Political Ideologies

"In order to get the proper perspective, we must take a quick glance at the past. Seven years ago, Western Europe faced the threat of imminent aggression by Soviet forces of overwhelming strength. In that hour of mortal danger the North Atlantic Treaty was signed. The decision to accede to the Alliance required great vision and great courage on the part of many of the members. For the United States, it meant abandoning their traditional policy of isolationism from the affairs of Europe. For Norway and others it meant abandoning their tradition of neutrality. The free world owes a deep depth of gratitude to the Statesmen of the Western Democracies in these days. Their vision has reaped a rich reward for us all. The Alliance which they brought into being saved the free world from the unfathomable disaster which threatened it. Peace in Europe has been preserved. Soviet westward expansion has been halted. A shield of armed forces has been built up which, though not yet strong enough to resist an all out attack, is at least a significant deterrent to aggression. The forces of NATO are no longer a dream, they are a reality."

"And it will always happen that he who is not your friend will invite you to neutrality, while he who is your friend will call on you to declare yourself openly in arms. Irresolute Princes, to escape immediate danger, commonly follow the neutral path, in most instances to their destruction."

"Armed neutrality, it now appears, is impracticable."

"The metaphysical apologia at least betrayed the injustice of the established order through the incongruence of concept and reality. The impartiality of scientific language deprived what was powerless of the strength to make itself heard and merely provided the existing order with a neutral sign for itself. Such neutrality is more metaphysical than metaphysics."

"Neutrality is too often assumed to require the bleaching out of all traces of faith, excluding religious belief and discourse from public life. But it doesn't, and we can see why by appeal to the notion of public reason, articulated most clearly by the late political philosopher John Rawls. Rawls was quite clear that the religious have no obligation at all to keep their faith entirely to themselves. "Reasonable comprehensive doctrines, religious or non-religious, may be introduced in public political discussion at any time," he wrote, "provided that in due course proper political reasons – and not reasons given solely by comprehensive doctrines – are presented that are sufficient to support whatever the comprehensive doctrines are said to support.""

"Science values objectivity, rationality, and neutrality. It has concern for the truth. The humanities value subjectivity, imagination, and commitment. They have a concern for justice. Design values practicality, ingenuity, creativity, and empathy. It has concerns for goodness of fit and for the impact of design on future generations."

"A guilty system recognizes no innocents. As with any power apparatus which thinks everybody’s either for it or against it, we’re against it. You would be too, if you thought about it. The very way you think places you among its enemies. This might not be your fault, because every society imposes some of its values on those raised within it, but the point is that some societies try to maximize that effect, and some try to minimize it. You come from one of the latter and you’re being asked to explain yourself to one of the former. Prevarication will be more difficult than you imagine; neutrality is probably impossible. You cannot choose not to have the politics you do; they are not some separate set of entities somehow detachable from the rest of your being; they are a function of your existence. I know that and they know that; you had better accept it."

"Hayek forced into public discourse the question of the compatibility of democracy and statism. And unlike Burnham, he made no pretense of neutrality about the phenomena he described. … In responding to Burnham and Hayek … liberals were in fact responding to a powerful strain of Jeffersonian anti-statism in American political culture … The result was a subtle but important shift in liberal thinking."

"Freedom and fear, justice and cruelty, have always been at war, and we know that God is not neutral between them."

"Perhaps what I am about to say may seem strange to you, who are socialists, and vaunt humanity and your duty to your neighbor, but I never seek to protect a society which does not protect me, and which I will even say, generally occupies itself about me only to injure me; and thus by giving them a low place in my esteem, and preserving a neutrality towards them, it is society and my neighbor who are indebted to me."

"The rights of neutrality will only be respected, when they are defended by an adequate power. A nation, despicable by its weakness, forfeits even the privilege of being neutral."

"It was an axiom of "containment" that no part of the known world could be considered neutral. "Neutralism" was among the Cold Warriors' gravest curse words, applied with caustic hostility to India and even France. Those who were not with were against, subjected to intense economic and ideological — and sometimes military — pressure to fall into line."

"Donald Judd spoke of a "neutral" surface, but what is meant? Neutrality must involve some relationship (to other ways of painting, thinking?) He would have to include these in his work to establish the neutrality of that surface. He also used "non" or "not" – expressive – this is an early problem – a negative solution or – expression of new sense – which can help one into – what one has not known. "Neutral" expresses an intention."

"People say that my works are "neutral". But if you paint something, it is "something", and it cannot be neutral. Being neutral is a mere expression of a form of intention."

"Time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively. More and more I feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co-workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity."

"Rationalizations and the incessant search for scapegoats are the psychological cataracts that blind us to our sins. But the day has passed for superficial patriotism. He who lives with untruth lives in spiritual slavery. Freedom is still the bonus we receive for knowing the truth. "Ye shall know the truth," says Jesus, "and the truth shall set you free." Now, I've chosen to preach about the war in Vietnam because I agree with Dante, that the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in a period of moral crisis maintain their neutrality. There comes a time when silence becomes betrayal."

"The so-called paradox of freedom is the argument that freedom in the sense of absence of any constraining control must lead to very great restraint, since it makes the bully free to enslave the meek. The idea is, in a slightly different form, and with very different tendency, clearly expressed in Plato. Less well known is the paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. — In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law, and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal."

"The peace-loving nations must make a concerted effort in opposition to those violations of treaties and those ignorings of humane instincts which today are creating a state of international anarchy and instability from which there is no escape through mere isolation or neutrality."

"Information smacks of safe neutrality; it is simple, helpful heaping of unassailable facts. In that innocent guise, its the perfect starting point for a technocratic political agenda that wants as little exposure for its objectives as possible. After all, what can anyone say against information?"

"Most of us are not neutral in feeling, but, as human beings, we have to remember that, if the issues between East and West are to be decided in any manner that can give any possible satisfaction to anybody, whether Communist or anti-Communist, whether Asian or European or American, whether White or Black, then these issues must not be decided by war. We should wish this to be understood, both in the East and in the West."

"If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality."

"Most people understand the need for neutrality. The real struggle is not between the right and the left — that's where most people assume — but it's between the party of the thoughtful and the party of the jerks. And no side of the political spectrum has a monopoly on either of those qualities."

"The eloquent Lysias, posing as a non-lover, had concealed designs upon Phaedrus, so that his fine speech was really a sheep’s clothing. Socrates discerned in him a “peculiar craftiness.” One must suspect the same today of many who ask us to place our faith in the neutrality of their discourse."

"I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented."

"Political extremism involves two prime ingredients: an excessively simple diagnosis of the world's ills, and a conviction that there are identifiable villains back of it all."

"It seems to me that it is these extremists who are advocating a soft approach. Their oversimplifications and their baseless generalizations reflect the softness of those who cannot bear to face the burdens of a continuing struggle against a powerful and resourceful enemy. A truly tough approach, in my judgment, is one which accepts the challenge of communism with the courage and determination to meet it with every instrumentality of foreign policy—political and economic as well as military, and with the willingness to see the struggle through as far into the future as may be necessary. Those who seek to meet the challenge—or, in reality, to evade it—by bold adventures abroad and witch hunts at home are the real devotees of softness—the softness of seeking escape from painful realities by resort to illusory panaceas."

"Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue."

"It is not easy to see how the more extreme forms of nationalism can long survive when men have seen the Earth in its true perspective as a single small globe against the stars."

"If you want to know what's shortly due for the guillotine look for the most obvious of all symptoms: extremism. It is an almost infallible sign — a kind of death-rattle — when a human institution is forced by its members into stressing those and only those factors which are identificatory, at the expense of others which it necessarily shares with competing institutions because human beings belong to all of them."

"The director of the FBI considers racially motivated domestic extremists such as white supremacists the “top threat” facing Americans, as the nation continues to learn more about such people who perpetrated the deadly insurrection at the US Capitol last month. “The top threat we face from [domestic violent extremists] continues to be those we identify as Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists (RMVEs), specifically those who advocate for the superiority of the white race,” FBI director Christopher Wray testified before members of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday. The FBI has formally elevated the threat from white supremacist groups to its top priority level, alongside Isis and its network of homegrown terrorists, Mr Wray said."

"I don't like radical anything; left or right. I have a radical dislike of radicals."

"Any time that you devote airtime to espouse these extreme viewpoints you are lending it legitimacy and normalising it and telling your audience that this is an acceptable viewpoint that deserves to be aired in the public domain. That’s exactly what Fox News has done and they have blood on their hands."

"An individual sitting in front of a computer in one country can communicate with, encourage, and inspire multiple extremist actors thousands of miles away. Social media provides an avenue for the rapid movement of information in a realm where radicalization is often a personal and anonymous process."

"Much of junk culture has a core of crisis — shoot-outs, conflagrations, bodies weltering in blood, naked embracers or rapist-stranglers. The sounds of junk culture are heard over a ground bass of extremism. Our entertainments swarm with specters of world crisis. Nothing moderate can have any claim to our attention."

"The federal government doesn’t officially track the size of extremist groups, because it’s legal to join them. Membership also tends to be fluid, which means it’s hard to gauge whether Biden’s strategy is working. “They’re just much less structured and hierarchical,” said a senior administration official. “They’re better defined as movements. People flow into them, they could dabble in two at the same time, or go in and out.”"

"There are many taboos, intolerance and extremism. And our task is — to destroy them. I believe that clever and artistic, reasoned and convincing humor can push more and more walls in our world. And it can be done without insult or aggression."

"But though I was initially disappointed at being categorized as an extremist, as I continued to think about the matter I gradually gained a measure of satisfaction from the label. Was not Jesus an extremist for love: "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you." Was not Amos an extremist for justice: "Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever flowing stream." Was not Paul an extremist for the Christian gospel: "I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus." Was not Martin Luther an extremist: "Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise, so help me God." And John Bunyan: "I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience." And Abraham Lincoln: "This nation cannot survive half slave and half free." And Thomas Jefferson: "We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal . . ." So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice?"

"A free culture, like a free market, is filled with property. It is filled with rules of property and contract that get enforced by the state. But just as a free market is perverted if its property becomes feudal, so too can a free culture be queered by extremism in the property rights that define it. That is what I fear about our culture today. It is against that extremism that this book is written."

"Combatting violent extremism is of critical importance for the United States. Extremist attacks of all kinds can have perilous effects on the perceived safety of our nation. It is therefore imperative that the United States employ effective means for preventing and deterring violent extremism and related attacks."

"Consistent with direction in the 2011 National Strategy, federal CVE efforts have generally been initiated by leveraging existing programs and without a specific CVE budget. For example, activities that address violence in schools or hate crimes in communities may be relevant to constraining or averting violent extremism, but receive funding as part of a different program."

"In September 2015, DHS recognized that its CVE efforts were scattered across a number of components and lacked specific goals and tangible measures of success."

"Although we were able to determine the status of the 44 domestically focused CVE tasks from the 2011 SIP, we could not determine the extent to which the United States is better off today as a result of its CVE effort than it was in 2011. That is because no cohesive strategy with measurable outcomes has been established to guide the multi-agency CVE effort towards its goals."

"Since September 12, 2001, the number of fatalities caused by domestic violent extremists has ranged from 1 to 49 in a given year. As shown in figure 2, fatalities resulting from attacks by far right wing violet extremists have exceeded those caused by radical Islamist violent extremists in 10 of the 15 years, and were the same in 3 of the years since September 12, 2001. Of the 85 violent extremist incidents that resulted in death since September 12, 2001, far right wing violent extremist groups were responsible for 62 (73 percent) while radical Islamist violent extremists were responsible for 23 (27 percent). The total number of fatalities is about the same for far right wing violent extremists and radical Islamist violent extremists over the approximately 15-year period (106 and 119, respectively)."

"White supremacists, anti-government extremists, radical Islamist extremists, and other ideologically inspired domestic violent extremists have been active in the United States for decades. Examples of attacks include the 1993 World Trade Center bombing by radical Islamists, in which 6 persons were killed; and the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah federal building by anti-government far right individuals, in which 168 lives were lost. The September 11, 2001, attacks account for the largest number of fatalities in the United States in a single or closely- related attack resulting from violent extremism in recent decades. While the September 11, 2001, attacks were perpetrated by foreign violent extremists, from September 12, 2001 through December 31, 2016, attacks by domestic or “homegrown” violent extremists in the United States resulted in 225 fatalities, according to the ECDB. Of these, 106 were killed by far right violent extremists in 62 separate incidents, and 119 were victims of radical Islamist violent extremists in 23 separate incidents. Figure 1 shows the locations and number of fatalities involved in these incidents. A detailed list of the incidents can be found in appendix II. According to the ECDB, activities of far left wing violent extremist groups did not result in any fatalities during this period."

"In October 2016, the federal government defined the U.S. approach to countering violent extremism as proactive actions to counter efforts by extremists to recruit, radicalize, and mobilize followers to violence. The three parts of the U.S. approach to CVE efforts are: (1) empowering communities and civil society; (2) messaging and counter–messaging; and (3) addressing causes and driving factors."

"How does PIRUS define Islamist, Far Right, Far Left, and Single Issue ideologies? Islamist - We recognize that the terms “Islamist”, “jihadism”, and “jihadist” are applied inconsistently in both academic and policy circles, and can imply a wide range of meanings based on the context in which they are used. For this project, we use the broad term “Islamist” in reference to the religio-political methodology practiced by Sunni Islamist-Salafists who seek the immediate overthrow of incumbent regimes, and the non-Muslim geopolitical forces which support them, in order to pave the way for an Islamist society which would be developed through martial power. Although there are a number of Islamist-Salafist thinkers who do not advocate for violent military strategies to achieve their goals (e.g., Muhammad Nasiruddin al-Albani), in the U.S. context, the individuals we classify as “Islamists” are most commonly connected to, or inspired by, violent Islamist-Salafist groups that have their roots in the onset of “global jihadism” of the 1980s, including al-Qaeda and its affiliated movements. There are a number of ideological tenets commonly elaborated by Islamist-Salafist groups, including the imposition of shari’a with violent jihad as a central component, the creation of an expansionist Islamic state, or khalifa, and the use of local, national, and international grievances affecting Muslims, which are aired in an overtly religious context. Far right - There exists a broad range of far right beliefs and actors (often overlapping movements), including both reactionary and revolutionary justifications of violence. In its modern manifestation in the United States, the ideology of the far right is generally exclusivist and favors social hierarchy, seeking an idealized future favoring a particular group, whether this group identity is racial, pseudo-national (e.g., the Texas Republic) or characterized by individualistic traits (e.g., survivalists). The extremist far right commonly shows antipathy to the political left and the federal government. As a result of this heterodoxy, this category includes radical individuals linked to extremist religious groups (e.g., Identity Christians), non-religious racial supremacists (e.g., Creativity Movement, National Alliance), tax protesters, sovereign citizens, militias, and militant gun rights advocates. Far left - The far left in the United States is essentially class-oriented and consists primarily of individuals and groups that adhere to belief systems based on egalitarianism and the mobilization of disenfranchised segments of the population. With roots in the leftist student movement and radical prison reform movement of the late 1960s, traditional far left extremists generally sought the overthrow of the capitalist system, including the United States government, in order to replace it with a new, anti-imperialist economic order that empowers members of the “working class”. The traditional left included groups that maintained a distinct racial identity (e.g., Black Panther Party), which were motivated by a mix of economic grievances and race-based issues. Today, the far left is more commonly identified by followers of animal-rights and environmental protection issues. While not all animal rights or environmental groups are inherently leftist in orientation (for instance, there are Green Fascists), the vast majority of these individuals and groups identify with leftist political positions and have thus been included in the far left category for the purposes of this project. Single issue - Single issue extremists are individuals who are motivated primarily by a single issue, rather than a broad ideology. Examples in the PIRUS data of single issue extremists are individuals associated with the Puerto Rican independence movement, anti-abortion extremists that were not motivated by traditional far right issues (anti-government, race superiority, etc.), members of the Jewish Defense League, and extremists with idiosyncratic ideologies (e.g., Ted Kaczynski)."

"How does PIRUS define radicalization? We define radicalization as the psychological, emotional, and behavioral processes by which an individual adopts an ideology that promotes the use of violence for the attainment of political, economic, religious, or social goals. Indicators of radicalization within the scope of the PIRUS dataset consist of arrests, indictments, and/or convictions for engaging in, or planning to engage in, ideologically motivated unlawful behavior, or membership in a designated terrorist organization or a violent extremist group. Radicalization does not necessarily involve violence. For example, under the foregoing criteria, an individual who runs a website for a violent extremist group would meet the criteria for inclusion in the database."

"Violent extremism—generally defined as supporting or committing violent acts to achieve political, ideological, religious, or social goals—has been perpetrated and promoted by a broad range of groups in the United States for decades. Such groups include white supremacists, anti- government groups, and groups with extreme views on abortion, animal rights, the environment, and federal ownership of public lands; and radical Islamist entities, such as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), among others. The September 11, 2001, attacks account for the largest number of fatalities in the United States resulting from violent extremism. According to the U.S. Extremist Crime Database (ECDB), since the September 11 attacks, 85 attacks in the United States by violent extremists—associated with both radical Islamist and far right ideologies—have resulted in 225 fatalities."

"Recognizing that most CVE activities occur at the community level, DHS and DOJ officials leading the CVE Task Force describe the federal role in CVE as a combination of providing research funding and training materials, and educating the public through activities such as DHS or DOJ hosted community briefings in which specific threats and warning signs of violent extremism are shared. According to FBI officials, these outreach efforts also provide an opportunity to build relationships in the community and help clarify the FBI’s role in engaging community organizations. According to DHS officials, DHS also conducts regular community engagement roundtables in multiple cities that provide a forum for communities to comment on and hear information about Department activities, including CVE. In addition to community meetings, education of the public is to occur through a multiplicity of outreach channels, including websites, social media, conferences, and communications to state and local governments, including law enforcement entities."

"Legitimate and traditionally moderate organizations such as animal welfare societies have for years achieved notable results on behalf of the causes for which they lobby. But, over the past two decades, some of the more popular issues have attracted radical elements that now form an extremist militant core prepared to resorts to threats, violence and destruction of property to achieve their ends. In the case of the abortion issue, this has included murder For the most part, legitimate organizations disown the violent fringe. Some, however-notably in the context of the environmental and abortion issues-actively support the militants, or do so tacitly by failing to condemn extremist activities."