EXTREMISM. 9. : EXTREMISM. 0. extremism. United States.

his assignment consists of 4 questions, which require a 2-3 page response for each question, to test knowledge and assimilation of the course objectives. The exclusive use of required texts and readings from this course is mandatory. Stringing together long quotations of course material is not considered a valid, legitimate response. Quotations should be used sparingly. If I want to reread any of the course material then I certainly have the access to do that. Final Assignment Components: Prepare your final draft for submission to include at a minimum the following components: Title Page of the Paper. The title of your paper should be brief but should adequately inform the reader of your general topic and the specific focus of your paper. Keywords relating to parameters and other specifics are useful. ALWAYS use a Title Page for graduate work! Your title page will include the title, name, course name and number, and Professor’s Name. I. Essay Question One (2-3 pag

Running Head: EXTREMISM 0
extremism
United States

EXTREMISM 1
INTRODUCTION
This document contains four essays relating to extremism and its growth in U.S. in detail
following with all its threats faced by the domestic groups, political extremism and its growth
due to the disfranchising of the government etc.
QUESTION 1
Through this essay the level of extremism in United States will be analyzed and its future
trends will be demonstrated along with its reflection as a threat to the domestic groups of
extremists. This term in its literal form means that the quality or the state of being at the extreme
level and is basically used for reflecting the political and religious sense of ideologies. The
extremists are usually mixed up with those of the moderates (Vidino & Hughes, 2015). For
example the western countries of Islam or of the Islam political movements in a discussion
differentiated extremist as bad and Muslims as good. Previously extremism had seem to be given
by the psychological, emotional, material and group based mechanism which were really very
important for an individual for taking their radicalization out. They are adopted by one’s own
self and none of these features seems to lead to the extremist behavior, instead radicalization can
be considered as a set of complex and casual processes where the various extremist outcomes are
the product of multiple factors working together as one (Jensen, Atwell Seate, & James, 2018).
In U.S. extremism is basically of two types’ right wing and left wing extremism. The growth of
or the rise of right wing extremism in U.S. Is greater as compared to that of left one i.e. the
terrorist attacks, number of deaths, pipe bomb attacks are in a trend now a days.
So this threatening situation requires a quick doubling of the force by the local and the
federal agencies. This threat appears to be raised due to the concerns of particular white
1

EXTREMISM 2
supremacists and the extremists who are against the government like the groups of militia,
sovereign citizens who are very much interested to plan and plot against the government on the
basis of race, caste, religion and political targets etc. (Khader, 2016).
To some extent the extremists invade and have negative impacts on the self-esteem and
the quality of unity of the individuals and the units of the military personnel, the activeness
relating to the race, religion and ideologies of the politics continues to exist in and among them
and would be reflected in the civil society for some issues (Iannaccone, 2006).
Therefore fair and effective the new recruits military personnel in the organization of the
extremists who must have fair and effective means of limiting and being involved in the active
duty, adequate education and training at all the levels, for protecting the domestic environment.
2

EXTREMISM 3
QUESTION 2
Through this essay the political extremism along with the matters that gave rise to them
along with their feelings of disfranchised form the government. A political extremist is one
whose beliefs comes beside the general values and norms of the society and upon the fingers of
the spectrum of the ideologies. Fear, anger, hate concerns for environment and for the rights of
the animals etc. against the government and people of different race, caste and nationality
motivates political extremist in U.S (Stern, 2016). They oppose all the basic principles of the
democracy and rights of the humans. These extremists are basically known for being engaged in
criminal activities which includes violence and are driven ideologically. Political extremists very
often shows disrespect for the rights and liberties of the others, and shows ironic qualities,
supports the restrictions of their enemies (Holmer, 2013). They use frightening and manipulating
skills for spreading claims and declarations, for example they use the name of religion or God for
getting excused for the acts of violence. There are six types of political extremists raised in
present in U.S. currently and they are as follows first, the sovereign citizens i.e. there are
thousands of people who claims to be free from U.S. sovereign and its laws, their beliefs in
antigovernment and anti-tax with the elected officials, judges and the police officers due to some
turned out clashes or conflicts, which may also become deadly sometimes. For example Joe
Kane a sovereign citizen shot two police officers during their routine traffic stops. Second are the
extremists of animal and environmental rights, they are those persons who operate on behalf of
the larger mission or crimes such as theft, damage to the property etc. Third ones are the
Anarchists who holds the society in the manner they want to choose and interferes with the other
person’s ability. They represent the left wing of political extremism and are engaged in violence
done by force in the society. Forth ones are the Anti-Abortion Extremists, who represents the
3

EXTREMISM 4
right wing extremists and are basically related with the usage of firebombing, shootings and the
actions causing destructions those are dangerous mostly done against doctors, nurses and other
staffs working for them. Fifth are the Militias who are also against the government and another
type of right wing very much similar to that of sovereign citizens. They are the armed people
who are motivated to overthrow the government of U.S. to whom they believe as the ones who
have breached their constitutional rights. Sixth ones are the White Supremacists who are
basically held responsible for the homicides and attacks and lastly they are considered as more
dangerous as compared to any other political extremist (LaFree, Jensen, James, & Safer‐
Lichtenstein, 2018).
Disfranchising is considered as an abnormality of politics in U.S. Not letting the citizens
to enjoy their political rights i.e. giving vote is a privilege, but on the grounds of race, property,
education, sex, caste etc. many Americans were barred of casting their votes, however over past
50 years the restriction on voting was eliminated but then the existence of the principle of
universal suffrage was realized over the time. Improper justifications relating to the standards of
political rights, unacceptable rejection by the societies, infringement of government system etc.
gave rise to the political extremists in U.S (Van Prooijen, Krouwel, & Pollet, 2015).
4

EXTREMISM 5
QUESTION 3
In this essay the radicalization process of individuals turning into the extremist group will
be discussed in detail, with the justifications showing the commission of the acts by an individual
that may cause violence through religions. This essay will also challenge the conventional
wisdom but not in the usual way but by the people who identify themselves as religious.
There is no particular way that can define violent extremist, unlike terrorism this term is
really a very confusing one and it can be employed interchangeably. Radicalization is basically
the act or the procedure that forces a person to take over a root position in the issues related to
the society, politics and the religious aspiration of the people (Hamm & Spaaij, 2015). UNESCO
discussed the challenges faced in defining radicalization in its research report the “impact of the
internet and social media on youth and violent extremism” and found the difference between
violent radicalization processes, radicalization and violent acts. Although the process of
radicalization basically involves various strengthening processes, some scholars displayed the
ways through which the individuals turned into the extremist group and some of them are
spending the entire life with religious beliefs which shows the terror causing acts on the religions
name like killing, burning down, abusing the people (Jensen, Atwell Seate, & James, 2018). The
will of getting engage and sacrificing of the self-life and become a suicide bomber is something
that helps in turning the individual into the group extremist, but this is not the only reason,
discrimination and the outcome of marginalization are also motivates it, for political and
economic benefits (Smith, 2018).
Violence is very difficult to define but involves a large variety of experiences like that of
blood shedding, physical harm, breaching of others rights etc. Whereas religion is a very
complicated and problematic concept of the modern society and is considered as an abstraction
5

EXTREMISM 6
which contains beliefs, doctrine and the pilgrim places. So religious violence means the violence
that is concluded or driven by the ethnic perspective. The violence which is motivated or reacted
by the perspective of the religion or are done on the basis of the religious events, rules religious
based rules, related texts are defined as religious violence, which are consisted of inhuman
behavior and cruelty against the institutions, people, objects or events. It does not include the
acts which are done by the religious groups but acts committed by the secular groups against the
religious ones are not included in it (Vidino & Hughes, 2015). The main reason behind the
causing of religious violence are confusion and unclear thinking, the violence promotion is the
very risky tendency that the religion has. Arguments motivates and can be considered as one of
the biggest reason behind religious violence as well as for that of political and economic once
too. Hating or arguing or being extreme favorers of one’s own religion may force an individual
to commit violence in the name of religion. Which is again a wrong perspective and must be
prevented (McCauley & Moskalenko, 2017).
6

EXTREMISM 7
QUESTION 4
In this essay the impacts and effects of 21st century’s technological tools such as social
media on the domestic extremism recruitment membership and its sustained impacts in United
States are being observed and properly explained. The forth coming communicating technologies
and the platforms of social media plays a very essential role in causing radical positions on the
political and social issues and make them capable of any movements in the process of violent
and non-violent extremists (Tucker, Theocharis, Roberts, & Barberá, 2017). It also includes the
analysis which describes the usage of social media amongst the extremists of U.S. The ideology
and purpose of members of the group can be rated by the use of social media and its impacts can
be seen on the fighter travel of foreign and the terrorism of domestic plots and fighter travel
(Holt & Freilich, 2016).
The connection between the social media and the radicalization of U.S. extremists based
on the findings of the PIRUS data are as follows 1st one is the increasing role of online media
platform that plays a key role in the increasing these processes of extremism in U.S. as prior to it
they were slow but with the increase in the use of these platforms the relationships between the
content and the facilitation of the extremists have developed. 2nd one indicates the activeness of
the terrorist groups on social media played a role in redefying and mobilizing processes.3rd one
suggest that irrespective of increased usage of the social media, the communication between the
extremist did not appeared increasing but yes have become successful in travelling to the conflict
zones of foreign and committing the acts of domestic terrorism. Being active on the social media
is not enough, openness to adapt the new techniques like Facebook and twitter played an
important role in creating the suspects of terrorism in U.S. Finally 4th one In U.S. the social
media has not proved that influential in increasing the success outcome of extremism. With the
7

EXTREMISM 8
growth of knowledge of the technology the members of the extremist groups have also become
very powerful, with it to some extent, it is not a good sign for the nation. So has to overcome
them or stop them which could be done in many ways, one of them is to adjust the sensitivity of
the tools detecting hatred means that the creators of the tool has to decide about the usage of the
false negatives i.e. contents which are allowed online even though they are known to be harmful
and positives i.e. not loved contents those are blocked etc. they are going to use. Second may be
enabling of easier takedowns i.e. use of content modernization aiming to minimize the inaccurate
reviews (Ellis & Abdi, 2017). Third is to limit the user’s ability to share, as it the most important
and basic part of social media but it may face heavy risk as the extreme and hated things can be
spread easily to the large audience at a time. Forth is to create shared databases of the contents
i.e. it is the duty of the creators to provide proper guidelines on the materials that could create
hate and try to reduce the same by ensuring that the contents which are removed have from one
site have to be banned from the another (Silke, 2018). This would further also avoid the needless
duplicating and enable those resources which has challenging contents and are at the same time
really very hard to detect.
Thus it can be concluded that media is a very powerful and influential tool which is to be
used with proper care and caution, otherwise it can become a dangerous tool used by the
extremists committing violence against a nation (Weimann, 2016).
CONCLUSION
Therefore it can be concluded that all the four questions raised in this document are
adequately answered, with explanation to all the related factors.
8

EXTREMISM 9
REFERENCES
Ellis, B. H., & Abdi, S. (2017). American Psychologist. Building community resilience to violent
extremism through genuine partnerships, 3(72), 289.
Hamm, M., & Spaaij, R. (2015). US Department of Justice. NCJRS. Lone wolf terrorism in
America: Using knowledge of radicalization pathways to forge prevention strategies.
Washington, DC:.
Holmer, G. (2013). US Institute of Peace. Countering violent extremism: A peacebuilding
perspective.
Holt, T. J., & Freilich, J. D. (2016). Deviant Behavior. Internet-Based Radicalization as
Enculturation to Violent Deviant Subcultures, 855-869.
Iannaccone, L. R. (2006). Public choice,. Religious extremism: The good, the bad, and the
deadly, 128(1-2), 109-129.
Jensen, M. A., Atwell Seate, A., & James, P. A. (2018). Terrorism and Political Violence.
Radicalization to violence: A pathway approach to studying extremism., 1-24. Retrieved
from Radicalization to violence: A pathway approach to studying extremism.
Khader, M. (2016). IGI Global. What we know and what else we need to do to address the
problem of violent extremism online: Concluding chapter. In Combating Violent
Extremism and Radicalization in the Digital Era, 486-495.
LaFree, G., Jensen, M. A., James, P. A., & Safer‐Lichtenstein, A. (2018). Criminology.
Correlates of violent political extremism in the United States, 2(56), 233-268.
McCauley, C., & Moskalenko, S. (2017). The two-pyramids model. American Psychologist.
Understanding political radicalization, 3(72), 205.
Silke, A. (2018). Internet-Based Radicalization as Enculturation to Violent Deviant Subcultures.
Routledge.
9

EXTREMISM 10
Smith, A. G. (2018). Office of Justice Programs, National Institute of Justice. How
radicalization to terrorism occurs in the United States: What research sponsored by the
National Institute of Justice tells us. US Department Of Justice.
Stern, J. (2016). The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science,.
Radicalization to extremism and mobilization to violence: What have we learned and
what can we do about it?, 1(668), 102-117.
Tucker, J. A., Theocharis, Y., Roberts, M. E., & Barberá, P. (2017). Journal of democracy. From
liberation to turmoil: social media and democracy, 4(28), 46-59.
Van Prooijen, J. W., Krouwel, A. P., & Pollet, T. (2015). Social Psychological and Personality
Science. Political extremism predicts belief in conspiracy theories, 5(6), 570-578.
Vidino, L., & Hughes, S. (2015). The George Washington University Center for Cyber and
Homeland Security. Countering Violent Extremism in America.
Weimann, G. (2016). Asser Press, The Hague. The emerging role of social media in the
recruitment of foreign fighters. In Foreign fighters under international law and beyond,
77-95).
10