Extreme of Consciousness

Extremism is epidemic. Even as an attack at a Kenyan mall slaughtered 67 people and seriously injured many more, the murderous Sunni Islamist perpetrators – al Shabab – still finds Kenyan recruits and Kenyan funding for its hellish exploits. “Kenya’s slums have long provided a fertile recruiting ground for Muslim extremists, but analysts say that the Shabab have been finding recruits from across the country, not just in traditionally Muslim areas like Mombasa or Somali enclaves and refugee camps. The heavy-handed response by the Kenyan police seems to have driven more young men to embrace radicalism.” New York Times, October 9^th.

Even as the Taliban attack numerous targets all across Pakistan and Afghanistan, inflicting collateral damage and random killings… shooting medical workers, teachers, and school girls along the way… recruits and financial support, even seemingly clandestine support from within the highest ranks of the Pakistani government, make the Taliban stronger than ever. Boko Haram murders college students in their beds, slashed the throats of practicing Christians and wreaks havoc in northern Nigeria, all with lots of willing local support and contributions from extremists outside their borders.

Less violent but equally reactionary are rising right wing political movements all across Europe. Members of an apparently almost-Nazi faction of the Greek parliament were recently arrested after a left wing protestor was stabbed. The seemingly down-the-middle Norwegians made a severe right turn after elections this September with major factions embracing highly exclusionary immigration policies and cutting foreign aid. Right wing politicians are making gains across the continent. Russia flirted momentarily with traditional democracy, but settled on a system where a mega-powerful single chief executive effectively controls the legislature with a virtual iron hand. The nation is now anti-gay, anti-free speech and anti-Western.

In the United States of America, there is also new extremism on the right. Previously moderate Republicans now fear voicing their willingness to compromise as they worry about facing a populist Tea Party extremist in the primaries. Even though it was the House itself that voted to pass the Affordable Care Act, supported in substantial part by the Supreme Court and moves to repeal or defund the act were reject 43 times in the U.S. Senate, there are too many Republicans – who know that what they are doing is not good for the country – who are willing to shut the government down and default on government obligations which they actually voted for.

That the economy could plunge and interest rates soar is an acceptable risk. Even the threat of losing the support of the powerful conservative Wall Streeters and major business mavens is not enough to stem the fear of too many Republicans, particularly those in gerrymandered House districts, of losing early to right wing factions with strong local support. “As the government shutdown grinds toward a potential debt default, some of the country’s most influential business executives have come to a conclusion all but unthinkable a few years ago: Their voices are carrying little weight with the House majority that their millions of dollars in campaign contributions helped build and sustain…

“‘We are looking at ways to counter the rise of an ideological brand of conservatism that, for lack of a better word, is more anti-establishment than it has been in the past,’ said David French, the top lobbyist at the National Retail Federation. ‘We have come to the conclusion that sitting on the sidelines is not good enough.’

“Some warned that a default could spur a shift in the relationship between the corporate world and the Republican Party. Long intertwined by mutual self-interest on deregulation and lower taxes, the business lobby and Republicans are diverging not only over the fiscal crisis, but on other major issues like immigration reform, which was favored by business groups and party leaders but stymied in the House by many of the same lawmakers now leading the debt fight.” NY Times. The Tea Party is not impressed.

Why? How do extremists ever get into such positions of power? It seems to be human nature, since the patterns have repeated themselves throughout history. Extreme repression and misery are often motivators, economic collapse creates new pressures, but the one constant in the mix might just surprise you. Uncertainty. And too many of us are circling the wagons and taking out our guns.

Professor Michael Hogg (Claremont) conducted a series of experiments to see what motivated people to embrace extremes. “The results hint that organizations espousing extreme views may be especially attractive to people with questions about their purpose. ‘Some groups provide a more clearly defined sense of self,’ Hogg explains. ‘These are the groups that seem from the outside to be a bit cliquish, a bit closed. At the extreme, you get groups that look like religious terrorist groups.’ Helping people navigate through times of social change, therefore, by providing them with a strong sense of self and belonging, may help lower the risk that they will end up in extremist organizations.” ScientificAmerican.com, April 4, 2011. Belonging to something that validates you?

Daniel Conor Style, writing based on his research at the University of Texas, writes (“Identity fusion and the psychology of political extremism”): “Empirical evidence supports the idea that extremism is more related to identity - related concerns than realistic conflict… From this perspective, individuals are motivated to affiliate with groups in response to events which make them uncertain about their understanding of the world or their place in it. When group members feel uncertain about their personal feelings, beliefs, or understanding of the world, they are moved to affiliate with a group and to self - categorize, or modify their self - concept to be more in line with the prototype of the group they belong to. In doing so, they receive feedback from other group members that reassures them they are correct in their beliefs.” Udini.Proquest.com.

Change and instability. Challenge to your way of life and how you will function and survive in that world. Threats to what you perceive to be your core values and moral mandates elevate the battle to messianic proportions, making what might seem to be ordinary political differences into effectively a holy war, from which there is no surrender. And this seems to be the story of many in a rural-based political party, the GOP, battling against the fall of American prestige and the rise of urban-driven minorities, whom, in the aggregate, are the new majority.

Absent a new comfort zone for this disenfranchised assemblage of traditional (past?) rural-values constituents, the future for the United States… perhaps the world… does not augur particularly well. All of us must learn to respect and tolerate those with differing views, finding paths to inclusion, not reasons why “I’m right and you’re wrong.” It’s a really hard road in this “my way or the highway” environment.

It’s funny that the Christian mandate for non-judgmental tolerance, loving thy neighbor, is sounding pretty good right now.