# WaiDai

Definition of Extremism

The term "Extremism" is defined as having a tendency or disposition to go to extremes or an instance of going to extremes, especially in political matterns, for example the leftist extremism and the extremism of the Nazis. (Dictionary.com http://www.dictionary.com/browse/extremism)

The Australian Politician, Peter Coleman and the Academician Andrea Bartoli describe extremism as “[...] activities (beliefs, attitudes, feelings, actions, strategies) of a character far removed from the ordinary. (Omar Ashour, The De-Radicalisation of Jihadists: Transforming Armed Islamist Movements (London: Routledge, 2009), pp. 4-7.)

Sharing an Extremistic view means that Humans have a tendency to think that others should also think like they do and therefore tend to assume that their own position is shared by the majority of other “reasonable” individuals. Therefore it can happen that even those whom we may consider extremists call others “extremist”. (http://www.icct.nl/download/file/ICCT-Schmid-Violent-Non-Violent-Extremism-May-2014.pdf)

On the other hand there exist the so called "Political extremism", which is defined as the will to power by a social movement in the service of a political program typically at variance with that supported by existing state authorities, and for which individual liberties are to be curtailed in the name of collective goals, including the mass murder of those who would actually or potentially disagree with that program. Restrictions on individual freedom in the interests of the collectivity and the willingness to kill massively are central to this definition. (the American political scientist Manus Midlarsky, in his study Origins of Political Extremism: Mass Violence in the Twentieth Century and Beyond has described extremism in 2011 in this way )