sterwood:

maozedongisnotcool:

What is the term “extremism” in the context of politics supposed to convey? Non-tepid? Non-mainstream? It’s a useless and harmful term and it needs to be ditched along with the left/right dichotomy, which ultimately grounds it, for the following reasons:

1. The left/right dichotomy is supposed to denote an extension of the center, normalcy, of political life. Terms like “far-right” or “far-left” or “extremism,” are used to describe huge departures from political normalcy, while at the same time reinforcing the claim that this normalcy is what grounds them—hence the spectrum.
2. However, political projects that are deemed “far-right” or “far-left” are actually questioning the legitimacy of that very center or alleged normalcy. So to categorize them as somehow branching out from a center they reject is inaccurate.
3. Unless you’re from Fox or other mainstream news networks, blanket terms like “extremism” or “far-whatever” render opposing ideologies such as Marxism or different anarchist sects and fascism or nationalism COMMENSURABLE, in that they are comparable just by virtue of their departure from status quo realpolitik.
4. Fascism and Marxism/anarchism are commensurable on NO SPECTRUM. They are not opposing ideologies because they are on opposite sides of a political spectrum (created by who, by the way?) but because the ideas are fundamentally at odds on their own grounds; e.g. in a Fascist society such as 70s Greece, anti-capitalist and even social democratic parties were ILLEGAL—completely erased from any relevant “spectrum,” and leftists were continually assassinated throughout the trajectory of this regime and others like it. Likewise no Marxist or anarchist society can tolerate platforms for fascistic ideas, regardless if how they go about preempting and fighting fascism methodologically differs.

Now, I’m very well aware that most people are going to continue using these harmful distinctions and awful terminology, but you should resist them anyway. This language is tacitly pejorative. If someone asks you if you’re far-left, say no. Unless you do acknowledge liberalism as the default way of arranging politics. Remember, just because it is the extant paradigm doesn’t mean it’s the default paradigm.

Agree with everything here. The rhetoric surrounding and including ‘extremism’ creates an environment where I am assumed to be an Obama supporter because of my supposedly ‘leftist’ ideals on this bullshit spectrum. It’s also the source of well-meaning, but realistically very stupid and naive, demands for ‘bi-partisan’ politics and ‘third’ or ‘middle’ way politics that try to find some happy medium between presupposed ‘extremes’.

If we’re going to have a political binary like left/right, I always like this opposition I found described in a book on Latin American politics (can’t remember the name right now): it claimed that the true opposition today wasn’t between left/right politics, but between neoliberal economic policies and social democratic values. That makes far more sense to me, personally.