The most deadly threat of extremism

The rise of extremism is socially dangerous that it is not only dangerous in terms of the events that extremist groups could do, but it is also dangerous that it will encourage more people to become extreme. Many people may have a similar experiment to mine, when I get into a verbal fight with someone else, I am very likely to say something that is more and more extreme when the argument continues, the one who I argue with is also doing the same. I am not here to blame anyone for starting it; however, from this example, we can see that when one side is becoming more extreme, the counterpart will also become more extreme. This is understandable and could be explained.

Suppose our society always delivers the result of the mean of the aggregation of the entire population’s preferences; then if one group becomes more extreme, the mean will be shifted in favour of the extreme group. Of course, the counterpart does not want to see that, so in terms of shifting the outcome backwards, they also need to be more extreme. Once both sides become extremely extreme that they cannot be any more extreme, in order to grow in influence, they will try to increase in their sizes, so they try to make the neutral people more extreme towards them. Because they are extreme groups, we assume they do not offer any median options, so the median group can only choose 0 (not cooperate) and 1 (cooperate and become extreme), there is no option between 0 and 1. Under such circumstance, the median group would be divided by the extreme groups. If the people do not want to accept either group, they will shift to a different dimension and become a new extreme group in a different dimension. So eventually everyone in the society becomes extreme. Although a triangle shape is a stable situation, if we assume there are more than just two dimensions, the whole system becomes very instable, this raises the probability of social unrest. There are more than two dimensions of opinions.

To conclude, extremism will drive more people to be extreme; no matter if the new extreme groups fight along the existing extreme group or against them, it is almost definite to increase the probability of social unrest.