Category: OPINION

In the context of the rapid challenges and changes the world is experiencing today, the importance of combating extremism arises as a fundamental line of defense and a necessity for protecting security and stability. However, combating extremism is considered one of the most complex tasks due to reasons related to extremist ideology itself, its ability to transform, adapt, and evade, and its use of technological advances to achieve rapid access and influence.

This makes the field of combating extremism primarily concerned with daily dealing with a vast amount of diverse publications and theoretical articles—not only those that explicitly and directly incite violence but also those that engage with and address the underlying mechanisms behind the tendency to adopt abnormal behavior among individuals who are considered by researchers as a representative sample. Through this sample, researchers outline the general characteristics of the extremist personality and, based on this, propose solutions that mostly revolve around reintegration, educational framing, and psychological support. Undoubtedly, this approach is effective in building preventive capabilities that allow anticipating individuals’ shifts towards critical levels, which in the worst cases may lead to involvement in acts of terrorism.

However, here we face the following question: Is focusing on the individual enough to understand the phenomenon of extremism? The answer is not simply yes or no. Rather, it can be said that such a focus may blind us to other ways of understanding the deeper backgrounds of extremism that go beyond the individual dimension or the cultural and social contexts. In all these cases, we would remain more connected to the outcomes and symptoms instead of exploring the deep and unseen aspects that form the objective causes behind such intellectual distortions. There are factors that go beyond individuals as independent entities and societies as specific cultural systems to form what resembles complex and intertwined structures. These generate acute susceptibilities to extremism linked to certain times, geographic or civilizational extensions, or ethnic, sectarian, and ideological dimensions. These susceptibilities become an automatic incubator for extremism at the intellectual, behavioral, and organizational levels, raising levels of radicalism across all spheres. This creates what resembles a general climate that produces extremist reactions. Here, psychological feelings or behaviors characterized by extremism become merely superficial phenomena; their deeper meanings only become clear when we go beyond the apparent level of behavior to investigate the underlying background behind it.

Therefore, the causes of extremism are complex and not solely linked to individual choices; even if they may appear, so on the surface. What truly represents the core of this phenomenon and the generative cause of its various manifestations are the antecedents of these factors rather than the subsequent outcomes. Hence, the understanding of ideologies is complete when we pay attention to the importance of investigating the pre-existing predispositions for extremism within minds themselves—as a structure preceding the extremists themselves, who are merely considered samples, molds, and qualitative models, nothing more.

Naturally, it is only appropriate to speak about extremism when certain factors, ideas, beliefs, conditions, or references turn into justifications for a state of conflict. In such cases, if this is not identified in time, the conflict can destroy the fundamental elements that constitute the uniqueness of human nature—humanity that has progressed from barbarism to civilization through the establishment of state institutions, which are the primary guarantors against the degradation of humans to inferior levels. Therefore, monitoring and identifying risk factors that could ignite the initial spark of such extremist tendencies must be a priority above all else.

Reaching and precisely identifying the core ideological drivers of societies will be of critical importance for the objective and strategic understanding of extremism as a hidden factor in certain contexts. Monitoring, accessing, analyzing, and understanding its scope and intersections will enable the process of combating extremism to achieve its goals. It is appropriate that this process begins by moving away from theoretical speculation when addressing the challenges of this issue, because in this case, we will be able to establish an effective and coherent reference framework for all our preventive and proactive plans regarding extremism. Otherwise, we will always have to wait for a conflict to manifest openly through individual or collective behavior, only to then attempt to deal with it—often too late. At that point, proactive plans become essentially ineffective because they are based on recurring phenomena without understanding their deep motives and causes. Conversely, if we were to draw our own intellectual map of potential conflicts by tracing their precise origins and locations without exception across the entire world, as if tracking weather patterns, volcanoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, and celestial bodies, what happens at point (A) will have an impact on point (D), and so forth. Here, a comprehensive approach to the risk of extremism becomes more realistic, effective, and embodies the essence of strategic combating.

 

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Many theories of the social contract and natural rights were developed between the 17th and 18th centuries. The most famous among the theorists behind them include Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and, later, Immanuel Kant. Each of them, in his own way, sought to resolve the problem of political authority.

The central premise of the “social contract” theory is that law and political order are not natural phenomena but human constructs. Accordingly, the social contract (and the political system it gives rise to) is a means toward an end: the well-being of the people who are bound by it.

The contract remains legitimate only so long as those involved uphold their mutual commitments. Does the current moment call for a new social contract – one suited to what the Italian Marxist thinker Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937) famously called “the time of monsters”?

An overwhelming sense of disappointment has prevailed across the world. Successive national social contracts have broken down, and the international order is growing increasingly frail, raising the alarming prospect of a collapse. This state of affairs urges us to develop a new global social contract grounded in progress, anchored in security and stability, veering toward the refinement of nations and the cultivation of peoples, and guided by a belief that we have a shared destiny.

However, what the Scottish moral philosopher and economist Adam Smith (1723–1790) once called the “circles of sympathy” that produce a cooperative rather than a conflictual society seem distant.

Successive crises have revealed the pressing need for a genuine global social contract over the past five years. They began with the COVID-19 pandemic, which exposed our fragility and revealed the dangers of neglecting underfunded health systems, gaps in social protection, and deep structural inequalities within societies.

Our world is languishing under the weight of inequality and the shadow of historical injustices and political colonial legacies; some are the result of patriarchal power structures, others of the digital divide.

The need for a new contract grows ever stronger, especially in Gramsci’s time of monsters. Our current challenges are not familiar, nor even unpacked by the ancients.

Take, for instance, the ecological question. Our blue planet now stands on the brink of extinction, as the danger has surpassed the stage of mere global warming and entered an era of boiling. The entire future of planet Earth has now become uncertain.

Tragically, the world’s major powers, chief among them the United States, believe that the alarm around climate change is exaggerated, even a big lie. Meanwhile, China continues down the path of carbon-based energy, leaving humanity to its fate.

One of Gramsci’s “monsters” threatening the old world order (without the capacity to generate an alternative), economic peril stands out. Many now expect a global financial collapse and a worldwide depression worse than that of the 1930s. One need only contemplate the state of global debt, especially that of the US.

Another of Gramsci’s monsters that call for a new social contract is the resurgence of nationalism and populism, both synonyms for the exclusion and isolation of “the other,” as well as the notion that the planet’s resources cannot sustain us all.

There is, in fact, a strong inverse correlation between levels of development and prosperity on the one hand, and the movements of right-wing fundamentalism rejecting immigration and cultural globalization on the other. When people feel insecure in their own countries, they turn inward out of fear of competition. Divided and anxious societies become fertile ground for populism, nationalism, selfishness, and individualism.

Conversely, when the earth flourishes and yields abundance, it becomes easy for nations, peoples, and tribes to show generosity toward the deprived – both at home and abroad.

Are there other factors that urge us to develop a new, modern social contract?

Those who listened to President Trump’s recent speech to the generals in Virginia, and his remarks on the trillion-dollar US military budget, cannot help but conclude that the world is on the cusp of a senseless arms race worse than that of the Cold War era.

What is both alarming and extraordinary is the introduction of new players such as China, which is seeking to build a land-based nuclear arsenal, as well as aspiring to join Russia and the United States in the militarization of outer space.

One question demands a discussion of its own: artificial intelligence. Sam Altman, founder and CEO of OpenAI, has written about the urgent need for a new social contract because the basic conditions of humanity, and the state of humankind itself, are irreversibly transformed.

 

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