The Abyss of "Extremism"

I mean, what is the point of serving up such edible stuff to people who are meant to be trying to learn. Isn't that "manufacturing consent"? And is being afraid of "extremist" political viewpoints fair and justified? If you look into the abyss long enough can you really get sucked in? Is it fair to say there's quite a silence surrounding "extremism" except when it manifests itself with violence. and then only the act is discussed.

I think it's important to face this stuff. It's important to realise that there is more than just simple racism to expose, there is a worked-out ideology, and you need to know it's there, and you need to know why it's wrong.

As for freedom of speech, it's invoked as if it's some absolute idea. It isn't. It's one of a number of competing priorities. The obvious pull in the other direction here is preventing incitement of violence and hate crimes. Few people would argue that freedom of speech should extend to instructing someone else to kill someone, for instance. There is no simple answer as to where freedom of speech should stop, but I'm not interested in putting up a free speech argument in defence of people trying to incite racial hatred, and wanting to deny all sorts of basic rights to people based on, for instance, their race.

Can I resurrect this for the primetime audience?

I think its fantastically important to be able to talk with an in depth knowledge about any oppositional groups ideologies if you are ever going to be in a position to argue against it. Unfortuantely though I find often seats of learning tend towards consensualist points of view because of socal and personality issues. But having to construct the decent, reasonable arguements is usually the best way of learning. (I disagreed massively with Zoe Williams arses piece in the Guardian magazine, but I had to work out why since she argued it pretty well - and in doing so I learnt a lot more).

Since morality isn't absolute why should any position be a priori unthinkable.

That's the thing, I'm unsure people share the view that morality isn't an absolute. I think for alot of media people it's my way or the high way.

i agree w.pete here but as i learnt this lesson from the writings of (among others) c.hitchens you can also see where the "abyss gazes back into you" argt starts to apply

Argments you disagree with but some people are convinced by can either be
a) Based on false premises
b) Arrived at via spurious logic (in particular one asylum seeker is bad = all are bad)
c) couched in persuasive language
d) delivered by a very charismatic persson
e) Right.

Or a combination of the above. Never rule out e) unless you come across a) or b).

I found Hitchens essay on 9/11 quite convincing. Perhaps this is what Mark refers to in itself.

hitchens has written abt 23423846 pieces on 9/11, and is still churning em out

Fair enough, the one I read was his debunking of the "chickens coming home to roost" argument re:American Foreign Policy.

I took a seminar in American far-right movements in college. It was very illuminating. We read quite a bit on the "brown scare" of the 1930s and 1940s and how the prosecutions (most of them botched) of various supposed "fifth columnists" (a very motley bunch) led into the McCarthyite persecutions of leftists in the late 1940s and 1950s. We also read a fair bit of extremist literature which was very disturbing.

As you might imagine much of the academic literature of right-wing movements is laced with considerable condescension if not scorn. And exception is Voices of Protest by Alan Brinkley which looks at two figures who confounded the right-left distinctions during the depression era: Huey Long and Father Couglin. While the book isn't exactly sympathetic, you do get a good sense of how these people were perceived from various POVs and a little sense of how they perceived themselve (and how Coughlin fell down the anti-Semitic trap eventually and was discredited). We read some other v. interesting books whose names are escaping me; I have the old syllabus somewhere at home and can dig it up later.

what do ppl think of richard hofstadter now?

Funnily enough Hofstadter was present by his absence--everyone expected we would read Anti-Intellectualism in American Life and "The Paranoid Style in American Politics" but we didn't. I think this is perhaps because Hofstadter was looking at areas that are common recipients of academic study: federal politics and intellectual life. Whereas my seminar was quite selfconsciously about those groups that "get ignored" by historians (actually they're not so much ignored anymore, since the new cultural history, but it's still politic to say they "get ignored")--militia groups, pop culture figures, the KKK, etc.