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Seriously though, we've heard a lot about extremism recently
a nastier harsher atmosphere everywhere, more abuse and bother-boy behaviour
less friendliness and tolerance and respect for opponents.
Alright, but what we never hear about extremism... is it's advantages!
Well. The biggest advantage of extremism is that it makes you feel GOOD
because, it provides you with enemies.
Let me explain. The great thing about having enemies
is that you can pretend that all the badness in the whole world is in your enemies
and all the goodness in the whole world is in YOU!
Attractive, isn't it?
So... if you have a lot of anger and resentment in you anyway
and you therefore enjoy abusing people
then you can pretend that you're only doing it because these enemies of yours are such very bad persons!
And if it wasn't for all of them, you'd actually be good natured, and courteous, and rational all the time.
So. If you want to FEEL good, Become an extremist!
OK. Now you have a choice.
If you join the hard LEFT, they'll give you their list of authorised enemies.
Almost all kinds of authority, especially the police. The City. Americans. Judges. Multinational corporations.
Public schools. Furriers. Newspaper owners. Foxhunters. Generals. Class traitors. AND of course... moderates.
OR. If you'd rather be an extremist on the hard RIGHT, no problem.
Fine. You still get a lovely list of enemies. Only they're different ones.
Noisy minority groups, unions,
Russia, weirdos
demonstrators, welfare spongers
meddlesome clergy, peaceniks
the BBC, strikers
social workers, communists
and of course... moderates.
And, upstart actors.
Now, once you're armed with one of these SUPER lists of enemies
you can behave as nasty as you like, and yet feel your behaviour is morally justified.
So! You can strut around, abusing people, and telling them you could eat them for breakfast
and STILL think of yourself as a champion of the truth.
A fighter for the greater good!
And not the rather sad paranoid schizoid that you really are.