What is extremism? Does it include far-left? Far-right? Choosing a definition is fraught.
Just what, exactly, is "extremism"?
For more than a century, the word has been debated, defended and weaponized in America. It has been applied to everyone from the slavery abolitionists of the 1850s to the rioters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Ideas that were considered extremist just a few years ago are increasingly bandied about in today’s mainstream politics. What extremism is, then, and who gets to define it, have perhaps never been more important questions.
Now, a group of scholars, aided by experts on hate, terrorism and homegrown violence, hopes to come up with a definition of extremism that will go some way toward ending the debate.
The effort comes from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a London-based think-tank, and the Polarization and Extremism Research Innovation Lab, or PERIL, at American University in Washington. While the experts acknowledge they will never please everyone, they hope to help professionals from journalists to law enforcement to politicians better understand the ever-shifting extremist threat in the United States.
“I like to think of us as a sort of Avengers, coming together to try and solve these existential issues we face,” said Milo Comerford, ISD’s head of policy and research on counter-extremism.
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Why definition of extremism is important
The "Academic Avengers" are not the first group to take on the thorny issue of what is, and is not, extremism.
J.M. Berger, a writer and scholar whose book “Extremism” was published in 2018, has been thinking about how to define this concept for more than a decade. Berger, who is now working on a Ph.D. on the definition of extremism, said the task is more than just an academic exercise.
“Extremism has increasingly been a label that comes with significant social and legal consequences, and the fact that we can't define it makes it extremely prone to abuse,” Berger said.
Ever since the 1850s, politicians have used “extremist” as a cudgel to discredit their opponents. Journalists on either side of the political spectrum have misused the term, as have law enforcement agencies, academics and historians, Berger said.
And now an accurate definition of extremism is crucial, he said.
With conspiracy theories and far-right and far-left ideas pervading political discourse, people must be able to separate bonafide extremism from hyperbole or disinformation, he said. And with so much of the conversation happening online, technology companies have become the arbiters of what is acceptable debate. –
“These companies are now in a position of deciding what extremism is, in order to take action against that content on their platform,” Berger said.
To understand how important defining extremism is, one need look no further than the fallout from the Jan. 6 insurrection, said Cynthia Miller-Idriss, PERIL's director.
While most Americans agree the events of that day were concerning, conservative politicians and pundits have sought to minimize what happened and discredit the notion that the Jan. 6 attackers were extremists.
"The Capitol police officers who testified in Congress really used the terminology of extremists and terrorists, but some of the representatives have said that these were tourists," Miller-Idriss said. "So there's been partisan and political backlash, in part because nobody agrees on the language."
Extremism defined by the fringes
Lots of definitions of extremism exist. Many contend the word essentially means far from the prevailing, accepted, ideas of the time.
"To the extent that there's a consensus, and it's a very rough consensus, extremism is a relative concept," said Mark Pitcavage, a senior research fellow at the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism. "It's comparing the beliefs of a particular group or movement or cause to the most common beliefs of the broader society in which that movement or cause exists."
While widely accepted, this approach has some serious challenges, Pitcavage said, perhaps the biggest of which is the sticky question of deciding what societal norms are, and who represents them.
What might be considered “extremist” in a small town in Iowa, for example, might be perfectly acceptable in New York City or San Francisco, he said. Similarly, many urban Americans chafe at the idea that in parts of rural America, guns are a central and everyday part of life and not indicative of anti-government or extremist ideology.
“I mean, in that 'Footloose' town, dancing was extreme,” Pitcavage said, referring to the 1984 movie about a small town that bans dancing and rock and roll music.
And what is considered extreme in society today might become accepted tomorrow. Hitler’s ideas were considered extreme in 1920s Germany, then largely accepted by the German public during the Nazi era, and are now considered abhorrent by most Germans, Pitcavage said.
“That’s another reason why extremism is a squishy topic,” Pitcavage said. “The orbit of an electron is always going to be the orbit of an electron, but in a particular context, what is extremist may not always be extremist."
Searching for a less squishy definition
Some experts argue that defining ideas or movements as extremist because they are “fringe” or not mainstream is unhelpful.
These scholars argue extremism should be defined in terms of the harm a belief or movement can do. It’s not enough for a group to be left-field in their views or actions, said William Braniff, director of the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, or START, at the University of Maryland. They must also be engaged in harmful activity to be truly extremist.
“You and I could disagree about abortion or gun rights all day long, and that's not extremism,” Braniff said. “But if I think the only way for me to protect gun owners is for me to harm you, or I publish your address online for other people to be able to find you, well, that's extreme.”
The new working group from American University and the ISD hasn’t come to any conclusions yet, but members of the group hinted strongly that this less comparative and more functional approach to understanding extremism is the direction they are headed in.
The fringe-versus-mainstream approach is "problematic,” said Sasha Havlicek, CEO and co-founder of ISD.
A more accurate approach is to identify extremists as people who view the world through the lens of an "in-group," Havlicek said. Extremism “defines an in-group that it seeks to protect, and it sees that in-group as dominant and better,” Havlicek said.
While experts may not agree on how to define extremism, there is consensus on one thing: Individuals don’t get to define what is extreme and what is not.
Individuals can, of course, vehemently disagree with the views and actions of other individuals, they said. But merely slapping the extremist label on anybody one disagrees with isn’t helpful or meaningful, experts said.
“The challenge for us is to come up with a definition that is rigorous, that enables us to do comparative studies to understand extremism better,” Berger said. “So that we can minimize the potential for abuse, and maximize the potential for productive use.”