The Extreme of the Extremists

In a world like today, it's very hard keeping our opinions to ourselves and not blurting out how "real" (credit to J.Lo for this reference) we are and how passionate we are about our beliefs. That's not to say that we should be neglecting the beliefs of others around us, either. I do believe that being a person that is open to the ideas of what others believe makes us individuals, great individuals in fact. It's what helps mold our society into such a diverse culture, making it an interesting and colourful world that we live in. 

However, not everyone in the world agrees to this world of individual thinkers and a world full of multi-cultural concepts. What's worse is that while people continue to express their freedom of speech on their own social media sites, this has introduced the "dark side" of our freedom on social media. From racists to fascists, closed minded people to anti-anything groups, social media has definitely opened another door that experiment with the cultural mishap of extremism.

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When the word "extremist" is mentioned, a majority of people think of Islamic extremism, the 9/11 attacks and suicide bombers. I don't believe that it is necessarily a racist reaction (although I don't entirely scratch it off the list), but it's a thought that goes straight through to our minds because of what the media has influenced us to think. Islam extremists act on behalf their intense conservative views of Islam, and take the initiative to bomb and assassinate for achieving their Islamic goals as they perceive it. This does NOT define that all people who follow the Islamic faith are extremists or terrorists, but there have unfortunately been classic examples to show that there are some existing in the world today. In saying that, we must consider that there are MANY extremists of all kinds across the world, and they are more than happy to be representatives of such hate crimes across the board of social media, giving them the title of being eExtremists (extremists online).

(Personal screenshot)

In such an advanced time of technology and social media, I'm sure that a majority of us have come across a number of "pages" and "links" that promote the severity of how much hate and prejudice continue today. Whether it be "Death to Americans / Muslims / homosexuals" etc (all of which I do not condone, under ANY circumstances), it's unfortunate that we still see so much of this in the world, even though we have been able to create greater equality for people. 

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However, social media does also shed some light to extremist issues. Because it is all online, it provides evidence of how certain people around the world are continuing to act in this prejudice way. They way I see it, if people have "the right" to post their opinions as extremists, the majority of the public have the right to fight against them and fight for equality in society.