Essay:Regarding Extremism

Extremism as a pejorative label is useless for understanding the ideologies labeled as "extremist" in question. Extremism is a fundamentally mirky concept, and can mean anything from "ideology or philosophy I don't like" to "any position advocating for or willing to engage in violence," which is fundamentally ambiguous when power (which politics is fundamentally the expression of) itself is a violent phenomenon.

Anarcho-pacifism for instance as a rule rejects violence, but is a fundamentally anarchist ideology. Are anarcho-pacifists extremist then? It also depends on the definition of "violence" one is using. If we define "violence" as "harm brought out by individual and/or systemic means" then so-called "centrism", an ideology that maintains the upholding of the status quo, and is opposed to both radicalism and reactionaryism respectively, can be called "extremist." This supposedly "moderate" position is what MLK had in mind when he wrote his famous words:

I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to 'order' than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice.

A problem with the label "extremist" is that it fails to properly convey what the ideologies labeled as "extreme" hold. It is a prescriptive judgement, not a descriptive label. Anarchists as a rule are skeptical of authority and government, meaning that demagogues are unlikely to appeal to them. In the same vein, so are ordinary politicians. Fascists as a rule are skeptical of egalitarianism in all its forms, and hence are liable to reject socialist experiments and established liberal democracies equally. Labeling these schools of thought as "extremist" doesn't tell us about what these ideologies and positions actually are, they merely tell us what the labeler views them as. To quote MLK again:

But though I was initially disappointed at being categorized as an extremist, as I continued to think about the matter I gradually gained a measure of satisfaction from the label. Was not Jesus an extremist for love…Was not Amos an extremist for justice…Was not Martin Luther an extremist…So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice?