Path to Extremism – A Personal Account 1: The Conflict
The greatest difficulty we encounter when trying to understand the phenomena of “extremism” is that we do not recognize the mindset of the extremists. We usually reduce it to simplistic origins, such as poverty, the feeling of being social outcasts or even mental illness. George W. Bush tried to explain why the terrorists attacked the US on 9/11 because “they hate our freedoms,” without realizing that this hatred for freedom is not the root cause of extremism, but only a by-product of it.
In this article I offer an insider’s perspective on what extremism means, and what it’s true origins are. This is a personal account of how I became an extremist, and why I chose that path. (more…)