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Norms in the Global Struggle against Extremism"rooting for" normalization vs. "rooting out" extremism?- / - Introduction Rooting out extremists Concept of "extremism" Extremism as a quality control problem (Six Sigma methodology) Social deviance as extremism Other possible understandings of extremism Methodological reservations regarding a statistical approach Terrorizing others by extremism Condoning extremism and its potential for terrorism Struggle against extremism: the ultimate global challenge for norms Human quality control: activities susceptible to extremism * Physical manifestations of extremism * Cultural manifestations of extremism * Psychological, religious and ideological manifestations of extremism * Lifestyle manifestations of extremism * Socio-political manifestations of extremism * Scientific and technological manifestations of extremism * Economic manifestations of extremism Possible implications Moderation as extremism -- norms as extremist? Conclusions References IntroductionThis is a review of some of the challenges arising from the reframing of the "global war against terrorism" as a "global struggle against extremism" -- or as a "global struggle against violent extremism". Curiously, in July 2005, US officials indicated that the phrase "global war on terror" (known by the acronym GWOT), used by the Coalition of the Willing for four years and predicted to last one or more decades, was to be "phased out in favor of more nuanced language" (cf Tom Regan, The 'rebranding' of the war on terror, Christian Science Monitor, 28 July 2005). The newly preferred phrase was indicated as being "struggle against violent extremism" [more] -- presumably to be known by the acronym SAVE as a natural reflection of "faith-based" strategic thinking. The strategic transition from "war" to "struggle", and from "terrorism" to "extremism", was variously articulated in July 2005 by the Bush regime and in August through the legislative proposals of Tony Blair (Blair vows to root out extermism, The Guardian, 6 August 2005). It could be considered an extremely farsighted proposal that anticipates constraints that citizens and consumers may need to impose on their behaviour as the challenges of society (global warming, scarcity of resources, social unrest, etc) become more acute. Tony Blair's announcement was however made on the occasion of the largest arts festival in the world, the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, and the World Science Fiction Convention (Glasgow, August 2005) -- both celebrations of extremism. It also immediately followed London's winning of the highly competitive bid for the Olympic Games in 2012 -- surely an extremist process in support of the ultimate celebration of extremism. It also coincided with a moment of reality TV described by editorialists as the nadir of British TV [more]. Unfortunately recent years have also seen admiration for anything "extreme" as an admirable lifestyle choice by which people affirm their identity and enhance their status in society -- being extreme has become a lifestyle frontier. Many commercial enterprises are as a result glorifying "extremism" by promoting their initiatives with "extreme" in the name of their company or product. In Britain these moves against extremism are being proposed and taken in response to a very limited number of deaths, resulting from a particular form of violent crime, a number that is a small fraction of the number of deaths associated with road traffic, alcoholism, drugs, suicide, murder, etc. It is an even smaller fraction of the number of deaths associated with political and economic positions maintained by the UK over long years in relation to developing countries. It might be asked whether the "struggle against extremism" is a consequence of the binary logic that has characterized the strategic leadership of the Coalition of the Willing: "If you are not with us, you are against us". Do we now have a case of the "Norms" vs the "Extremists"? Rooting out extremistsTony Blair has announced a 12-point plan on new security measures (5 August 2005). Given the switch in terminology from "terrorism" to "extremism", the following summary of the original plan has been adapted to reflect more accurately that switch:
Given the switch in emphasis from "terrorism" to "extremism", it is curious how the legislation subsequently proposed will be able to distinguish between the two. For example, emphasis has been placed on a new offence of "glorification" which may well be interpreted to apply to any form of extremism as indicative of incitement to terrorism (cf Clarke's draft bill proposes new offence of glorification, The Guardian, 16 September 2005). How is glorification of extremism to be distinguished from glorification of terrorism within such legislation? Concept of "extremism"Connotations: Although the strategic replacement for terrorism is clearly stated, what exactly constitutes "extremism" is not. For example, Butler Shaffer (What the 'Struggle' Is All About, LewRockwell.com, 1 August 2005) argues:
There do indeed exist bodies and sources that address the issues of "extremism", such as:
It may be assumed that such groups are concerned with particular forms of extremism, but the question of what is included and why, is not well articulated. As Shaffer points out:
The context in which the Bush/Blair proposals take place may well ensure that "extremism" is readily assumed to be Muslim extremism -- carefully excluding any reference to the extremism of other religions, notably Christianity and Judaism -- or indeed to any other forms of extremism, whether or not they have political dimensions. But the general terms in which "extremism" is to be defined by legislation may also be deliberately used as device to design many minority beliefs and practices out of British life -- and thereafter, presumably, out of European life through appropriate European directives. Ironically it may be the British who seek to use directives to transform Europeans into the "straight bananas" they had previously scorned [more]. The big danger is that, with "extremism" defined so loosely, many other unforeseen behaviours and beliefs may fall under interpretations of legislation regarding "extremism". Under the guise of what many assume to be a legitimate response to a very specific form of "extremism", power will be given to prohibit other forms of behaviour -- which may in fact be the hidden agenda of those formulating strategy in this way whatever the denials of such intentions. Also problematic is the extent to which people perceived by some to be "extremists" may well be appointed to high positions by governments who claim to be acting rigorously against "extremism" (notably as in the USA). The European Parliamentary Assembly is more precise in its definition of "extremism", focusing on its conflation with "political extremism":
A website of research links on extremism (Michael McFarland. The Rhetoric of Extremism: A research page of links on extremism, anti-extremism, or sites that are considered outside the mainstream) noted:
These suggest that radical efforts at "rooting out" might themselves be construed as a form of "extremism". More challenging to simplistic definition is the insightful argument that:
Peter T. Coleman and Andrea Bartoli (Dealing with Extremists, 2003) offer a measured approach to defining extremism, noting:
However they too avoid the basic challenge of how to define unambiguously the question of "how unlike us" does a group have to be to be legitimately defined as extremist. This is curious because there are excellent statistical approaches that point to the possibility of such precision. Statistical distinctions: An excellent discussion of the possibility, in relation to the war on terrorism, is provided by Harry Rosenberg (Counter Extremism: population characteristics and the sigma tool for change, Roadtopeace.org, 2004) in the light of the discipline of psychometrics. He focuses on the standard deviation of a whole population (known as sigma, symbolized by the Greek letter σ) which is the most commonly used measure of statistical dispersion. It is a measure of how dispersed are the values in any set with respect to a mean, or normal, value. In a normally distributed population then:
For Rosenberg, as applied to ethnic attitude for example: "anyone in the 2/3 group might be considered typical, because they are indeed typical. The 1/370 group might well deserve the label of being extreme, simply because they are so rare and far removed from the rest of us". In the UK there are approximately 1.6 million Muslims (namely 3 per cent of the population). According to the above, if "extremism" were understood as
Extremism as a quality control problem (Six Sigma methodology)Such an approach raises the question whether "extremism" is to be associated with those outside 3 standard deviations from the norm, rather than 4, 5 or 6. Many corporations have adopted the so-called Six Sigma methodology for quality control (cf Pete Pande, Larry Holpp, What Is Six Sigma? 2001) [more | more]. Six Sigma aims to have the total number of failures in quality, or customer satisfaction, occur beyond the sixth sigma of likelihood in a normal distribution of customers. GE Aircraft Engines operates at Nine Sigma levels of quality. Six Sigma tries to achieve a defect rate of 3.4 per million units, namely a 99.99964% quality level for the sample [NB see comment below on sigma shift correction]. Six Sigma is a methodology designed to reduce defects in products and processes and has been hailed as a critical business tool for the 21st-century -- professionalized through Black Belt Certification. Six Sigma processes are executed by Six Sigma Green Belts and Six Sigma Black Belts, and are overseen by Six Sigma Master Black Belts. The skills are acquired at a Six Sigma Academy and those involved are grouped within the International Society of Six Sigma Professionals. Clearly analogous qualifications may be needed to ensuring the rooting out of extremists -- although some would see unfortunate historical associations that are well explored in Umberto Eco's Name of the Rose. There is some irony to the possibility that "extremists", like suicide bombers, might come to be viewed as the social equivalent of "defects" for which a Six Sigma approach is called for. Six Sigma is indeed a tool in what is known as Total Quality Management -- now to be understood as a form of "Total Quality Governance". Extremism is in this sense a quality control problem focusing attention on the defects that have to be rooted out. Given the statistical terminology of standard deviation, such extremists might come to be viewed as 6-Sigma "deviants", by contrast with the acceptable "norms" as "standard deviants".
With respect to the Muslim population of the UK:
Similar comments could be made with respect to the Muslim population of the USA, as with supporters of the IRA in the USA. The standard deviation might be considered an indication of the confidence level with which it can be predicted that a given Muslim is an "extremist" of a given degree. Sigma shift correction: distinction between "short-term" and "long-term" Sigma: To the extent that "extremists" are to be considered as generated by processes within their community, there is a case for learning from the recognition of a long-term corrective measure built into the above calculation of sigma in the light of experience with manufacturing processes. In Six Sigma parlance, z-score (a common statistical way of standardizing data on one scale) and process sigma are used interchangeably. Strictly speaking, the process sigma and z-equivalents are loosely tied to the statistical z-score based on the strict definition derived from that of a normal distribution. For most Six Sigma applications the differences are not significant. Sigma (with a capital "S"), as used in Six Sigma Methodology, is therefore not the same thing as the standard deviation of a process, referred to as sigma (with a lower case "s" or as the Greek letter σ). The sigma calculation in the above table takes account of a dynamic process factor discovered in manufacturing:
This difference of 1.5 sigma (typically between 1.4 and 1.6) is due to the fact that processes vary and drift over time - otherwise known as Long-Term Dynamic Mean Variation. The long-term corrector (whose value continues to be the subject of debate [more]) is based on experience with particular processes. In any definition of extremism, it therefore allows for common and special causal variation that may be characteristic of a particular community. The adjustment takes into account what happens to every process over many cycles of manufacturing -- the kind of adjustment that is required in assessing extremism in a dynamic community. The reporting convention of the Six Sigma methodology requires the process capability to be reported in short-term sigma -- without the presence of special cause variation. Long-term sigma is therefore determined by subtracting 1.5 sigma from the short-term sigma calculation to account for the process shift that is known to occur over time. The 1.5 Sigma shift is based on the "conservative" assumption that over time, and with a sufficiently large number of samples, a realistic Sigma value is 1.5 Sigma less than that calculated to report "optimistically" on the success of the project -- such as the rooting out of "extremists" from any community. [more more] Social deviance as extremismIn a study of Thinking about Psychopathology, James E. Maddux et al (Conceptions of Psychopathology: A Social Constructionist Perspective, 2004) argue that: Subjectivity also influences the determination of how deviant a psychological phenomenon must be from the norm to be considered abnormal or pathological. We can use objective, scientific methods to construct a measure such as an intelligence test and develop norms for the measure, but we are still left with the question of how far from normal an individual’s score must be to be considered abnormal. This question cannot be answered by the science of psychometrics because the distance from the average that a person’s score must be to be considered abnormal is a matter of debate, not a matter of fact. It is true that we often answer this question by relying on statistical conventions such as using one or two standard deviations from the average score as the line of division between normal and abnormal (see the chapter on cognitive abilities in childhood). Yet the decision to use that convention is itself subjective. Why should one standard deviation from the norm designate abnormality? Why not two standard deviations? Why not half a standard deviation? Why not use percentages? The lines between normal and abnormal can be drawn at many different points using many different strategies. One of the challenges in the political debate is whether efforts should be made to ensure that "extremists" are either "integrated" or "assimilated" into the "mainstream" of any national culture -- presumably prior to "rooting out" those for which this process is not successful. Here "mainstream" is presumably to be understood as one standard deviation -- namely the population of "norms" who have the same "way of life" to which both Bush and Blair make reference. The question is whether those like Muslims, Druids, or nudists should abandon their "way of life" within such a national culture or be declared to be "extremists" (cf Roy Hattersley, End This Chorus of Intolerance, The Guardian, 12 August 2005) Other possible understandings of extremismMental disorders: The incidence of disease, especially mental disorder, could be presented in terms of a binomail distribution. One form of mental disorderr, namely learning disability may be defined as those performing two standard deviations away from the mean, or the bottom 2.5% -- namely an "extreme" which has evoked the attention of those favouring eugenics. Any such discrepancy of actual language or math performance below that expected for a given intelligence level may be considered significant [more]. Tests can also be divided into nine levels of performance or stanines with results typically following a binomial distribution. The challenge of extremes is however more evident in subtler disorders to which the population as a whole may be significantly susceptible. According to Stuart A. Kirk (Are we all going mad, or are the experts crazy? LA Times, 14 August 2005), psychiatric researchers recently estimated that half of the American population has had or will have a mental disorder at some time in their life -- in comparison with only a small percentage a generation ago. Kirk argues that because there are no biological tests, markers or known causes for most mental illnesses, who is counted as ill depends almost entirely on frequently changing checklists of behaviors that the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (published by the American Psychiatric Association) considers as symptoms of mental disorder. An estimated 22.1 percent of Americans ages 18 and older -- about 1 in 5 adults -- suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder in a given year. When applied to the 1998 US Census residential population estimate, this figure translates to 44.3 million people. [more more more] One percent of the population (more than 2.5 million Americans) has schizophrenia (Schizophrenia Bulletin, 1998). Given the consequences of such disorders, the question is who then should be considered an "extremist". Perhaps matching such disorders on a normal distribution are the peak and flow experiences, notably as experienced by the cultural creatives. Paul H. Ray and Sherry Ruth Anderson (The Cultural Creatives: how 50 million people are changing the world, 2001). They claim to have found out that 50 million adult Americans (slightly over one quarter of the adult population) can now be identified as belonging to this group -- also "extremists" to a certain degree? Mutation and mutants: Any given biological species is subject to a degree of genetic mutation. Some mutations may survive, others may be essentially non-viable in comparison with the prevailing norm. Two standard deviations from the norm are considered significant. By analogy, this points to the possibility of a form of memetic mutation with which psychological or ideological extremism might be associated. The Memetic Lexicon indicates the phenomenon of memetic drift as: Accumulated mis-replications; (the rate of) memetic mutation or evolution. Written texts tend to slow the memetic drift of dogmas. To what extent is a suicide bomber a memetic mutant? Risk: Assessment of risk is of vital significance to the financial markets and to insurance of every kind (health, life, accident, etc). Typically extreme risk is recognized analytically in terms of standard deviations, with two standard deviations being a significant cut-off point beyond which any risk may be considered extreme. The new approach to extremism and its elimination will favour tendencies towards risk aversion and should minimize exposure to extreme risk. Anomalies / Abnormalities: There is a particular challenge to detection of the anomalous and the exceptional because it is of necessity a very low frequency, if not unique occurrence. It may well be non-repeatable and as such any observation cannot be effectively confirmed. One consequence is that, in order to sustain the coherence of explanations that would be undermined by any such evidence, there is a marked tendency simply to deny that the anomaly occurred or to explain it in terms of erroneous observation. The process of rooting out extremism may then be understood as an institutionalization of the exclusion of such anomalies. There is however a challenge in that inexplicable anomalies may constitute significant indicators of system failure [more] and may be vital to the identification of new lines of research and the development of new technologies [more]. Anomaly research is then a discipline of particular importance. But, as with the need of the Vatican to continue confidential research into esoteric domains whose significance to others is denied, a special research context and methodology is required to maintain research into "extremism" to ensure that it can be effectively rooted out -- if the existence of such phenomena is not simply to be denied. For the Catholic Church, "miracles" also call for particular methods of investigation. Anomaly research is also significant in relation to cult phenomena such as UFOs, paranormal phenomena, etc [more | more]. Error conditions: The challenge of detecting "extremism" may be usefully seen in terms of the kind of error associated with observations and their intepretation:
The dilemma in identifying "extremists" is that whilst it would be nice to completely eliminate both Type I and Type II error types, in practice reducing one causes the other to increase. This is because the appearance of "extremism" t and "normality" are not clear-cut. "Norms" can appear to be "Extremists" and "Extremists" can appear to be "Norms". Coherence: A quite different approach is also interesting because it reflects the "extreme" perspective of a group, the Maharishi University of Management, which many would readily label "extremist". David W. Orme-Johnson (Quantifying the field effects of consciousness: from increased EEG coherence to reduced international terrorism, 2002) reviews the methodology and results of nine key studies from a body of 50 studies demonstrating field effects of consciousness (notably a form of EEG coherence) associated with the Transcendental Meditation (TM) technique. Through collective meditation by groups of a critical size the research is claimed to offer evidence for a stress reduction effect (the "maharishi effect") for a larger surrounding population. Thus for any population of 10,000, just 1% meditating would achieve that effect in the case of regular TM meditators. For the same population, the same effect would be achieved by the square root of 1% meditators if they were advanced TM meditators. The work predicted decreased international conflicts and terrorism on a global scale, using data from independent scholars who were in no way connected with this research programme. Ironically this suggests that "extremists", possibly several standard deviations from the norm, can provide a remedial response to the conditions giving rise to "extremism". Unsaid: There is an assumption that "extremism" is necessarily a detectable manifestation. Given the importance of religious beliefs -- which may not be detectable -- in the issue of "extremism", some attention could usefully be given to the nature of the unsaid (cf Varieties of the Unsaid in sustaining psycho-social community, 2004). Methodological reservations regarding a statistical approachThe apparently rigorous statistical approach to identifying degrees of extremism is based on a questionable assumption regarding the "normality" of distribution as highlighted by Steven Rose (Lifelines: Biology, Freedom, Determinism, 1997):
In considering the statistical approach to determining extremism it is worth reflecting on the intimate relationship of any statistical norm to the democratic elected majority of a population. Where at least 50% of a vote is required to achieve such a majority, this may be described as 1.5 Sigma, namely 1.5 standard deviations. Any political opposition is thus positioned as a form of extremism -- an exception to the democratically elected norm. Efforts to root out extremism may therefore be understood as efforts to institutionalize the rooting out of opposition -- if only in its more extreme forms. In these terms a satisfactory (and honourable) opposition in parliament would be that proportion of the population between 1.5 and 2.0 Sigma -- provided that those beyond 2.0 Sigma could be successfully marginalized. This is one justification for the avoidance of proportional representation -- it gives an unwelcome voice to extremists. In commenting on the above arguments, statistician Peter Collins notes (in a personal communication):
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