelings that moves extremists to act in ways that moderates find so alarming.
An extremist preoccupation that has come up several times is purity.7 The purity that preoccupies extremists can take different forms: racial, religious, or ideological.
To become a member of the SS,9 the applicant had to prove Aryan ancestry back to 1750.
One possibility is that the extremist’s preoccupation with purity is in reality a preoccupation with impurity. To be impure is to be defiled, and the undesirability of being defiled is taken as obvious.
Robespierre cultivated an ascetic and frugal personal style that was seen as a sign of virtue, hence his nickname: the Incorruptible.
Two further extremist preoccupations are victimhood and humiliation.
In their victimology, ‘Hindus have been subordinate for centuries, and their masculinity insulted, in part because they have not been aggressive and violent enough’ (ibid.: 85). Pacifism was seen as part of the problem, according to this narrative, and this led to the assassination of Gandhi by former RSS member Nathuram Godse. In the West today, fantasies of persecution and humiliated masculinity are the driving force behind so-called ‘Incels’, a movement of involuntarily celibate men who think they are entitled to sex and trade on ‘a sense of male victimhood’ (Ebner 2020: 64).
if a group of people are the victims of genuine persecution, then why should their preoccupation with it mark them out as extremists? The simple answer is that it does not: on its own, a preoccupation with real persecution does not make one an extremist.
If there were no examples in the history of extremism of a preoccupation with purity, virtue or victimhood, then there would be no reason to see these are having any special relevance for an account of the extremist mindset.
Extremists like the RSS mythologize the past in an attempt to justify their feelings of humiliation. Reference to such feelings highlights the extent to which the extremist’s preoccupations are motivated by feelings or emotions. This affective component of the extremist mindset is the next item on the agenda.
According to Hume, people are motivated to act by their emotions. Emotions, or what Hume calls passions, are the ultimate sources of human motivation.
Irrational emotions are recalcitrant emotions.
Two emotions that play a significant role in the extremist mindset have already been mentioned: anger and feeling humiliated. To this list, one might add resentment and self-pity. Why these emotions? Because they are closely related to extremist preoccupations: it stands to reason that extremists who are preoccupied with their victimhood will also be subject to feelings of humiliation and self-pity, as well as resentment and anger towards their supposed persecutors.
Resentment And self pity
People with an extremist mindset are resentful about non-actual persecution or towards social groups who are in no way responsible for their real marginalization.
Pro-Violence is part of the militant extremist mindset, but extremism need not be militant.
Sectarianism is a disposition to view any compromise as a rotten compromise … [The sectarian] finds compromise a capitulation, a betrayal of the cause … There is more to the sectarian cast of mind than just a negative attitude to compromise. But in my view the refusal to compromise is its main feature.
Extremists are not just uncompromising about the wrong things but uncompromising about everything in the political realm. They see ‘any compromise [as] a shameful capitulation’ (ibid. 10). To put it another way, they see all compromises as rotten, including ones that are made for the sake of peace and that do not establish or maintain an inhuman regime.
three other attitudinal elements of the extremist mindset: indifference, intolerance and anti-pluralism.
They have a Manichaean world-view, a strong sense of dualism ‘between the realm of light and goodness (us) and the realm of darkness and evil (them)’ (Margalit 2010: 153–4).
Berger defines extremism as ‘the belief that an in-group’s success or survival can never be separated from the need for hostile action against an out-group’ (2018: 44).
Paradoxically, what makes value monism so lethal is not just its impositionism but its idealism: its conviction that every genuine question has only one true answer, that there is a dependable way of knowing what that answer is, and that true answers to different genuine questions must be compatible with each other.
A fanatic, for Hare, is someone who is willing to trample on other people’s ideals and interests, and even sacrifice his or her own interests, in order to realize his ideals.
the fanatical Nazi ‘sticks to his judgements even when they conflict with his own interest in hypothetical cases’ (ibid.: 162).
A fanatic is willing to trample on the interests and ideals of other people in pursuit of his or her own ideals. A fanatic is willing to sacrifice his or her own interests in order to realize his or her ideals.
A fanatic is not only willing to trample on the interests and ideals of other people in pursuit of his or her own ideals but is willing to do this even when there is no moral justification for acting in this way.
The refusal of fanatics to think critically about their ideals is related to another epistemic failing: being excessively certain about their ideals, or what Katsafanas calls the fanatic’s ‘unwillingness to doubt’ (2019: 8).
The sociologist Anthony Giddens argues that doubt is a pervasive feature of modernity and ‘forms a general existential dimension of the contemporary social world’ (1991: 3).
Fanatics have unwarranted contempt for other people’s ideals and interests, are willing to trample on those ideals and interests in pursuit of their own perverted ideals, and impose their ideals on others, by force if necessary. Fanatics are unwilling to think critically about their ideals because they regard them as indubitable. However, they are willing to sacrifice themselves and others in pursuit of their ideals.
the concept of fundamentalism is used to refer to ‘specific religious phenomena that have emerged in the twentieth century, particularly in the last several decades, in the wake of the success of modernization and secularization’ (Almond, Sivan and Appleby 2004: 403).
Fundamentalists ‘tend towards a literalist interpretation of the texts they revere’ (ibid.: 40),
