Months of rioting in several US cities. People murdered in downtown “autonomous zones”, police officers assaulted, public history destroyed (no, not confederate statues) & countless businesses ruined. Is the extremism field ready to talk about progressive* extremism yet?

*progressive used for want of a better word. This is part of the problem, are we ready to analyse it? Can we even name it? We talk a lot about countering *all* forms of extremism, I don’t see it.

Bias plays a huge role in the failure to analyse and dissect this new form of left wing extremism & agitation, but it’s also a huge imagination failure. We don’t seem able to recognise extremism unless it arrives in the form of terror attacks or persecution of minorities

What’s more, extremism, authoritarianism & violence can arrive in the form of values we like to think we revere (such as “antiracism”), we’re kidding ourselves to think otherwise