Extremism

The Military Is The Extremism

January 3, 2025 David Swanson, World Beyond War. Educate! Extremism, Media, Terrorism, US military

According to a headline in The Hill newspaper, which takes a position typical of U.S. corporate media, “New Year’s attacks fuel fears of extremism in military.” In other words, an institution openly dedicated to mass killing and destruction may have fallen victim to infiltration by “extremists.” As if there could be something more extreme than a military. The reason for this approach is that two U.S. military veterans attempted mass murders that made the news on the same day — and their status as veterans (or in one case active duty) made the news. The fact that those guilty of mass shootings in the United States are, and have long been, very disproportionately veterans is, and has long been, strictly avoided by U.S. corporate media, including in reporting and commenting on these new incidents.

The Persistent Myth Of Radicalization

June 17, 2022 Cody Bloomfield, Defending Rights and Dissent. Educate! Extremism, Police, Racial Profiling, Radicals

You’ve seen the story in the media. A kid stumbles across fringe ideas online, gets involved with the wrong crowd, and ends up in the headlines for committing some act of violence. These stories follow a familiar arc. The only problem? For every person that follows this trajectory, many more will adopt fringe ideas and never commit violence. And for every hard-core idealogue that commits violence, there are people drawn to the violence, not the ideology. Following reprehensible acts of white supremacist violence, lawmakers are understandably grasping for solutions. But reliance on outdated radicalization theory empowers law enforcement agencies to trample over constitutional rights and civil liberties, all while misleading law enforcement about the causes of white supremacist violence.

US Risks Reigniting Islamic Extremism In Xinjiang

May 1, 2021 Vijay Prashad and Jie Xiong, Asia Times. Educate! Belt and Road Initiative, China, Extremism, Xinjiang

“Kashgar is a key location for the land and sea interface of the Belt and Road, connecting not only westward to West Asia, Europe, the Red Sea and Africa, but also southward to the Indian Ocean through the port of Gwadar,” said Professor Li Bo of the China Research Institute, Fudan University. It is, he told us, “a core area of the Belt and Road strategy.” Kashgar, one of the westernmost cities in China, is the main urban area of southern Xinjiang. Traders from across Asia have assembled at its Sunday bazaar for 2,000 years. More than 1,000 kilometers north of Kashgar is the town of Nur-Sultan, previously known as Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan. Here, in 2013, Chinese President Xi Jinping spoke about the need for a “Silk Road Economic Belt.

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