Extremism has plagued humanity in cycles throughout recorded history. But if it has always been with us, so too have the forces that contain and defeat it. This battle will probably never end, but it is far from pointless. With each new wave, we rise again to the challenge and make gains for future generations.
Extremism is an old problem, but it is also always new. Extremist ideologies build on previous ideologies and evolve to fit the times. As human society becomes more complex and interconnected, so too does extremism. Extremism is a socially transmitted disease. Ideologies are transmitted when one person communicates with another. When communication technology changes, extremism changes as well.
The invention of the printing press is widely credited with starting a transformative change in Western society, notably in spreading the ideas of the Protestant Reformation and associated apocalyptic beliefs.1 The rise of electronic communication—radio, film, and television—was similarly transformative.
Broadcast and film provided powerful advantages to extremist movements with enough resources to exploit them, such as the Nazi regime.2 But most extremist organizations are small and have limited resources. Professional film and video editing was once expensive and required highly technical skills. Broadcasting to more than a niche audience cost more still and was usually subject to government regulation.
These factors imposed a natural ceiling on what most extremist movements could achieve. If an extremist ideology cannot reach a mass audience, it cannot become a mass movement. Some movements managed to clear that hurdle, but in many cases, media limitations slowed their growth.
When robust social media platforms came on the scene in the early twenty-first century, futurists waxed on about their transformative power. Some observers, including me, were skeptical, believing that changes in communications technology would be more incremental than revolutionary. We were wrong.3
Social media wrought dramatic changes in many different sectors of society in a very short period of time. For extremists, access to social media was a game changer. Extremists had been largely priced out of the broadcast revolution, but social media provided an inexpensive platform to reach massive audiences, emphasizing virality and controversy over social norms.
Extremists quickly established small and sometimes significant beachheads on social media, but Islamic State was the first to realize the potential of the new technology. Before the social media platforms developed a coherent response, Islamic State recruiters garnered thousands of supporters online, guided them in synchronized action, and produced highly professional propaganda using newly inexpensive video editing and publishing technologies. The organization’s widely distributed content mixed ultraviolence with millenarian utopian visions in novel ways. The result was an unprecedented wave of jihadist extremist recruitment.4
While Islamic State’s extreme violence dominated headlines, white nationalists were concurrently adopting and developing many of the same social media techniques and building an audience more gradually. These efforts started prior to the rise of Islamic State and blossomed in the late 2010s, fueling the current resurgence in ideological racism.5
There is evidence that social media use fosters increased tolerance and diversity in many users,6 but the current generation of social media platforms provides benefits that uniquely empowered extremist movements relative to their mainstream counterparts.7 While research on this subject is ongoing and the online environment is in constant flux, the current evidence suggests that social media leads a majority of people toward centrism and inclusivity but empowers and accelerates polarization and extremism for a significant minority. Factors aiding the spread of extremist views include the following:
Social psychology research strongly suggests that feelings of uncertainty make people more susceptible to extremism and empower the specific elements of extremism discussed in this book, such as in-group identification, out-group hostility, and crisis-solution narratives (such as conspiracy theories).
It is not surprising, therefore, that extremist movements are enjoying a wave of successes around the globe and that policymakers have identified violent extremism as one of the critical challenges of our time. Like extremism, uncertainty is with us always, but it may be particularly pronounced in today’s world, for a number of reasons:
Short of a civilizational collapse, all of these problems are likely here for the duration. Eventually, society will develop counterweights to their destabilizing influence, but that will take time, and the process of adaptation has barely begun. Because of all these factors, we are probably facing at least decades of increased extremist activity and associated violence.
Despite these challenges, we can hope to do better than simply endure. September 11, 2001, brought the challenge of extremism to the forefront of global politics, shaping a new era of conflict and setting new priorities for countries around the world. Politicians began an endless series of pledges to “defeat the ideology” that fuels terrorism, words that are now solemnly repeated after every terrorist attack.
Under intense political pressure to find solutions but reluctant to expand already prodigious military campaigns, policymakers adopted the age-old strategy of throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks, except that they rarely noted what stuck. Diplomats pushed pet projects such as development aid and education programs, even though the evidence strongly suggested they would not be effective.9 A multitude of messaging campaigns were launched but with few visible successes and some fairly spectacular failures.10
Although some promising programs have managed to carve out a place at the table, they compete with many inferior programs, and policymakers have few objective measures to help them distinguish good from bad. Many factors contribute to the stagnation and inefficacy of the field known as Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) or Preventing Violent Extremism (PVE).11 Among the most important problems are a lack of definitions for key terms, a lack of consensus models for extremism and radicalization, and a lack of interest in understanding extremism as a cross-ideological phenomenon.
These are not simply academic quibbles. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent on initiatives to defeat extremist ideologies and prevent radicalization by policymakers who cannot define extremism, ideology, or radicalization. This is a recipe for failure and a massive waste of resources. If we cannot define extremism or radicalization, we cannot define what success looks like. It is highly unlikely that the definitions and frameworks discussed in this book will be the final word in this debate, but they are designed to address some of the major deficiencies in the field and inspire further research on concrete questions—by defining the problem, understanding legitimacy, modeling radicalization, and understanding uncertainty.
As is discussed in chapter 2, extremism is currently defined in a variety of ways by policymakers and academics. Most of these definitions are problematic in one way or another, especially for designing programs that can be meaningfully evaluated.
Extremism is defined in this book 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. This definition offers several practical benefits for those seeking to counter extremism.
Perhaps foremost, this definition is not constrained to any one type of ideology. Although CVE efforts to date have focused overwhelmingly on jihadism, there is a growing recognition in the field that similar initiatives are needed for other types of extremism, whether white nationalists in Virginia, Hutu génocidaires in Rwanda, or ultranationalist Buddhists in Myanmar.
This definition also focuses on the core of the problem. Some supposed experts argue that countering jihadist extremism requires engagement with a wide range of Islamic religious teachings.12 But efforts that do not focus clearly on mitigating a movement’s hostile activity against an out-group are not countering extremism.
Definitional challenges also apply to the term ideology, which is used so vaguely that it takes on almost mystical qualities as a harbinger and proximate cause of bad ideas and bad behavior. By anchoring extremist ideology in the texts that encourage hostile action against out-groups, this book seeks to demystify the concept and encourage more specific countermessaging strategies.
Radicalized individuals do not necessarily engage with an extremist ideology in a sophisticated manner. Although extremist ideologies are often complex in their arguments, adherents pick and choose the elements that are meaningful to them. For some, this may entail little beyond a need to act violently against an out-group.13
Some adherents will steep themselves in an ideology. Others are satisfied knowing than some ideology—some internally coherent explanation for the shape of the world—exists. For many extremists, the charisma of the messenger or the ratification of existing violent impulses matters more than the ideology itself.
Yet ideology is ultimately the anchor for all of these dynamics, even when understood only by reference. The exact contents of an extremist propaganda message (or a mainstream counternarrative) may matter less than simply knowing that supporting arguments are always within reach.
Since September 11, a core message from Western governments has been that groups like al Qaeda and ISIS are not legitimate in a religious sense.14 President George W. Bush famously said that al Qaeda had “perverted” Islam. President Barack Obama’s administration insisted on using the acronym ISIL or even the Arabic acronym Daesh because officials felt that referring to Islamic State by its chosen name would legitimize its connection to Islam. President Obama spoke more directly to the issue in 2016:
Groups like ISIL are desperate for legitimacy. They try to portray themselves as religious leaders and holy warriors who speak for Islam. I refuse to give them legitimacy. We must never give them that legitimacy.15
Some elements of this rhetoric were positive. For one thing, both administrations were speaking not just (or even primarily) to Muslims but also to non-Muslim Americans who were confused about the reason for terrorist activity. Refuting the link between terrorist groups and the normative practices of Muslims is both important and admirable for wide audiences.
However, these attitudes leaked over into Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) initiatives, an entirely different arena. In dozens of policies and papers, government officials and nongovernmental activists discuss the goal of using religious figures, former extremists, and other tactics to delegitimize violent extremism.16
This approach is understandable, but the framework discussed in this book suggests that attacks on the legitimacy of extremist groups are likely to fail because legitimacy is the most central component of an extremist in-group’s identity construction—the most highly developed and best-protected asset that any extremist group possesses. Legitimacy can be understood within this book’s definition of extremism as the health, success and survival of the in-group. Hostile actions are taken against out-groups in order to ensure the health and legitimacy of the in-group, so direct attacks on extremist legitimacy may reinforce the notion that extreme measures are required to protect it.
Even worse, attacks on extremist legitimacy can provoke ideologues to craft counterarguments that lead the movement to radicalize even further. As British Israelism radicalized, it did so in the face of attacks from members of the eligible in-group—traditional Christians who cast aspersions on the developing ideology. Time and again, British Israelist authors responded to these criticisms by developing even more elaborate arguments in defense of its beliefs. These new justifications then formed the basis of additional theories that fueled more extreme beliefs.17
Similar dynamics are found in jihadist movements, where competition with mainstream Muslim scholars has hardened and expanded the complexity of extremist arguments. The escalation of radicalization from al Qaeda to the Islamic State was informed, in part, by internal and external criticisms of previous jihadist strategies and tactics.18
Although direct attacks on legitimacy may be unwise, feeding an extremist group’s sense of legitimacy and entitlement is also an obvious and grave error. Western politicians who seek to conflate normative Muslim practices with those of Islamic State, for instance, are sending a clear message that they believe Islamic State does in fact represent some form of legitimate Muslim identity. Such rhetoric poses a genuine challenge to the legitimacy of the nonextremist in-group and may make extremist arguments seem more compelling to more people.
Similar problems pertain to conflating systemic racism or racial inequality with fully developed neo-Nazi ideologies. These are related but separate problems, and conflating them may have unintended consequences. Given that extremist groups will generally absorb any information source that supports their claims, messaging that awards them any form of legitimacy is extremely dangerous and counterproductive.
Beyond the question of definitions lies a question of processes. Here, again, consensus is sorely lacking. There are many competing models, often using different nomenclature. Some are too specific and are tailored to only one type of extremism—while others are too vague to have practical application. Some scholars dispute that radicalization even exists as a discrete, identifiable phenomenon.19
Nevertheless, people do adopt extremist views, and we need a way to talk about that process if we want to do anything about it. The models in chapter 5 are an attempt to describe this process based on observations of extremist activity, with an eye toward identifying opportunities to intervene.
The model of group radicalization offers additional opportunities for narrative countermessaging that undercuts ideological premises. The most vulnerable points in this process are the extremist arguments connected to crisis—the linkage of an out-group’s intrinsic identity to a crisis afflicting the in-group, the link between the extremist in-group and a solution for the crisis, and the very existence of a crisis in the first place. There is value in degrading other conceptual linkages promoted by extremist ideologies, but the framing of a crisis is most critical in mobilizing people toward violence and least likely to challenge the legitimacy of the eligible in-group.
The individual radicalization model also offers a number of possible intervention opportunities. While individual radicalization starts with some conditional acceptance of negative out-group characterizations and the crisis framing, the most critical stage in the process is the consideration of an extremist ideology. This is crucial both to the advancement of an extremist mindset, and, perhaps more important, it is the stage at which an individual is most likely to make social contact with extremist adherents and recruiters. Interventions that are pitched earlier in the radicalization process risk backfiring and pushing at-risk people into further engagement with extremism, while interventions later in the process face a much steeper challenge in dislodging ideas that have already taken hold.
As previously noted, politicians and policymakers often gravitate toward programs that address the so-called root causes of terrorism. These typically focus on discredited explanations for extremism, such as poverty, lack of education, and undemocratic governance.
Although these structural factors are not proximate causes of extremism, there is good reason to believe that dramatic uncertainty-producing changes in these social and political tent poles may be linked to increased extremism. The experimental evidence for this premise is strong. Additional research should examine how this potentially works in the real world by studying the emergence of significant extremist movements in historical context.
With more study, it may be possible to craft pragmatic policies to prevent extremism by monitoring and potentially intervening in situations that are likely to create significant amounts of uncertainty in a specific region. For instance, if a local economy suddenly collapses (or surges), it may be useful to keep tabs on how that change is being processed and examine whether steps can be taken to reduce uncertainty.
Similarly, the uncertainty framing argues against certain strategies that have been attempted since September 11, such as instigating regime change in a country that is currently stable, even if that country suffers from oppression or other problems. Islamic State was the primary beneficiary of just such a strategy in Iraq, and it exploited the uncertainty caused by the initial invasion and the mismanagement of the aftermath.20
Obviously, extremism is not the only problem in the world, and many different pragmatic and idealistic considerations must be weighed when making policy decisions. There are other moral dimensions to making decisions based solely on the extremism/uncertainty frame. People suffering from poverty or injustice in relatively stable conditions may suffer as much as or more than those in uncertain conditions. But well-intentioned policies designed to aid people who are suffering should not be conflated with policies to combat extremism. These are separate pursuits and should be pursued separately.
The persistence of extremism in human history can be discouraging. It is difficult to accept that we are doomed to repeat such costly cycles of destruction. Yet humanity progresses despite it all. Steven Pinker argues in his book The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, that there is reason to think that violence has declined throughout history as a proportion of all human activity, and that measures of health, happiness, and prosperity have improved.21 Although some take issue with Pinker’s argument in its entirety, many people (perhaps most) see an arc of progress stretching throughout history—painfully slow at times, and our two steps forward are too often followed by one back. But progress nonetheless.
Arguably, it is the very tension between extremism and inclusivity that produces social progress. Institutionalized slavery in the United States ended after just such a contest.22
Humanity may march forward over that long arc, but we cannot take progress for granted. During the Inquisitions, the conquest of the Americas, the African slave trade, World War II, and the prolonged conflicts in Iraq and Syria, ascendant extremism has again and again resulted in unbearable atrocities.
Extremists constantly evolve to meet the times, whether by adopting new technologies to spread their ideologies or by redefining in-group and out-group identities. Our efforts to counter extremism must also evolve.
The relative pace of institutional change creates a virtually unavoidable gap between the rise of an extremist movement and a successful response. Mainstream institutions reduce uncertainty—and thus extremism—primarily by providing stability, but the tradeoff can produce inertia when change is necessary.
Nevertheless, we can do better. The new communications technologies that empower extremists can also be used to detect their arrival and diagnose their importance. Both the rise of Islamic State and the resurgence of white nationalism were clearly visible online before most analysts acknowledged their changing threat.23 Our improved understanding of online social networks can provide a critical early warning about the growth of extremist movements and escalating radicalization.
Finally, we can begin to approach the problem of extremism as a field worthy of study in its own right and worthy of study across ideological boundaries. After September 11, those who sought to study terrorism were faced with a poorly defined field of study that encompassed many complex, multidisciplinary problems. In the ensuing years, the once shaky arena of terrorism studies has gradually solidified, thanks to a profusion of research by skilled professionals.24
Extremism is the field behind the field of terrorism, and it merits increased focus and prominence as a discrete academic subject. It may fall most securely within the discipline of social psychology, but extremism also requires a multidisciplinary approach encompassing history, politics, economics, religion, individual psychology, and more. Perhaps most important, extremism studies must include approaches that incorporate the comparative study of multiple ideologies. While it makes sense to focus on ascendant and escalating movements, cross-ideological study empowers insights that are obscured when viewing the problem through a single lens. When we study diverse extremist movements, we can identify what important principles they have in common and strip away superficialities.
Deep dives into specific ideologies such as jihadism and white nationalism remain vitally important, but we must also acknowledge the category-defying nature of extremism belief in order to combat it most effectively and to respond quickly to the rise of new and unexpected movements. We must understand extremism as it exists in the real world—an enduring part of human society that transcends demographics.