The Truth About Extremism That America Likes to Forget

Actions are tied to ideas, and if ideas are toxic, then actions can kill.

There’s something incredibly frustrating about America’s extremism debate. There are truths we all know, but we just don’t want to apply them consistently. Here’s one such truth: The more hateful and vicious rhetoric that’s culturally upstream, the greater the risk of violence downstream. We know this because we know human nature.

If you participate in politics, ministry, or any other cultural enterprise centered on a cause, you know that engagement, energy, and action work like a funnel. At the top of the funnel is the general idea—“We must win the 2024 presidential election” or “We must ease the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine.”

At every level of interest or action beyond the broad idea, engagement both narrows and intensifies. Let’s look at humanitarian aid, for example. Lots of folks will passively agree with the general, virtuous principle. Fewer people will share news stories. Fewer still will share donation links. Fewer still will donate. And the smallest number of all will put their bodies in the field, serving refugees and sometimes even placing themselves in harm’s way.

What’s the constant? The more you care, the more you do. So while the maximum level of commitment is at the very bottom of the funnel—many steps removed from the general idea—that commitment is inextricably linked to the idea itself. If that commitment is linked to an idea rooted in love, then it can show humanity at its best.

Now, what happens if the idea at the top of the funnel isn’t virtuous at all? What happens if it’s laden with misinformation, vitriol, and hate? As engagement narrows and intensifies toward the maximum-level commitment, it channels toward violence. And the more people who believe and share the hateful idea, the greater the chance that some will pick up arms. This is as predictable as the sun rising in the east.

Yet we all too often live in a world that declares, “Their anger breeds violence. Our anger is justified, violence is completely disconnected from our movement, and how dare you suggest otherwise?”

Conservatives have long argued that misinformation and extreme rhetoric can breed violence. They can immediately point to a series of terrible recent examples. False claims that a police officer gunned down an unarmed Black man who had his hands up contributed to nights of riots in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014. Similarly, false claims that police shot a young man who was holding a book rather than a gun contributed to violence in Charlotte, North Carolina, in 2016.

Police officials rightly raised national alarms about anti-police rhetoric after two horrific terror attacks in 2016. On July 7, a shooter (I’ve adopted a policy of not naming mass killers) ambushed and killed five police officers in Dallas. Nine days later, a different shooter ambushed and killed three officers in Baton Rouge.

Most recently, after George Floyd’s murder, violent anti-police memes and messages surged across far-left social media as riots ripped through American cities.

Two things were true at once. First, acts of violence should not undermine or deter reasonable (and even passionate!) calls for police reform. And second, the widespread adaptation of vicious and violent anti-police rhetoric increased the chance of violent attacks. Why? Because when hate is at the top of the funnel, intensifying engagement and passion at the bottom of the funnel will mean direct, hateful action on the ground.

The exact same reasoning applies to right-wing violence and the “Great Replacement” theory. It is completely fair and reasonable to debate levels of immigration, to analyze the political and cultural effects of immigration, and to even argue for or against different levels of immigration on the basis of those political and cultural effects.

It is another thing entirely, however, to combine misinformation with extremism to claim that high levels of immigration are what they are doing to you to destroy this nation and your way of life. Indeed, any theory based on the premise that malevolent forces are seeking to violate your rights or eradicate your culture is prone to breed anger, then threats, then violence.

The entire “Stop the steal” effort is a prime example of this phenomenon. Think of the funnel of engagement. At the top was the message that the Democrats were engaged in world-historic election fraud. Some folks shared those messages on social media and mobbed their opponents online. Some put their money on the line and donated to legal efforts to overturn the election. A small number went further—much further. They made threats. They gathered outside election workers’ homes. And on January 6, 2021, thousands attacked the Capitol itself.

All of this was predictable. On December 13, 2020, I wrote a piece with a simple premise: “We can pray peace will prevail, but we’d be fools to presume it will.”

And now we’re watching the same phenomenon unfold in white-supremacist spaces, with violence often tied to the so-called Great Replacement theory. Simply stating that immigration changes American demographics and American politics isn’t stating replacement theory, but identifying demographic change as part of a malign and nefarious plot to undermine and destroy the American way of life most certainly is.

Moreover, it was utterly foolish to presume that angry rhetoric tied to race and immigration would remain “merely” online or was “just” a form of trolling designed to torment and harass political opponents.

What starts on Twitter migrates to internet cesspools like Gab and 4chan and then moves quickly into direct threats, real-world harassment, and ultimately violence. Hate and conspiracy are at the top of the funnel. At the bottom are violence and death.

I’ve experienced part of this process in the most direct and personal ways. In 2015 my mixed-race, immigrant family (my youngest daughter is adopted from Ethiopia) was targeted online with a series of horrific, racist attacks. It didn’t stay on Twitter. It was never going to stay on Twitter. Thankfully my family has been safe, but I wouldn’t wish the online threats and real-world harassment we’ve endured on my worst enemy.

This does not mean that the voices at the top of the funnel are directly responsible for the violence at the bottom. Individual human actors make individual decisions each step of the way.

But each one of us who possesses a public platform should be keenly aware that our words and ideas are amplified and intensified at every stage of downstream engagement. We may not be directly responsible for the actions of others, but we are responsible for our influence. We own our words.

This is an eternal truth. The Book of James, in the New Testament, states it well: “Consider how a small fire sets ablaze a large forest. And the tongue is a fire…Every kind of animal, bird, reptile, and fish is tamed and has been tamed by humankind, but no one can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison.”

Actions are tied to ideas, and if the ideas are virtuous, the actions can take our breath away with their courage and love. If ideas are rooted in hate, then the actions can kill. Murder is downstream from hate, and everybody knows that it is.