Normalizing Extremism: White Supremacist and Other Radical Movements Reemerge

Extreme and radical views must be moderated before they can receive widespread acceptance then support.  Extreme and radical views must be normalized.  To do this, advocates must either impose their will and views on a significant portion of society via violent and/or coercive means or they must assimilate their views into more moderate factions, which is a long and difficult process.  Whether hailing from the Left or the Right, those with fringe ideologies seek to normalize their views in order to defend against hostile critics and social backlash by spreading their ideologies and engineering society to think and act in line with their interests.
 
It is easy to think of social progress in chronological terms, but social evolution and cultural shifts are far more dynamic.  The US, for example, has made significant progress in purging the American culture of overt racism, yet radical hate groups seek to renormalize racial segregation then overt racial discrimination.  To do this, they hope to moderate racism by hijacking Right-wing causes.  The so-called “Unite the Right” protest in Charlotte, SC demonstrates the ultimate objective to unite all Right-wing causes under the umbrella of white supremacy.  Saving “history” and honoring Confederate dissent is a seemingly innocent means to disarm critics and attract the support of those who would never support a hate group.

Hate groups like the Neo-Nazis and the KKK need allies to spread their message, protect their members from social backlash, and transform society.  They need to find related causes, i.e. causes that share common goals, then frame their arguments to lead moderates to their thinking.  On the flip side, Left-wing factions need to vilify all Right-wing factions in order to spread their views.  Those on the Right and Left, therefore, must both work to divide and radicalize the American People.   There is unintentional cooperation between the extremes of the political spectrum in their goals to further their causes, because they must divide the population in order to force people to choose a side.
 
When trying to indoctrinate people, specifically when it comes to normalizing extreme views, it is important to recognize there are those who are receptive to extreme views and those who are thoroughly non-receptive to those views.  This is as much a hindrance as it is an opportunity.   Extreme measures are necessary, and more acceptable, in times of great peril and conflict.  By capitalizing on a “for-us-or-against-us” mentality and framing every situation as a crisis, advocates of extremist views are able to unite people against a common enemy, i.e. everyone else.  For the Neo-Nazis and the KKK, the enemy is those deemed racially inferior while any whites opposing their message are deemed traitors.
 
Extremists, including white supremacists, Islamic Jihadists, radical communists, and many others, flourish within the chasm of division.  Dissent is a necessary part of a healthy and representative democratic society, yet widening divisions between subcultures isolate subcultures to the point they become distant alien societies.  At that point, proponents of extremist views can easily paint those belonging to outside subcultures as enemies then use that threat and their membership within the subculture to garner support for their views.  White supremacists want a race war that forces whites and blacks to seek the safety of their races in radically divided communities and to shun non-whites and whites.  They want their progressive equivalent to push non-whites to make themselves an economic, legal, and physical threat.