no risk, infinite reward, and a chance to lash out: inside the mind of extremist

Science is giving us a better, more complete look at how extremists think, why they refuse to listen to reason, and how to prevent their self-radicalization.

“Wait, wait, hold on, which one is it?” I asked with an exasperated sigh. “Am I living in a totalitarian dystopia where the police are demanding to see my vaccination card at random checkpoints throughout the entire city and I’m not allowed to venture out of my designated quarantine zone without risking fines and jail time? Or am I cowering from hordes of BLM protestors destroying everything in sight while plunging the city into anarchy? Because those two are mutually exclusive.”

“That’s what I said!” my mom laughed. “You have to pick one or the other, it can’t be both at the same time!”

Although we laughed, the subject matter wasn’t funny at all. You see, we were talking about the latest outburst from a family friend who underwent a very common and very sad transformation over the past eight years or so. She went from being a seemingly reasonable, sociable person with a few unfounded fears about vaccination popular in a lot of suburban mom groups for decades, to an argumentative hothead constantly flying off the handle about the latest conspiracy theory that had taken over right wing social media while alienating virtually all of her friends, and much of her family. No one wanted to be around her because nobody wanted to fight with her angry ghosts.

If there was a trope popular in the extremely online right wing circles, she was all over it faster then you could blink. From full blown pandemic denialism, to anti-vaccination, to the Great Reset, to supporting Russia in the current war in Ukraine despite being a Ukrainian immigrant -- as is, for full disclosure, yours truly -- and very eagerly quoting every conspiracy theory about why the war started. Now, she was apparently worried that I was stuck in California while the state was a) on fire, b) under totalitarian control of roving vaccination squads, c) the major cities had fallen into Mad Max style anarchy thanks to the aforementioned BLM protests.

All of this was supposedly happening at the same time, the “stupid, evil Marxists in charge” weren’t doing anything about it, and I should just move down to Florida to be safe, like she is. Noting the inconvenient little facts that none of the above was true only led her to dive deeper into paranoid hoaxes that were lighting up what was still called Twitter, and Fox News. Eventually she’d move on to OAN and Newsmax when she needed a stronger fix of fascism and paranoia blasted at her from her screens in what has become a sad and common trajectory witnessed in the same time frame by a growing number of Americans.

Millions of us have watched so many of our friends and loved ones become obstinate, argumentative, and paranoid seemingly overnight since 2016 or thereabouts, and no matter what we try, their condition seems to only get worse as time passes. They’re no longer moved by reason, facts, figures, or even an emotional appeal to friendship, love, and empathy. Even worse, they now openly and shamelessly support politicians who are vile trolls or xenophobic sociopaths at best, and outright fascists hellbent on running a totalitarian dictatorship at worst. Their only motivation seems to be to hurt others and make the lives of their fellow citizens more miserable.

But why is this happening? What makes a slightly pudgy paper-pushing Midwestern uncle with oversized, thick glasses and a self-described “wine mom” from suburban Blahsville barge into a school board meeting with a gang of neo-Nazis and demand to know who’s brainwashing their kids into turning gay or trans with Marxist CRT books written by Antifa on the Jewish Space Laser satellite, shouting down any attempt to reason with them while accusing teachers of cannibalism and pedophilia? Do they not understand how paranoid, out of touch, and irrational they seem to others, and the full and obvious implications of what they’re advocating?

Well, no, they don’t. According to research into the decision making process of people along the political spectrum, the more extreme your beliefs, the more impulsive you’re likely to be when making decisions and picking your battles, and the less likely you are to consider nuances or realize the consequences of your choices. An extremist’s brain jumps ahead to the perceived reward and favors sensation-seeking behaviors, which is strongly coupled with distaste for out-groups along with a high degree of tolerance for violence against said out-groups. You also tend to suspend your ethical standards if the person violating them is “on your side” as irrelevant.

In less abstract terms, the insurrectionists on January 6th were not all too concerned about the backup plan if they failed to overthrow the government, nor did they worry too much about whether the election was really “stolen” or not. Their desired reward was Trump in the White House making people they hated miserable, they didn’t want to be denied this reward, therefore, in their minds, they needed to heed his calls and keep him in office. Afterward, they were distraught to find out that their actions have consequences and couldn’t understand why so many faced jail time. Their impulsivity and single-mindedness simply didn’t let them think through the scenario that far.

But that’s is why Trump’s promise to “root our vermin” during a Hitleresque campaign speech is so dangerous. His base is not only easily persuaded that violence against a faceless, dehumanized enemy is valid, they also lack the impulse control to pause and consider if it was possible to ever be classified as “vermin” themselves for the horrific, unforgivable crime of not giving the Dear Orange Leader exactly what he wants, when he wants it, no matter how problematic the request, and cannot compel themselves to imagine a reason they wouldn’t follow him into the bowels of Hell without so much as a second thought.

History isn’t exactly lacking examples of dictators turning on their own former devout supporters for minor offenses but the MAGA train of thought is “I’m a loyal follower, a true believer, a real patriot fighting the good fight for mom, baseball, and apple pie!” Of course, that’s more or less what the participants in Mao Zedong’s Long March and Stalin’s cadres thought as well. When Mao and his friends rose to power in China, any Long Marchers who merely disagreed with him on a policy were publicly denounced, humiliated, and sent to labor camps during the crackdowns of the Cultural Revolution. (China’s current leader Xi Jinping is the son of one such disgraced Long Marcher.)

Those who caught enough ire from Mao’s new foot soldiers were tortured and killed, despite being devoted party elites and loyal members whose only crime was failing to meet his grand plans. It was the Chinese rendition of the Soviet Great Terror, during which Joseph Stalin brutally purged any former Bolshevik bigwigs to consolidate his power despite said bigwigs giving him the keys to the kingdom just a few years prior. Similar purges would also be imitated by North Korea and the Khmer Rouge, where trusted lieutenants of yesterday became the traitors of tomorrow and sentenced to grizzly summary executions.

All of this should really give serious pause to the potential army of 50,000 zealots who are foaming at the mouth to remake America as a retrograde fascist kakistocracy as a swarm of chaos with which Trump plans to replace qualified, tenured federal workers across the entire government if he wins. Even worse for them, Trump has shown quite often that he thinks in the same vein, readily disavowing any knowledge of aides who outlived their usefulness to him, and calling for humiliation, arrests, and executions of those against whom he holds a grudge on the campaign trail, between bouts of short-circuiting, unsure of his wife’s name or who is the current president.

He’s gone after his former Attorney General Bill Barr, and demanded the execution of Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley, all while his sycophantic flunkies threaten critics and journalists. A leader of a sane, civilized, democratic nation would never refer to a group of citizens as vermin, or threaten elected members of the government who do his bidding only 99.9% of the time with violence or death. A tyrant, on the other hand, absolutely would. And it’s not just the rhetoric coming from him and the GOP’s MAGA wing that elicit very disturbing totalitarian dictatorship vibes. It could easily be argued that January 6th and Trump’s handling of BLM protests were his Reichstag Fires.

Just as the Nazis used the high profile act of arson to claim that Germany needed to suspend individual liberties and constitutional guardrails against dictators, so too are Trump and his fan club claiming that “the stolen election” and “crime and the border crisis” were reasons to use the Insurrection Act to silence critics and throw out vote tallies they didn’t like. Just to drive that point home, Trump killed a bipartisan deal to beef up security at the border because he wants to campaign on a “crisis” that could let him a) keep the racist and xenophobe as energized and possible, and b) create a justification for mass deportations and ethnic cleansing once in power.

Even more disturbingly he’s threatening to use the military against Americans to stay in power if he manages to claw his way back into office, much like Syria’s Bashar al-Assad used armed forces to kill protestors and kidnap and torture critics, ultimately leading to a full blown civil war in 2012. This is why his supporters’ views can only be described as extreme. After their idol checks off virtually every diagnostic criteria for being a wannabe dictator, their only interest is in subjecting fellow citizens to misery and woe because they barely see them as human, much less fellow Americans. Any consideration past that cruelty is not even remotely registering in their minds.

When Trump inevitably turns on them, they will be shocked and wail in disbelief that the object of their devotion to which they’ve sent billions over the past near-decade, who they tattooed on their bodies, whose golden idol they worshipped at CPAC, and who they plastered across their favorite merch like some sort of Hello KKKitty, could ever do such a horrible thing. They won’t find any solace in their friends either since those friends will just as quickly abandon them as apostates and talk about them as if they were traitors or “liberals in MAGA clothing.”

All right, you might say, what if I simply confront them with these facts, really talk to them, and make them think it through? Good luck with that because disagreement is going to be an exhausting experience for everyone involved, literally. Scientists found that when your views are challenged, your brain has to work overtime to maintain its perception of the world around you. If in your reality, Trump and the GOP are saving you from some Marxist plot to send you to reeducation camps for being such a great patriot, and you’ve built your entire identity and social circle around it, your mind will fight viciously to preserve that reality no matter what.

So far, all this seems rather bleak. Once someone turns to the dark side of extremism, the road back is extremely long, arduous, and they’ll resist efforts to deprogram them at every turn. It seems like the only viable solution to handling extremism is to prevent it in the first place, which requires very significant investments in a diverse education emphasizing critical thinking and curiosity, economic opportunities for everyone, and even redesigning cities to be more walkable and denser to allow for communities mix, integrate, and neighbors to get to know each other and form stronger bonds. This is a core tenet behind the idea of “third spaces” you hear so much about today.

The more people come to know each other and talk about their experiences, the more they would be exposed to different opinions and stories from flesh and blood humans rather than online avatars, and the more they can see that others not only don’t wish them harm, but don’t even think about them that much, the harder it becomes to fall for some paranoid, racist, or homophobic conspiracy theory, much less be convinced to discriminate against, much less unleash violence on friends and neighbors, 99.9% of whom are almost certainly normal, decent, hardworking people who’ve never done you wrong or wished you ill. 

In fewer words, developing empathy and strong social bonds in diverse communities built to maximize togetherness and face to face interactions is the only reliable way to counter hate and fear that leads to extremism and culture wars. This is especially true for former extremists who walked back their aggressive, simplistic, and violent beliefs because they can talk to current fanatics, speaking their code and language to finally get them to start questioning if they’re being manipulated by power hungry fascists to hate random people who don’t threaten them, never had, do not want to, and are only worried about their own survival, just like them. 

Without fostering that empathy, there’s simply no way to hold on to functional society because there will always be difference for extremists to exploit, target, and turn into weaponized political platforms. And without publicly shaming and rightfully ridiculing unhinged extremists who lack this sense of empathy, whether they’re John and Jane Public on the street, or a two term Senator, or a pundit with millions of viewers, there’s no way to preserve one. Just ask yourself why right wing conspiracy klaxons despise the very idea of more walkable cities, diverse communities, and YIMBY infill zoning. It can’t be because they hate convenience and easy access to parks and shopping.

Likewise, the current normalcy bias of political reporting which shies away from the comparisons or historical analogies and foreshadowing made above, no matter how warranted, and no matter how clear Trump and his lackeys make it that they do very much intend to run a reactionary, violent, extremist dictatorship in which their only goals are absolute power and vicious campaigns of retribution against their critics, even if they were former enablers, is doing America a disservice that borders on the criminal. The standard 1990s style horse race coverage is absurdly dangerous, and countless editors and pundits are both unable to comprehend this or listen to critics.

We have to be very clear eyed about what awaits us if we give extremists the reward they want. They will not be sated, or kind, or gracious. They will want more, and they will not care what happens when they exact their revenge on the nation. They will not think about what happens next or categorize their critics or any political opposition as anything other than mortal enemies. They will not listen to law, precedent, or appeals to the better nature they shed on their way to their self-indoctrination into extremism. And for any of us to pretend otherwise is not just naive, but downright suicidal.

See: Zmigrod, L., et al (2021) The cognitive and perceptual correlates of ideological attitudes: a data-driven approach, Phil. Trans. R. Soc., DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2020.0424

Hull, K., Warren, C., and Smith, K. (2024) Politics makes bastards of us all: Why moral judgment is politically situational, Political Psychology, DOI: 10.1111/pops.12954

Hirsch, J., Tiede, M., et al (2021) Interpersonal Agreement and Disagreement During Face-to-Face Dialogue, Front. Hum. Neurosci. DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2020.606397