Berger - Extremism

The MIT Press Essential Knowledge Series

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J. M. Berger

The MIT Press

Cambridge, Massachusetts

London, England

2018 Massachusetts Institute of Technology

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher.

This book was set in Chaparral Pro by Toppan Best-set Premedia Limited. Printed and bound in the United States of America.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Berger, J. M. (John M.), 1967- author.

Title: Extremism / J. M. Berger.

Description: Cambridge, MA : The MIT Press, 2018. | Series: The MIT press essential knowledge series | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018007483 | ISBN 9780262535878 (pbk. : alk. paper)

eISBN 9780262349352

Subjects: LCSH: Radicalism. | Political violence.

Classification: LCC HN49.R33 B464 2018 | DDC 303.48/4--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018007483

ePub Version 1.0

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Bruce Tidor

Professor of Biological Engineering and Computer Science

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

As always, I am deeply indebted to many people who helped me along the way to this book. Most of the concepts discussed herein were developed with support and guidance from Alastair Reed, head of the Counter-Terrorism Strategic Communications Project. I am grateful for his friendship and support.

The work of Haroro J. Ingram, published through the International Centre for Counter-TerrorismThe Hague and the CTSC Project, was deeply influential on my own. I benefited greatly from our conversations and his feedback in general and on this manuscript. The direction of this work also was shaped by his critical contributions regarding messaging broadly and his development of crucial elements of theory regarding crisis and solution constructs. His publications, cited in the bibliography, are highly recommended as a companion to this book. The work of Michael Hogg on uncertainty and extremism, and the work of others building on his concepts, also influenced on this work in very important ways.

This book came about after I gave a lecture at a conference at the Paris Institute for Advanced Study (Paris IAS), where I met MIT Press editor Matthew Browne. Thanks are due to Itzhak Fried, who organized that fascinating event, and Jessica Stern, my friend and past collaborator, who brokered my invitation and whose support in general has opened many doors for me. Thanks also to Anne-Marie Bono of the MIT Press, for guiding the process of publication and to my agent, Martha Kaplan. Thanks also to Maura Conway and Lisa McInerney of VOX-Pol for their support of this book and other generosities.

Finally, and most of all, this book and all my work in this field, and pretty much all of the good things in my life in general, would not be possible without the love and support I have received from my wife, Janet.

In a 1964 U.S. Supreme Court opinion attempting to define pornography for legal purposes, Justice Potter Stewart summed up the nebulous nature of the concept in seven now-infamous words. He couldnt offer a workable definition, he wrote, but I know it when I see it.

More than fifty years later, we find this test applied to one of the worlds most pressing problems, a rising tide of extremist movements that are destabilizing civil societies around the globe. Virtually everyone acknowledges the severity of the threat, but extremism is still most often classified according to Stewarts criteria: we know it when we see it. And as with pornography, we do not all agree about what passes the test.

The dictionary definition is circular: extremism is the quality or state of being extreme or the advocacy of extreme measures or views. In politics, extremism is an increasingly convenient insulta way to characterize and condemn what the other guys believe.

The flaws in these definitions should be apparent. A circular definition (extremists are extreme) is meaningless and highly vulnerable to abuse because it can apply to anyone whose views you disagree with. A definition that specifies a religious dimension excludes secular movements and vice versa. A definition predicated on violence excludes a world of movements that we know when we see them, such as some segregationists, the alt-right, and at least some branches of the Muslim Brotherhood. A definition based on the norms or center of a society is especially perilous because it excludes successful and important historical extremist regimes, such as institutionalized racial slavery in America and Nazi Germany.

The answer to the question What is extremism? seems like it should be obvious, but it definitely isnt. And in a world where violent extremism is widely acknowledged as a defining challenge of our age, that failure of definition has huge real-world consequences.

In the United States, the term extremist is frequently hurled, shorn of context, across racial and partisan divides. Many in the wider West contend that the entire religion of Islam is inherently extreme, arguing for policies that range from the curtailment of civil rights to mass internment. Within Islam itself, furious debates rage about which sect, movement, or nation is normative and which is extremist.