What is Extremism?

The use of terms like "extremism" and "extremist" seems to be increasing, but frequency of use seems to be inversely proportional to clarity of meaning.

Most people who use the terms frequently seem to think extremism is a bad thing, but they rarely say what it is that they are denouncing as bad.

I assume, since the opposite of extremism is moderation, middle-of-the road, mediocrity or sitting-on-the-fence, that people who denounce extremism favour vagueness, and not holding strong opinions about anything. One gets the impression that the role model for anti-extremists is Wither, the deputy-director of N.I.C.E. -- the National Institute for Coordinated Experiments in C.S. Lewis's novel That Hideous Strength.

It is the custom of some Christian bishops to sign their official correspondence with a self-designation like "the humble mediocrity", or words to that effect, and this might give the impression that the Christian faith is anti-extremist, until one reads the words in the Revelation of St John the Divine:

And unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write; These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God; I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth. Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked: I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thine eyes with eyesalve, that thou mayest see.

Whatever the Church of Laodicaea was back then, it certainly could not be accused of extremism, but its lack of extremism brought not praise, but denunciation. And people like Christian saints seem to have bee characterised by extremism. Most of us mediocrities admire them, but do not really seek to emulate them. That would be over-the-top. The safest position is a moderate disapproval of evil, and a moderate approval of good, but nothing extreme, you understand. 

Being extremist is, in fact, neither intrinsically good not intrinsically bad. It is not being it extreme that is good or bad, but rather what you are being extreme about.

Extremism and extremist are weasel words. Avoid using them, and be wary of people who use them too much. Those who are extremely anti-extremist are themselves being extremist.

Hijacking words: Urban Dictionary: Communitarianism

Having at one time been an editor of academic texts I am interested in words and meaning, and especially in the way words are sometimes used to obscure and confuse meaning rather than to communicate meaning. Words can sometimes be "hijacked" or "skunked". They are hijacked when their meaning is twisted or perverted to mean something else. They are "skunked" when they are used by so many people to mean so many different things that you can never be sure what a person means by them unless they give a definition every time they use it. One example is "liberal" and "liberalism", and that these words have been skunked can be clearly seen in the two preceding posts.

"Communitarian" and "communitarianism", on the other hand, have apparently been hijacked, at least by some people. I've blogged about this before here and here.

Communitarianism is a fairly new word, but the concept was developed by Catholic anarchists like Dorothy Day, Peter Maurin and Ammon Hennessy to distinguish Christian anthropology from modernist secular anthropologies like individualism and collectivism. Even though there wasn't a specific word for it, the concept has been around at least as long as Christianity has, and I've described it, with quotations from Orthodox theologians, in Love is the measure: Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker | Khanya.

I didn't realise how bad it had got, however, until I read this: Urban Dictionary: Communitarianism:

Communitarianism

buy communitarianism mugs, tshirts and magnets

n. The belief that a society is greater than the sum of its parts, and that the members of an organization ought to work toward improving the organization. Often accused to be 'communist' or 'fascist'.

Communitarianism is perceived to be evil because it opposes the individualistic doctrine of our society.

I find it difficult to see how anyone could take such a "definition" seriously. For a start, "accused to be" is illiterate. The correct English idiom is "accused of being", and "accused to be" is a solecism. Anyone who writes English that badly is not competent to write dictionary definitions.

The next problem is that we are not told the identity of those who make these accusations, nor are we told the identity of those who "perceive it to be evil", nor are we told which society is meant by "our" society. But I think it is safe to assume that those who make the accusations and perceive communitarianism in this way are as ignorant as the writer of the definition.

My attention was drawn to this in a blog post by James Highham, whose blog I read fairly regularly, and find interesting, though I don't always agree with everything he says, and in this instance, of course, I emphatically disagree.

nourishing obscurity : Four Great Lies:

The Fourth Lie – the “third way” – is an attempt to bring people in by the back door to the dark side of the duality and it utilizes the First Lie to good effect. Thus we get “communitarianism”, perverting the concept of local community and having a vast number of federalist controlled local communities, each under the influence and rubber stamping power of a Common Purpose graduate. Leading beyond authority, i.e. assuming powers which are not yours to assume and being answerable only to the oligarchy in the centre.

The thought of Dorothy Day being part of an "oligarchy at the centre" really is too much.

Worsened words

I took down my copy of Fowler's Modern English Usage this morning to check on something and my eye lit on the article on Worsened words.

Changes in the meaning of words, and still more in their emotional content, often reflect changes of opinion about the value of what they stand for. Occasionally a pejorative word becomes commendatory -- Baroque and Prestige, for example -- but more often it is the other way round.

Fowler gives several examples of such worsened words -- imperialism and colonialism were in much more favour a century ago than they are today. But as Fowler points out, this is because the things they stand for are less in favour. The words have not changed their meaning.

Other words do seem to have changed their meaning since the Second World War, or at least seem to be thought of mainly in the light of bad examples, such as appeasement and collaborator. One that has suffered an almost complete change of meaning is propaganda.

A word that seems to be in danger of developing a purely bad meaning, especially in America, is epithet. Yet when we speak of "Jesus Christ", "Christ" is in fact an epithet. Perhap it is because this particular epithet is so often used as an expression of annoyance that all epithets have been given a bad name.

And soon after reading and reflecting on this, I received the following e-mail, which gave another example of a worsening word:

We at christiancollegesonline.org recently came across your blog and were excited to share with you an article “10 Signs You’re in a Cult” was recently published on our blog at (http://www.christiancollegesonline.org/blog/2010/10-signs-youre-in-a-cult/ ), and we hoped that you would be interested in featuring or mentioning it in one of your posts. If you find something interesting or similar, please let me know.

Well, I've mentioned it in my blog, but I have grave reservations about the misuse of the word "cult" as if it always and only means something bad.

The primary meaning of "cult" is a specific system of religious worship, and I see nothing intrinsically wrong with worshipping God.

But perhaps I'm just rather old-fashioned that way.

When I bought Fowler's Modern English Usage I got the revised edition, brought up-to-date by Sir Ernest Gowers. But I look on the fly-leaf and see the date when I bought it -- 23 December 1970 -- nearly 40 years ago.

Rock-solid nebulous hot air

Hat-tip to Father David MacGregor of Contact Online Weblog: Ugandan Church faces totalitarian liberal activism. for pointing to this piece of rhetorical gobbledegook.

Anglican Mainstream: Ugandan Church faces totalitarian liberal activism.:

Chris Sugden Evangelicals Now Janaury 2010

The pressure on the Church of Uganda to respond to legislation that will be placed before the Ugandan Parliament on homosexual behaviour is not restricted to Uganda. This issue is affecting other democratic nations in Africa and Asia."

Anyone who knows anything about the English language will know that "liberal" and "totalitarian" are about as far removed from each other in meaning as they can possibly be. It is impossible for anything, including activism, to be simultaneously liberal and totalitarian. It is no more possible than it is for something to be simultaneously wet and dry, or hot and cold, solid and liquid. The only place where you will find liberal totalitarians is skiing the slow-clad slopes of Sahara mountains in midsummer, or sunbathing on the sand-dunes of Siberia in mid-winter.

If you want people to pay attention to what you have to say, avoid such over-the-top rhetoric.

Recalling interesting children

I've been puzzled by two terms recently -- "recall" and "interesting children".

Recall, in the sense of calling to mind, or remembering, is well known. So is the idea of recalling someone to duty.

But a couple of years ago the news media began referring to a "recall referendum" for President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela.

That suggested that he had ceased to be president some time ago, and now was being recalled to duty as president, something similar to what happened to Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan, until she was assassinated, so she didn't return to office.

But no, President Chavez wasn't returning to duty, since he was already there. The "recall" referendum actually meant just the opposite from what one would expect. It was not to recall him to duty as president, but actually to kick him out. In the event, he wasn't kicked out, but stayed there.

But since then the talking heads on South African TV and radio have begun talking about the "recall" of the late President Thabo Mbeki. I haven't heard anyone saying that Tony Blair was "recalled" as British prime minister, but perhaps that is not far off.

This came up for discussion in the alt.usage.english newsgroup, where people began discussing words that mean opposite things in American English and other varieties of English.

Two well-known examples are "table" and "moot point". In most English speaking countries if you table a report, you present it to a committee or other deliberative body to consider and discuss. In American English, however, if you table a report, you do the opposite -- you decide not to discuss or consider it.

Similarly, a "moot point" is usually a debatable one, one that one disagrees with, but in American English it means a point that is not worth debating.

So "recall" seems to be another word like "table" -- meaning one thing in one place, and the opposite in other places.

Well, not quite, as it emerged from the discussion in alt.usage.english.

In the US, many elective offices, such as that of the president, are for a fixed term. There is no provision for presidents or governors or mayors to resign, as Tony Blair and Thabo Mbeki did. So in some cases they can have a kind of "unelection", where they can unelect certain officials -- not the president, apparently, but the governors of certain states and mayors of certain cities. And, paradoxical as it may seem, this "unelection" is called a "recall"; only instead of recalling someone to office, if there are enough votes, the person is removed from office.

So the talking heads better wise up. Thabo Mbeki was not "recalled", not even in the American sense. He felt obliged to resign, which is something different. We did not have a general election to unelect him, which is what "recall" means in the American sense.

The other term, "interesting children", is much older, and the problem with it is that nobody seems to remember what it meant.

It was found in death announcements in newspapers, especially in Ireland, about 150 years ago, where one would find things like "two interesting children died last week". Or "Emma Jane Smith, daughter of Mr John Smith, an interesting child, died last Tuesday".

It was obviously so familiar that no one saw fit to explain it, and now I can't find anyone who knows what it actually means. I've written more fully about it in my genealogy blog.

If anyone has some definite information about it, please let me know.