META: A brief phenomenology of extremism
From: Joe Dees (joedees@addall.com)
Date: Sun Dec 10 2000 - 23:33:35 MST
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Extremists cannot bear considering themselves as extremists; they must look upon themselves as mainstream - either present or future. Thus, they cannot stand the existence of a middle ground between their extreme position and the extreme position of those to which they are diametrically opposed. They must view and lump together all who disagree with their position, in any particular, as extremists of the opposing camp, and because they view (and must view) themselves as absolutely correct, they must view all deviations from their position as incorrect. They hate being considered as inhabitants of one tail or other of a bell curve spectrum of opinion. This entails that they must view all holders of differing positions as either dupes (either educable or impossible dense), or shills (who are smart enough to know better, but who maintain what they maintain out of malevolence and positive evil), but in any case, correlatively opposits extremists. Many times, both mutually exc!
lusive charges will be hurled at the offending middle-of-the-roaders simultaneously, in the hopes that one or the other will stick. The two most prevalent contemporary hotbeds of extremism relate to abortion and gun control (Aaron Lynch, THOUGHT CONTAGION, pp. 161-169), and these two have spawned deadly cross-fertilizations.
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: Fri Nov 01 2002 - 15:32:18 MST