Disagreeing with government policy

The argument

Disagreements over government policy can incite extremist violence very quickly, and the reason is one of scale. Policies are implemented over a large area and affect many people at once, so a single decision creates a large population with the same grievance at the same moment. A private dispute affects those party to it; a policy dispute supplies a ready-made constituency, which is the raw material extremist movements need in order to form. Polarization compounds this. Where politics is polarized, both sides feel they need to discredit the other in order to gain power and status, so a disagreement about a policy is rarely left as a disagreement about a policy. It is recast as evidence of the other side's bad faith, and an opponent understood in those terms is easier to justify acting against. Policies also impact different socioeconomic groups differently, and socioeconomics play a large part both in policy and in the reaction to it. The same measure will be an inconvenience in one place and a serious loss in another, which is why reactions to it diverge so sharply. Violence rates are much higher in larger cities, which is attributed here to the inequity and the disparities between groups of people concentrated there — where the gap between groups is visible daily, a policy that widens it registers as something more than an administrative decision. It is important to note that extremism in politics does not always lead to violence. Extremism can include forms of violence, whether public or private, but it can equally take the form of thoughts or of ordinary conversations, and most of it never goes further than that. Politics and policies are sensitive issues, and it is because of that sensitivity that dissenters and displeased people can become extremists over politics and government policy.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Government policies are open for appeal and dissent that do not include extremism or extremist violence. Politics may be divided does not—and should not—lead to an increased amount of extremist or extremist violence.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Disagreement with government policy is close to universal while extremism is rare, so the premise cannot explain what it is offered to explain: a condition present in almost everyone cannot account for the conduct of a very small number. "Can incite extremist violence very fast" also asserts a speed and directness the research on radicalisation does not support, since it generally describes gradual processes involving networks, personal grievance, identity and active recruitment. [Rejecting P2] The claims gathered here do not connect. Polarisation describes the distribution of opinion rather than a route into violence; the socioeconomic point substitutes urban violence rates for extremist violence, a different phenomenon with different perpetrators and causes; and the argument itself concedes that extremism often involves no violence at all, which leaves the premise supporting a conclusion about beliefs while the evidence offered concerns violence. As the counter observes, the ordinary channels of appeal and dissent are open to exactly the same people, so what actually needs explaining is why a few bypass them.