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Rating: 
Summary: An Outstanding and Informative Work
Review: This book is the definitive work for anyone who wants to know about extremists in this country. I notice that one reviewer described the book as "tedious." I cannot agree. The book was extremely well researched, well written, and fascinating from one end to the other. A must read.
Rating: 
Summary: How to handicap the spread between delusion and fantasy
Review: This fact filled tome will aggravate those with a fixed set of assumptions whether from the Left or the Right. The reason? They view themselves as exceptionally virtuous, morally superior, and they're convinced they are middle-of-the-road as to their beliefs. It doesn't take very long to see that this point of view leads to a distorted perception of reality i.e. if Dan Rather sees himself as middle of the road then moderate Libertarians would be far Right in the pantheon of his worldview. It's the same story with the abortion issue, particularly from the Right. John George, a professor of Political Science and Sociology at Central Oklahoma University and Laird Wilcox, founder of the Wilcox Collection of Contemporary Political Movements, are the book's authors. Wilcox has the largest collection of extremist literature in America and it can be found at the University of Kansas, home of copious fields of wheat, endless horizons and a highly successful basketball program. They cover every facet of extreme political movements including what radical groups exist, who joins up and why, what do they want to accomplish, how far are they willing to go to achieve those ends, and the degree of danger we face should they achieve their ends. They begin by summarizing pre-60's movements, then morph into the makeup of conspiracy theories and what motivates extremists. They thoroughly document and detail a listing of contemporary groups in addition to adding an in-depth appendix of fake quotes and fabricated documents. If you've ever wondered how the far-Left in America could fawn at the feet of a butcher like Fidel Castro or lap up the distorted and inaccurate screeds of a false intellectual like Noam Chomsky then go no further, it's all here. I'll share with you some insights in the book. For the alienated and "ideologically prone", identification with a power figure or someone held up as an intellectual guru can serve as a mechanism to free them from anxieties and doubt. A failed ideology such as Socialism can thus continue to embody all their fantasies, utopian ideals, and hopes for the future. This phenomenon is repeated over and over throughout history from the heaven-on-earth promises of Communism to the heaven-hereafter central to the teachings of radical Christianity as well as radical Islamicism. The "true believer" tends to believe in theories with little or no evidence to support his conclusions or predictions. Eric Hoffer addresses this condition in his book by the same name. Put another way "true believers" tend to believe what they tend to believe, a form of "petito pricipii", where dogma is presented which assumes the truth of the premise. It assumes that the thesis speaks for itself. After pounding home this theme with his followers the guru uses selected facts, working backwards from his addled assumptions, to support his flawed thesis. Rituals are often invoked to soothe the listener by incorporating what amounts to the elements commonly found in the practice of hypnosis. There is much, much more and it's all worthwhile if you're a student of people and how they come to believe what they do. This is the best book of its kind I've read, and I wish to say thanks to the authors, "I needed that". It was getting just too difficult to understand my Libertarian-Socialist-Communist friends let alone my friends of strong religious conviction. And, these are my friends! they're not even trying to kill me! We're a lucky bunch here in the USA.
Rating:
Summary: Definitive Work
Review: When future American historians and political scientists look back at political extremism in the last half of the twentieth century, this is the book to which they will turn. It is thoroughly detailed and meticulously researched; in short the definitive work on this subject. The following groups, along with their leaders, are covered. THE FAR LEFT Communist Party USA
Socialist Workers Party
Black Panther Party
Students for a Democratic Society
Progressive Labor Party
Revolutionary Action Movement
Revoluntionary Communist Party
Communist Workers Party THE FAR RIGHT Reverend Billy James Hargis and his Christian Crusade
The John Birch Society
The Christian Right
Willis Cato and Liberty Lobby
Robert Bolivar DePugh and the Minutemen
The Militias
Gerald L. K. Smith and Christian Nationalist Crusade
The LaRouche Network
Jewish Defense League
The Nation of Islam
Assorted Neo-Nazis
National States Rights Party
Ku Klux Klans Appendix 1 contains 36 pages of fake quotes and forged documents extremists are fond of using. Appendix 2 contains a handy guide for extremist watchers and lists their common characteristics and differences. It also lists some mainstream organizations which are sometimes considered extreme, but really are not. A sample paragraph, from page 48 of American Extremists: "McCarthyism existed on a half-truth. There were Communists in the United States and some of them were entirely anti-American and would like to do in our system of government. For the most part, however, the Communists, real or imagined, were of no significant security threat to our country. What was a greater threat was the witch-hunting and official and unofficial persecution of these people as heretics. One of the worst things extremists can do to a society, usually without intending to, is to cause it to overreact and burn down the barn to catch the rat, so to speak. The net effect of domestic extremism has been negligible. The net effect of attempts to exterminate it have been quite telling, a legacy that haunts us to this day." "American Extremists" is the favorite book in my library, and, outside of the dictionary, the most useful.
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