Download or read book Extremism written by Quassim Cassam and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-09-01 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Extremism is one of the most charged and controversial issues of the twenty-first century. Despite myriad programs of deradicalization and prevention around the world, it remains an intractable and poorly understood problem. Yet it is also sometimes regarded as a positive force – according to Martin Luther King Jr., 'the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be'. In this much-needed and lucid book, Quassim Cassam identifies three types of extremism – ideological; methods; and psychological extremism – and discusses the following fundamental topics and issues: What is extremism? What are the methods adopted by extremists? Is there an extremist ‘mindset’ and if so, what is it? What role do ideas of purity, victimhood and humiliation play in understanding extremism? How does extremism differ from fanaticism and fundamentalism? How does one become an extremist and how should we understand deradicalization? Throughout the book, Quassim Cassam uses many compelling examples, ranging from the Khmer Rouge, the IRA, Al-Qaeda and Timothy McVeigh to Philip Roth’s novel American Pastoral and counter-extremism programmes, including the UK’s Prevent strategy. Clear-headed and engaging, Extremism: A Philosophical Analysis is essential reading for anyone interested in this important topic, not only in Philosophy but related disciplines such as Politics and International Relations, Conflict and Terrorism Studies, Law, Education and Religion. It will also be of great interest to policy-makers and those engaged in understanding extremism at any level.
Download or read book Philosophical Perspectives on the War on Terrorism written by Gail M. Presbey and published by Rodopi. This book was released on 2007 with total page 529 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book responds to the Bush Administration position on the "war on terror." It examines preemption within the context of "just war"; justification for the United States-led invasion of Iraq, with some authors charging that its tactics serve to increase terror; global terrorism; and concepts such as reconciliation, Islamic identity, nationalism, and intervention.
Download or read book Democratic Extremism in Theory and Practice written by Paul Lucardie and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-12-04 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Democracy and extremism are usually considered as opposites. We assume that our system (in the UK, the USA, the Netherlands etc.) is democratic, and extremists try to destroy our system and introduce some kind of dictatorship, if not chaos and anarchy. Yet in many cases, the extremists seem sincere in their attempt to construct a more democratic polity. Hence, they can be called democrats and yet also extremists, in so far as they strive for a regime with characteristics that are more extreme in a significant sense. This book analyses radical and extreme democratic theories and ideas in their historical context, interlocked with critical descriptions of historical institutions and experiments that help to evaluate the theories. Cases range from ancient Athens to recent experiments with citizen juries and citizen assemblies, from the time-honoured Swiss Landsgemeinde to contemporary (and controversial) workers’ councils in Venezuela and participatory budgeting in Porto Alegre. Among the theorists discussed here are familiar names as well as relatively unknown persons: Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Karl Marx, Murray Bookchin and John Burnheim, William Godwin and Barbara Goodwin, Anton Pannekoek and Heinz Dieterich. Whereas the extreme ideas do not seem to work very well in practice, they do indicate ways by which we could make existing political systems more democratic. This book will be of interest to students of Politics and Current Affairs, as well as inspiration to political activists and reformists.
Download or read book Political Extremism and Rationality written by Albert Breton and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2002-01-07 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Political extremism is widely considered to be the product of irrational behavior. The distinguishing feature of this collection by well-known economists and political scientists from North America, Europe and Australia is to propose a variety of explanations which all insist on the rationality of extremism. Contributors use variants of this approach to shed light on subjects such as the conditions under which democratic parties take extremist positions, the relationship between extremism and conformism, the strategies adopted by revolutionary movements, and the reasons why extremism often leads to violence. The authors identify four core issues in the study of the phenomenon: the nature (definition) of extremism and its origins in both democratic and authoritarian settings, the capacity of democratic political systems to accommodate extremist positions, the strategies (civil disobedience, assassination, lynching) chosen by extremist groups, and the circumstances under which extremism becomes a threat to democracy.
Download or read book Understanding and Rejecting Extremism written by David Myatt and published by Createspace Independent Pub. This book was released on 2013-04-30 with total page 58 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contents. Part One: Towards Understanding Extremism - Some Notes From Personal Experience. Part Two: A Learning From Grief. Part Three: A Rejection of Extremism Perhaps Explained. The first part contains some reflexions on, and some conclusions concerning, forty years as a practical extremist and forty years of practical experience of extremism and of other extremists. The conclusions regarding extremism resulted from some years of moral, personal, and philosophical questioning and reflexion; a questioning whose genesis was a personal tragedy in 2006, and which questioning led a few years later to a rejection all forms of extremism to the development of a philosophy of pathei-mathos, based on the virtues of empathy, compassion, and humility. Part two consists of transcriptions of some handwritten letters sent to a friend following that tragedy in 2006. Since such personal correspondence is usually far more revealing - of personal views, motivations, and feelings - than some essay or other in which one pontificates about this or that, some readers may find this part more interesting and insightful than either part one or part three. The third part consists of personal replies sent to individuals between 2011 and 2012 and which replies may serve to place into perspective that rejection of all forms of extremism as well as elucidate the development of the philosophy of pathei-mathos.
Download or read book The Philosophy of Extremism written by David McLean and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2017-10-13 with total page 108 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This gem of a book playfully explores extremism, a philosophy by which I, Chesler, have lived for most of my life. It explores literary extremism, gives examples, tells the truth about why prostitutes have no breast milk left come feeding time and other such conundrums. Also included are transcripts of real-life situations that McLean and Chesler find to be titillating examples of extremism. McLean shines as he describes philosophical extremism, spiritual extremism, Lyotard and Artaud. A must read for both simple and sophisticated minds
Download or read book Origins of Political Extremism written by Manus I. Midlarsky and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2011-03-17 with total page 443 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Political extremism is one of the most pernicious, destructive, and nihilistic forms of human expression. During the twentieth century, in excess of 100 million people had their lives taken from them as the result of extremist violence. In this wide-ranging book Manus I. Midlarsky suggests that ephemeral gains, together with mortality salience, form basic explanations for the origins of political extremism and constitute a theoretical framework that also explains later mass violence. Midlarsky applies his framework to multiple forms of political extremism, including the rise of Italian, Hungarian and Romanian fascism, Nazism, radical Islamism, and Soviet, Chinese and Cambodian communism. Other applications include a rampaging military (Japan, Pakistan, Indonesia) and extreme nationalism in Serbia, Croatia, the Ottoman Empire and Rwanda. Polish anti-Semitism after World War II and the rise of separatist violence in Sri Lanka are also examined.
Download or read book Rational Extremism written by Ronald Wintrobe and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2006-08-14 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Extremists are people whose ideas or tactics are viewed as outside the mainstream. Looked at this way, extremists are not necessarily twisted or evil. But they can be, especially when they are intolerant and violent. What makes extremists turn violent? This 2006 book assumes that extremists are rational: given their ends, they choose the best means to achieve them. The analysis explains why extremist leaders use the tactics they do, and why they are often insensitive to punishment and to loss of life. It also explains how rational people can be motivated to die for the cause. The book covers different aspects of extremism such as revolution, suicide terrorism, and global jihad. The arguments are illustrated with important episodes of extremism, including the French Revolution, the rise of nationalism in Yugoslavia under Milosevic, and the emergence of suicide terror and Al Qaeda today.
Download or read book Terrorism Ticking Time Bombs and Torture written by Fritz Allhoff and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2012-02 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The general consensus among philosophers is that the use of torture is never justified. In this book, Fritz Allhoff demonstrates the weakness of the case against torture; while allowing that torture constitutes a moral wrong, he nevertheless argues that it represents the lesser of two evils.
Download or read book A Theory of Militant Democracy written by Alexander S. Kirshner and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2014-01-07 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How should pro-democratic forces safeguard representative government from anti-democratic forces? By granting rights of participation to groups that do not share democratic values, democracies may endanger the very rights they have granted; but denying these rights may also undermine democratic values. Alexander Kirshner offers a set of principles for determining when one may reasonably refuse rights of participation, and he defends this theory through real-world examples, ranging from the far-right British Nationalist Party to Turkey’s Islamist Welfare Party to America’s Democratic Party during Reconstruction.
Download or read book The Essence of Islamist Extremism written by Irm Haleem and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2011-11-23 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a conceptual analysis of Islamist extremism and examines radical Islamist rhetoric and various extremist groups. Engaging in a conceptual analysis of Islamist extremism that focuses on the ‘what is’ and not the ‘why’ of Islamist extremism, the book extends the traditional parameters of analysis, from context-specific and temporally confined causal analyses to a broader conceptual analysis relevant to the many different temporal and geo-political contexts of Islamist extremist groups.
Download or read book Master Narratives of Islamist Extremism written by J. Halverson and published by Springer. This book was released on 2011-01-31 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume introduces the concept of Islamist extremist 'master narratives' and offers a method for identifying and analyzing them. Drawing on rhetorical and narrative theories, the chapters examine thirteen master narratives and explain how extremists use them to solidify their base, recruit new members, and motivate actions.
Download or read book Moving beyond Islamist Extremism written by William Allchorn and published by BoD – Books on Demand. This book was released on 2021-12-21 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Traditionally, far-right terrorism has been the black swan of terrorism studies—receiving less attention than Jihadi extremism. In this book, William Allchorn takes a deep dive into multiple geographical locales and the online space of far-right movements, uncovering the crisis narratives that are animating violent far-right extremist milieus and presenting solutions on what we can do to stop them. Using eight country case studies and the results of an online pilot project, this is the first book-length presentation and discussion of counter techniques to far-right narratives—exploring their effectiveness, the ethics of such techniques, and their ability to disrupt pathways from radicalism towards violent extremism. Coming at a time of a renewed global wave of far-right violence, this book is of use to scholars as well as practitioners in the fields of far-right studies, terrorism studies, and strategic communications.
Download or read book Extremism And Reformation written by David Myatt and published by . This book was released on 2019-09-07 with total page 80 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The genesis of this compilation of essays was, as mentioned in the included essay A Premature Grieving, the publication in 2019, by political advocacy group, of various unsubstantiated allegations and disinformation about me and the subsequent repetition of such allegations and disinformation by some mainstream newspapers and media outlets. The unsubstantiated allegations and the disinformation concerned my supposed continuing involvement with extremism, specifically neo-nazism; it being apparent that neither the political advocacy group nor the newspapers and media which repeated the allegations and the disinformation had bothered to read my extensive post-2011 writings about rejecting extremism and about seeking expiation for my decades-long extremist past. This compilation of essays is my reply to those unsubstantiated allegations and disinformation. Contents � Preface � A Premature Grieving � A Perplexing Failure To Understand � Concerning The Abstractions of Extremism and Race � Some Notes on The Politics and Ideology of Hate Part One: According to the Philosophy of The Numinous Way Part Two: A Personal Perspective - My Uncertitude of Knowing � Some Philosophical and Moral Problems of National-Socialism � Suffering And The Human Culture Of Pathei-Mathos � Persecution And War � The Matter With Death � Appendix I: Physis And Being � Appendix II: Pathei-Mathos: Genesis of My Unknowing � Appendix III: A Matter Of Honour
Download or read book Education and Extremisms written by Farid Panjwani and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-08-09 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Education and Extremisms addresses one of the most pressing questions facing societies today: how is education to respond to the challenge of extremism? It argues that the implementation of new teaching techniques, curricular reforms or top-down changes to education policy alone cannot solve the problem of extremism in educational establishments across the world. Instead, the authors of this thought-provoking volume argue that there is a need for those concerned with radicalisation to reconsider the relationship between instrumentalist ideologies shaping education and the multiple forms of extremisms that exist. Beginning with a detailed discussion of the complicated and contested nature of different forms of extremism, including extremism of both a religious and secular nature, the authors show that common assumptions in contemporary discourses on education and extremism are problematic. Chapters in the book provide a careful selection of pertinent and topical case studies, policy analysis and insightful critique of extremist discourses. Taken together, the chapters in the book make a powerful case for re-engaging with liberal education in order to foster values of individual and social enrichment, intellectual freedom, criticality, open-mindedness, flexibility and reflection as antidotes to extremist ideologies. Recognising recent criticisms of liberalism and liberal education, the authors argue for a new understanding of liberal education that is suitable for multicultural societies in a rapidly globalising world. This book is essential reading for academics, researchers and postgraduate students with an interest in religion, citizenship education, liberalism, secularism, counter-terrorism, social policy, Muslim education, youth studies and extremism. It is also relevant to teacher educators, teachers and policymakers.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Terrorism written by Erica Chenoweth and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-03-14 with total page 704 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Oxford Handbook of Terrorism systematically integrates the substantial body of scholarship on terrorism and counterterrorism before and after 9/11. In doing so, it introduces scholars and practitioners to state of the art approaches, methods, and issues in studying and teaching these vital phenomena. This Handbook goes further than most existing collections by giving structure and direction to the fast-growing but somewhat disjointed field of terrorism studies. The volume locates terrorism within the wider spectrum of political violence instead of engaging in the widespread tendency towards treating terrorism as an exceptional act. Moreover, the volume makes a case for studying terrorism within its socio-historical context. Finally, the volume addresses the critique that the study of terrorism suffers from lack of theory by reviewing and extending the theoretical insights contributed by several fields - including political science, political economy, history, sociology, anthropology, criminology, law, geography, and psychology. In doing so, the volume showcases the analytical advancements and reflects on the challenges that remain since the emergence of the field in the early 1970s.
Download or read book Engineers of Jihad written by Diego Gambetta and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2017-11-28 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A groundbreaking investigation into why so many Islamic radicals are engineers The violent actions of a few extremists can alter the course of history, yet there persists a yawning gap between the potential impact of these individuals and what we understand about them. In Engineers of Jihad, Diego Gambetta and Steffen Hertog uncover two unexpected facts, which they imaginatively leverage to narrow that gap: they find that a disproportionate share of Islamist radicals come from an engineering background, and that Islamist and right-wing extremism have more in common than either does with left-wing extremism, in which engineers are absent while social scientists and humanities students are prominent. Searching for an explanation, they tackle four general questions about extremism: Under which socioeconomic conditions do people join extremist groups? Does the profile of extremists reflect how they self-select into extremism or how groups recruit them? Does ideology matter in sorting who joins which group? Lastly, is there a mindset susceptible to certain types of extremism? Using rigorous methods and several new datasets, they explain the link between educational discipline and type of radicalism by looking at two key factors: the social mobility (or lack thereof) for engineers in the Muslim world, and a particular mindset seeking order and hierarchy that is found more frequently among engineers. Engineers' presence in some extremist groups and not others, the authors argue, is a proxy for individual traits that may account for the much larger question of selective recruitment to radical activism. Opening up markedly new perspectives on the motivations of political violence, Engineers of Jihad yields unexpected answers about the nature and emergence of extremism.
