Why do people become extremists?

Encyclopedia of Opinion

Question: Why do people become extremists?
Position‹4 of 5›: People feel undervalued by society
Argument: Feeling undervalued by society

Feeling undervalued and under-appreciated by society can make a person feel like they have nowhere to turn for support and encouragement. Extremist groups give people a sense of purpose and drive in their lives that they may not have if they're feeling underrepresented in their society.

The argument

Feeling undervalued or ignored by society can lead to a myriad of violent thoughts and actions. Being undervalued by society is more of an external factor than insecurity, anger, or loneliness. The feeling of being under-appreciated can stem from socio-economic barriers or other external factors beyond the individual's control. As people feel undervalued, they begin to look to people to blame. Blaming others can result in a loss of empathy and an increase in angry emotions. This anger can be taken out in violence against other people while turning into extremism. When people feel undervalued, they can be manipulated by extremist groups who pretend to show care and interest in that individual to recruit them. There is evidence that this recruitment even starts from a young age, with school-age children and young adults, who may be the target of bullying or violence in their personal lives. Extremist groups make those individuals feel valued and appreciated and feed them misinformation about the righteousness of their cause to gain support. Their value and appreciation cause the individual, who may have felt disenfranchised and undervalued before, more confident and more prone to violence on behalf of that extremist cause.

Premises

[P1]Feeling undervalued or ignored by society—often rooted in socio-economic barriers beyond a person's control—breeds a search for someone to blame, a loss of empathy, and anger that can turn into violence. [P2] Extremist groups exploit this by pretending to value and appreciate disenfranchised individuals, recruiting them (sometimes from a young age) and feeding them misinformation about the righteousness of their cause. [C] People become extremists in part because they feel undervalued by society and seek the appreciation extremist groups offer.

Counter-arguments

Extremists don't manipulate people for their own personal or causal gain. Believing that extremists manipulate other people into following their cause is naive. The individual chooses the path of extremism and follows it on their own for their own reasons. Being undervalued by society does not mean that an individual is too weak to resist persuasion or misinformation from extremist causes.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Feeling undervalued is vastly more common than extremism, so the premise identifies a background condition rather than a cause, and the chain it describes — devaluation to blame to lost empathy to violence — is asserted step by step with nothing to explain why almost everyone who begins it stops. [Rejecting P2] Casting recruits as manipulated by groups that "pretend" to value them writes the recruit's own reasoning out of the account, when people who join such movements typically also adopt and argue for their claims; grievance and ideology operate together here, and treating the first as sufficient makes the second invisible.