Extremism is "a totalitarian worldview that people adopt at the expense of their autonomy,” says Elad Nehorai. To people who have "longed for a sense of purpose," it informs them they're "a hero in a cosmic struggle." It tells them that their "community had the answers to all of life’s big questions, while other communities didn’t," and that even within the community, some people can't be allowed to participate on "equal footing."
It’s a worldview in which you believe there are superhumans, ordinary humans, and subhumans. That the inferior humans want to take over the world, at the expense of the superior humans. And that the superhumans can—no, must—do everything they can to stop that.
* * *
I think few people consciously set out to become extremists. But extremism offers something so powerful that people are willing to give up their autonomy in exchange and let ideology dictate their course.
* * *
[RV:] What is it like for you looking back on it?
It still feels surreal. As if I was inhabited by someone else for a few years. And that’s where the extremism begins for me: that I’ve been convinced to adopt a persona that fundamentally contradicts who I really am, what I believe, and what I stand for.
— Elad Nehorai, interviewed by Rinke Verkerk. An Interview With De Correspondent: An in depth interview where we explore my story as well as my thoughts on extremism, antisemitism, and how to address both. Elad Nehorai’s Newsletter, Dec 23, 2025
From a 2019 New York Times explainer by Sophie Lewis:
"Ms. Parker [aka Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull] and Ms. [Julia] Long may not know it, but they’re likely influenced by the legacy of the British “Skepticism” movement of the 1990s and early 2000s, which mobilized against the perceived spread of postmodernism in English universities as well as homeopathy and so-called “junk science.” Hence, the impulse among TERFs to proclaim their “no-nonsense” character; witness the billboard Ms. Parker paid to have put up last fall [2018] dryly defining a woman as an “adult human female.” Such a posture positions queer theory and activism as individualistic, narcissistic and thus somehow fundamentally un-British.
It’s also worth noting that the obsession with supposed “biological realities” of people like Ms. Parker is part of a long tradition of British feminism interacting with colonialism and empire. Imperial Britain imposed policies to enforce heterosexuality and the gender binary, while simultaneously constructing the racial “other” as not only fundamentally different, but freighted with sexual menace; from there, it’s not a big leap to see sexual menace in any sort of “other,” and “biological realities” as essential and immutable. (Significantly, many Irish feminists have rejected Britain’s TERFism, citing their experience of colonialism explicitly as part of the reason.)¨
Michael Shermer is the publisher of Skeptic magazine. I saw some of his transphobic tweets and picked up a copy of his 2000 book Denying History to try to figure out what's going on there.
Below, emphasis mine:
"We all write our own ideological scripts, of course, so what is the difference between our scripts and the scripts of extremists? If we assume that the underlying beliefs of all extremists are false, we have to admit that at some point in our lives most of us qualify as extremists. But, Goertzel explains, the 'true beliefs' of extremist ideological thinking are often so amorphous and ambiguous that it is difficult to refute them. Further, when these beliefs form the basis of group cohesion, when they create in their followers a passionate, almost obsessional attachment to them, that is another sign of extremism, as is the polarization of the world into unambiguous categories, biased rhetorical and semantic argumentation, all-inclusive systems that offer the key to wisdom and truth, the dogmatic use of texts where the leader's words become hallowed, and the denial of contradictory information. Each of these characteristics is a necessary but not sufficient delimiter of extremist ideology. It is the combination of many of these indicators that makes an ideology extreme. The belief that the Holocaust did not happen, for example, is most certainly cohesive for the denier movement — the entire ideology revolves around it. The followers are deeply passionate, indeed, almost obsessive about their belief. They have polarized their world into Jews and non-Jews, exterminationists and revisionists, lies and truth. Their bias, as we shall see, drives them to select evidence, analogies, and documents that fit their belief and ignore those that do not." (p. 91)
Michael Shermer and Alex Grobman, Denying History: Who Says the Holocaust Never Happened and Why Do They Say It? (University of California Press, 2000)
This interests me because (1) I blogged here about political polarization in 2017 (2) some of it sounds not unlike what it feels like to be on the receiving end of transphobia. When cis people start worrying about the existence of trans people and try to stop people from being trans, it becomes a consuming belief for them.
I wrote more about this book and my reflections on transphobia. See: "Transphobia is a Form of Denialism". It's a 10-minute read on Medium. Medium lets you read a certain number of stories for free every month. You may also consider a paid membership on the platform.
https://twitter.com/MattWalshBlog/status/1684279589600735239
The publisher of "Skeptic Magazine" thinks if you get murdered by agents of the government in the act of protest, it's your fault for just not staying home.
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— Anthony L. Fisher (@anthonylfisher.bsky.social) January 9, 2026 at 10:53 AM
Michael Shermer, "skeptical libertarian," is now taking his forensic analysis cues from Tim Pool.
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— Anthony L. Fisher (@anthonylfisher.bsky.social) January 9, 2026 at 11:50 PM
"It is politically/ideologically neutral." Hmm. How would you know?
Dear @sobekhotep97.bsky.social
Here is a general overview of all the trans issues in the debate, which we released free in Skeptic. It is politically/ideologically neutral, best piece I've read on the subject:
www.skeptic.com/reading_room...
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— Michael Shermer (@michaelshermer.bsky.social) December 18, 2024 at 10:31 AM
Relatedly, in genocide denial:
...in response to this...
...Florence Ashley (@ButNotTheCity) tweeted: Barbara Kay, seeing the success of her son’s race science outlet Quillette, officially announces her genocide denialism era. (April 1, 2023)
Thomas Lecaque is referring to this Ohio Capital Journal story.
"“Normalization” might be an overused trope – but here it applies. Religious zealotry is presented as the outgrowth of a worldview shaped by 'faith and family,' those widely accepted pillars of American culture; a professional life spent in rightwing activist circles and among partisan extremists is reinterpreted as a career of service and leadership; a radical political agenda is sanitized as the manifestation of the worries and desires of 'regular folks.'
This is another iteration of an apologist sleight of hand that is often deployed to provide cover for the Republican Party: If extremism is not defined by its ideological and political substance, but purely as 'something fringe,' then the minute it becomes GOP mainstream, it ceases to be regarded as extreme. Just like that, radical ideas and politicians get automatically legitimized: By definition, the Republican Party, regardless of how substantively extreme, gets treated as 'normal' simply because it is not fringe, because it is supported by almost half the country."
— Thomas Zimmer, “Faith and Family” vs Democracy, Democracy Americana (Substack), November 1, 2023
Only one side has moved.
Liberals continue to believe more or less the same thing they've always believed: people exist and should have basic rights, and that while we may sometimes be annoyed or unimpressed with each other, there's no sense making a big fuss about the fact that humans have sexuality and that individuals and groups are different in various ways.
Whereas the "conservatives" have radicalized and ratcheted up supremacist beliefs. They think that they are the real people, and that their nation is theirs to control.
If you say "no," they think you're part of the conspiracy.
If you provide facts and reasons, they deflect with whataboutisms.
Their hypocrisy is a feature, not a bug.
Here are the consequences
If you believe that you deserve to exist and others don't, you'll start to act that way.
"I don’t know how you believe that most people deserve to die except for you without starting to arrange power in ways that will make people die. I don’t know how you can believe that the death of the planet and the eternal punishment of others is tied to your own eternal profit without becoming inherently genocidal in your spirit, without believing that you deserve to live and other people deserve to die, that your comfort is more important than everyone else’ lives, that the satisfaction of your whims are worth their pain."
— A.R. Moxon, "An Appropriate Anger," The Reframe (Substack), October 29, 2023
'Extremism' debate in the UK
In early 2024, George Galloway was elected MP and held the seat for a few months. After his election, Rishi Sunak gave a speech on extremism. Tory ministers then sought to define extremism in a way that would allow anti-trans beliefs and not consider them impermissible extremism.
People who lean into GC beliefs of course say that GC isn't bigoted
An example: In the UK, Wes Streeting, a Labour MP and the shadow Health Secretary, told The Sun on April 10, 2024 that he used to believe "trans men are men, trans women are women," but that, over the past "few years," influenced by ideas from people like JK Rowling and Labour MP Rosie Duffield, he's changed his mind. Instead he "think[s] there are lots of complexities." (Complexities, here, may be a euphemism. It's commonly used as such in anti-trans rhetoric. It means: I'm aware of many facts and I have reasons for holding my opinion, and the information may be evolving, and my opinion will evolve in humility, and therefore I cannot possibly be a bigot — but I won't tell you what facts and arguments I'm aware of because everything is just really quite complex. Meanwhile, I don't believe trans people are who they say they are.)
In May, he told the Hay Festival: "I genuinely think there is a way through this toxic conversation where trans people can live with dignity, respect and inclusion, and women can have their sex-based rights protected."
The problem is that we don't know what he means by "dignity, respect and inclusion" — if indeed he means anything at all, which he probably does not. Pink News probably would have given details, had Streeting given any. If trans people aren't being listened to or believed, and are only receiving "dignity, respect and inclusion" in the abstract according to whatever cis people would like to congratulate themselves for pretending to give us, while 'GC' anti-trans people are being listened to, believed, and handed specific policy wins that materially restrict trans people's lives, that's not balance.
Streeting said it was "wrong" and "counterproductive" for "gender-critical feminists and women who have been raising concerns about women-only spaces or erasure from NHS documents...[to be] written off as bigots and prejudiced...people sort of shut them down. Please I would like to ask him if any trans people's opinions have been written off as extremist and biased and if any trans people have been shut down.
— "Labour’s Wes Streeting says it’s ‘wrong’ to write off ‘gender-critical’ people as bigots," Amelia Hansford, May 29, 2024
Image by Oimheidi from Pixabay
On using your real name on the internet: The anonymous handle is a "hood."
