Growing Extremism in American Society

Growing Extremism in American Society
Extremism can be defined as harboring a highly polarized view about a race, religion, political identity, and social doctrine. Unfortunately, all forms of extremist organizations exist in present-day American society, ranging from white supremacists and neo-fascism to right-wing religious movements. These extremist groups share a commonality: they all use online and offline platforms to propagate their views and agenda. The use of online platforms has significantly accelerated the spreading of various extremist agendas amongst the masses, as evident from recent violence and domestic terrorism incidents in Texas and California. Their perpetrators used online platforms to coordinate and execute these acts (Dawson et al., 2021). Therefore, this essay aims to estimate the current trends and variations of extremism in American society by analyzing the doctrine and activities of various American extremist groups.
In modern-day America, the specter of extremism has begun to raise its head in various forms. Neo-Nazi idealists have begun to remerge and restart their malicious activities against Jews, Muslims, and African Americans. For instance, Atomwaffen Division is a pro-Nazi militant group that voluntarily disrupted itself after it was about to be declared a Foreign Terrorist Organization. However, in the mid of July 2020, this group remerged with a different name and doctrine that it terms Nationalist Socialist Order (NSO) (Ware, 2020). This reemergence of a social and ethnic extremist group signifies the rise in far-right militant activities in the United States. Another trend that explains the reappearance of ethnic, religious, and political extremism in America is the spread of sub-communities on Reddit, an online network of communities. Authorities investigating various incidents of recent extremist activities have found that these subreddits have been instrumental in spreading racial, religious, and political discrimination. For the same reason, authorities have found that the current events of domestic terrorism in Texas and California resulted from online propaganda perpetuated on the subreddit 8chan (Dawson et al., 2021).
In testimony, the members of the International Security Program provided substantial data to House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security to validate the rise in domestic violence against minorities in American society. According to the given data, there has been a surge in violent attacks on minorities in 2020 and 2021. Human casualties have also risen from 5 in 2020 to 30 in 2021. The report also indicates that only in 2021 have been 73 reported attacks on minorities (Anonymous, 2022). This recent report is an eye-opener for state authorities. Besides, It should spur a swift response from the U.S. government to reevaluate its strategies to deal with growing social polarity and various forms of extremism in American society. Political extremism is another manifestation of this growing menace in American society. For instance, in 2021, after losing the presidential election, Donald Trump started fiery online rhetoric against the newly elected president Joe Biden which led to the eruption of political riots in the U.S. Capitol building (Dawson...