The advantages of extremism

Post date: Mar 31, 2021 9:44:42 AM

The advantages of extremism

Allrighty then. Henry tries to fix the internet again. Let's see what happens now.

I found this really great old advert where John Cleese talks about extremism and the content unfortunately never seems to get outdated.

So I wanted to quote the entire thing and searched the internet for the exact text.

Unfortunately that was nowhere to be found and I took it upon myself to write it all down from what I assume is an uncut original copy on YouTube.

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Seriously though, we've heard a lot about extremism recently a nastier, harsher atmosphere everywhere, more abuse botherboy behavior, less friendliness and tolerance and respect for opponents. All that, but what we never hear about extremism and its advantages.

Well, the biggest advantage of extremism is that it makes you feel good. Because it provides you with enemies. Let me explain. the great thing about having enemies, is that you can pretend that all the badness in the whole world is in your enemies and all the goodness in the whole world is in you.

attractive isn't it?

So If you have a lot of anger and resentment in you anyway, and you therefore enjoy abusing people

Then you can pretend that you are only doing it because these enemies of yours are such very bad persons.

And if it wasn't for them you'd actually be good-natured and courteous and rational all the time.

So if you want to feel good, become an extremist.

Okay, now you have a choice.

If you join the "hard left", they'll give you their list of authorized enemies: almost all kinds of authority, especially the police, the City, Americans, judges, multinational corporations, public schools, furriers, newspaper owners, fox hunters, generals, class traitors — and of course, moderates.

Or if you'd rather be an extremist on the hard right, no problem, fine, you still get a lovely list of enemies, only they are different ones; noisy minority groups, unions, Russia, weirdos, demonstrators, welfare sponges, meddlesome clergy, peaceniks, the BBC, strikers, social workers, communists — and of course, moderates.

And upstart actors.

Now once you are armed with one of these super list of enemies, you can be as nasty as you like and yet feel your behavior is morally justified. So you can strut around abusing people and telling them you could eat them for breakfast and still think of yourself as a champion of the truth, a fighter for the greater good and not the rather sad paranoid schizoid that you really are.

*John Cleese

From: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLNhPMQnWu4