How NOT to deal with extremism

There are various ways societies can deal with extremism. They can ignore extermism. They can try to make it socially unacceptable. Some try to crush extremism with brute force. These have varying degrees of success.

One way that usually doesn't work, especially in societies that consider themselves democratic, is to ban extremism. The problem with this approach is that you can't legislate away extremism any more than you can ban hatred or rain or mosquitoes.

Apparently someone never got this memo.

A new report submitted to the United Nations Human Rights Commission on Monday called on the EU and other member states to ban racist political parties and crack down on neo-Nazism, especially in eastern Germany, according to a report on Deutsche Welle.

Two thiings occured to me when I read the article.

First, what does 'crack down' mean? Usually international organizations are CRITICAL on governments who crack down on political freedom.

But the really astonishing part is that the authors of the report don't realize how counterproductive such measures would be.

Extremists thrive on a sense of persecution. Just look at conservative Evangelical Christians in this country. Not all are extremists, but many are and much of their self-appointed leadership is.

They have more power and influence than any religious movement in any other western democracy. But to listen to them, you'd think they were they were two weeks away from being completely exterminated by secular, Christ-hating heathens. The fact that not all of their political opponents are secular or Christ-hating is glossed over. Leaders of this community know that this siege mentality is absolutely essential to keeping their flock motivated.

So forget that they control the presidency. Forget that they control Congress. They need to keep the focus away from such pesky things as reality and on, say, the judiciary. And even if they get the judges they want, they'll still have the Holy Trinity of boogeymen: Hollywood, Hillary and homos.

Neo-Nazism also requires this perceived persecution in order to flourish. The sense that "real" Germans are being swamped by immigrants, mainly Turks. The original Nazis used Jews as their scapegoat; neo-Nazis use Muslims. The original Nazis also exploited such sentiment. Resentment over Weimar Germany's economic collapse. Anger over the conditions of the Versailles Treaty. Humiliation over loss of German territory. Without such fury, the Nazis would never have come to power. Contented people don't become extremists.

Take North Africa, for example. The two countries with the most dangerous, extremist Islamist movements are Egypt and Algeria, where such movements are banned by the dictatorship and militocracy respectively. The nation with the most tame movement is Morocco, where the party is legalized and integrated into the country's burgeoning democracy.

There are laws in place to deal with actual violence. If Germany or other European countries were to ban extremist political parties, it would give the neo-Nazis a real martyrdom far greater than any they could invent themselves.

Europe could give political extremists no greater gift than to ban them.