Extremism

Extremist

On February 24, a young man went into a Toronto massage parlour with a machete and killed one of the masseuses. He has now been charged with terrorism—on the grounds that his motive was support of the “incel” movement, defined by CSIS as “violent misogyny.” 

The press and media consistently describe him as an “extremist.” As they invariably do other terrorists.

The term presumes that the problem with his thinking is that it strayed too far from the average. This implies that the average person shares the same basic ideas in a more muted form.

In this case, that apparently means that we are all misogynists. We all believe we are entitled to sex, and that it is the duty of random women to give it to us. Most of us are simply not prepared to resort to violence.

I have a problem with the tacit assumption that sex on demand is okay.

Similarly, it is nonsense to call the attackers on 9/11 Muslim “extremists.” We have ample evidence that they were not particularly observant Muslims. They came from secularized, Westernized backgrounds. Al Qaeda ran brothels in Iraq.

I also have a problem with the notion that the average person and what he thinks and does is the standard of morality, or truth. This is what the term “extremist,” used as an accusation or charge, implies: “extreme” makes sense only in relation to a norm.

You want an obvious example of a person whose thinking strayed far from the norm? Here are a few: the Buddha. Socrates. Jesus Christ. Mother Theresa. Gandhi. Martin Luther King. Oskar Schindler. Churchill. Copernicus. Steve Jobs, with his personal slogan, “think different.” Any individual who has ever contributed any significant good to mankind. Any was, literally, an extremist.

By contrast, it is not so clear that the guy who stabbed the masseuse was an extremist. The term, remember, makes sense only in terms of a social norm. If you are surrounded by people who think the same way you do, you are not an “extremist,” but a conformist.

The RCMP investigation determined that the "crime was in fact one in which the accused was inspired by the ideologically motivated extremist [sic] movement commonly known as incel."

Most of his social dealing may well have been with that movement, which apparently thrives online. Incels are not generally the type who get out a lot. Accordingly, he was not an extremist—he was a moderate in relation to the social group to which he belonged.

The same is true of the team of hijackers who rammed the World Trade Center on 9/11. They were not extremists at all, but conformists within their social group. Indeed, a large proportion of the populations of some Middle Eastern Muslim countries probably supported the attacks at the time.

To call such people “extremists” is a perfect inversion of the truth, and is, worse, calculated to encourage such incidents in future. Going along with those around you is the opposite of morality.