{"id":60954,"date":"2018-09-24T06:09:49","date_gmt":"2018-09-24T06:09:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=60954"},"modified":"2018-09-24T06:09:49","modified_gmt":"2018-09-24T06:09:49","slug":"jm-bergers-extremism-from-mit-press-brilliant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=60954","title":{"rendered":"JM Berger’s Extremism, from MIT Press. Brilliant."},"content":{"rendered":"

[ by Charles Cameron<\/strong> — my third JM Berger review, following reviews of Jihad Joe<\/a> and ISIS: State of Terror<\/a> ]
\n.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

**<\/p>\n

I ordered a copy of JM Berger<\/strong>‘s Extremism <\/a>months early from Amazon, having followed many of the posts in which he was formulating the insights that led to the book, and expecting a volume full of the very detailed diagrams and network analyses they contained:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Image sources: <\/strong><\/p>\n

\n
  • ICCT<\/strong>, Countering Islamic State Messaging Through \u201cLinkage-Based\u201d Analysis<\/a>\n
  • Intelwire<\/strong>, EXTREMIST CONSTRUCTION OF IDENTITY<\/a><\/li>\n<\/blockquote>\n

    **<\/p>\n

    These diagrams, and the research that underlies them — the work of JM and his colleague, Haroro J Ingram<\/strong> — attest to JM’s skill at the detailed drill-down level, the equivalent of rock-face drilling in a mine. The book couldn’t be further from my expectations: it attests to an entirely different set of skills, those of simplicity, grace, and a superb command of language.<\/p>\n

    JM has the ability to communicate directly with a lay audience at their (our) level. He neither shies away from nuance nor adds needless complications — either of which would be a form of condescension to the reader. <\/p>\n

    JM’s writing is direct and clean:<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

  • Terrorism is a tactic, whereas extremism is a belief system.\n
  • Extremism is a spectrum of beliefs, not necessarily a simple destination.\n
  • Group radicalization precedes individual radicalization<\/li>\n

    <\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    **<\/p>\n

    Above are three of the pull-quotes, extracted from the book’s text, that state some of JM’s basic propositions on lucid, large-print, white on black pages, scattered as needed across the book’s 167 short pages (plus glossary, notes, bibliography, further reading, index)..<\/p>\n

    \n
  • What extremism is, how extremist ideologies are constructed, and why extremism can escalate into violence<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/blockquote>\n

    That’s the core proposition of the whole work, buttressed as it is with a wealth of detailed research and analysis. And radical…<\/p>\n

    JM’s approach is already radical in its (his) refusal to treat only one ideological or religious frame for extremism. Studying both ISIS <\/strong>and home grown Identity <\/strong>groups, those who promote violence and those who arguably foreshadow it, led JM to see extremism <\/strong>itself as the most fruitful category to study — not terrorism<\/strong>, nor Islam<\/strong>, not the Citizen Sovereignty<\/strong> movement nor alt-right<\/strong>, but extremism<\/strong> tout court<\/em>.<\/p>\n

    That broadening of the frame allows Berger a set of analytic insights that were obscured by detail in earlier, more limited studies, and his book is the elegant formulation of those insights, simply, and with a forest of scholarship in support.<\/p>\n

    **<\/p>\n

    JM lists Impurity, Conspiracy, Dystopia, Existential threat<\/strong>, and Apocalypse <\/strong>as central “crisis narratives” utilized by in-groups<\/strong> as they view out-groups<\/strong> — but it is the in-group-out-group distinction<\/strong> which is central to his thinking, its wrongness characterized by the in-group’s paranoid conspiracist suspicions of the out-group’s impurity, dystopic being the nature of the world now ruled by the out-group, and to be abhorred or saved by the in-, with existential threat and apocalypse providing the sense of time-crunch<\/strong>, urgency.<\/p>\n

    All this, I say, with a simplicity and elegance which belies the originality and scholarship that undergirds it.<\/p>\n

    Above highly recommended.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    [ by Charles Cameron — my third JM Berger review, following reviews of Jihad Joe and ISIS: State of Terror ] . ** I ordered a copy of JM Berger‘s Extremism months early from Amazon, having followed many of the posts in which he was formulating the insights that led to the book, and expecting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1221,133,526,9,151,1693,483,644,78,23,139,725,19,533,1010,211,1,1584],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-60954","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-amazon","category-book","category-charles-cameron","category-complexity","category-conspiracy","category-existential","category-extremists","category-graphical-thinking","category-ideas","category-insight","category-media","category-radicalization","category-recommended-reading","category-religion","category-review","category-terrorism","category-uncategorized","category-violence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60954","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=60954"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60954\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61001,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60954\/revisions\/61001"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=60954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=60954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=60954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}