When we talk about extremism in Bangladesh, the mind quickly goes to images of bomb blasts, street violence, or militants caught in raids. But philosopher Quassim Cassam pushes us to look deeper. In "Extremism: A Philosophical Analysis," he argues that extremism is not first about action, it is about mindset. And if we look honestly at our political culture, we will see that extremism is closer to home than we like to admit.
Cassam describes the extremist mindset as dogmatic, black-and-white, prejudiced, and conspiratorial. It refuses self-criticism. It divides the world into pure good and pure evil. It always suspects hidden foreign hands. These traits don’t belong only to radicals with guns. They exist across our political spectrum, from left to right and government to opposition.
The extremist mindset
And nowhere is this clearer than in our obsession with branding everyone an “agent.” Speak up against the ruling party? You’re an Indian agent. Criticize the opposition? Then you must be working for ISI. Question US policy? A Russia or China agent, no doubt. Support human rights? Clearly CIA funded. There may be kernels of truth about foreign influence, but when everyone is labeled an agent, we achieve two things at once: we silence dissent and we lose sight of the real danger.
Because the real danger isn’t always Pakistan, India, the US or Russia. The danger is the extremist mindset that is eating away at our political culture, the refusal to listen, the comfort of black-and-white thinking. Tagging people as agents blinds us to this deeper disease and leaves us unprepared when extremism mutates into violence.
This is not uniquely Bangladeshi. Around the world, extremism shows the same mental habits, just with different labels. In the United States, conspiracy thinking around a “stolen election” drove the 6 January Capitol attack. In Germany, the Reichsbürger movement denies the legitimacy of the modern state, echoing far-right nostalgia for a mythic past. In New Zealand, the Christchurch mosque attacker was radicalised online by the “Great Replacement” theory. On the far-left, Peru’s Shining Path and Italy’s Red Brigades show how utopian certainty and refusal of self-criticism led to mass violence. In India, Hindu nationalist extremism (far-right) paints minorities as threats; and Maoist insurgency (far-left) justifies armed struggles. Far-right Buddhist nationalism led to persecution of Rohingya in Myanmar.
Different ideologies, same mindset.
Reinforced by social media
Social media has only made this worse. Our digital spaces reward outrage, not dialogue. We scroll endlessly in echo chambers where every disagreement becomes betrayal and every opponent becomes “anti-Bangladesh.” We are raising a generation to believe that doubt is weakness and nuance is treason.
Extremism is not always loud. Sometimes it is hidden in the words we use, in the way we tag every critic as an outsider, in our refusal to reflect on ourselves
This intensifies dogmatism, reinforces conspiratorial thinking, and normalises black-and-white worldviews. For example, in the United States, platforms like Facebook and Twitter amplified QAnon conspiracy theories, radicalising ordinary users and contributing to events like the January 6 Capitol attack. In Europe, far-right groups in Germany and France have used online communities to spread xenophobic propaganda, recruit sympathisers, and normalise extremist rhetoric. Even in Asia, misinformation on Facebook, WhatsApp and Telegram has fueled communal violence in India and Myanmar.
Bangladesh is no exception. Social media influencers with millions of followers, show how digital platforms can be weaponised to spread divisive narratives. Their content includes anti-Hindu rhetoric, sexism, backing campaigns to vilify Hindu communities or framing cow slaughter as a deliberate provocation. By normalising such exclusionary ideas under the guise of “activism,” these voices cultivate intolerance, stoke suspicion, and distract from real societal problems.These cases illustrate a global pattern: social media doesn’t create extremism from scratch, but it accelerates, amplifies, and entrenches the mindset that Cassam describes.
Strengthening the culture of thought
If extremism is a way of thinking, then security crackdowns and surveillance will never be enough. We must prepare strategically, and that means strengthening the culture of thought itself. Teaching young people not what to think, but how to think. Building intellectual humility, the courage to say, “I might be wrong.” Learning to separate criticism from conspiracy.
Bangladesh has already paid too high a price for political absolutism, disappeared voices, broken trust, lives wasted in prisons. If we keep treating every dissenter as a foreign plot, we will never confront the extremism within.
Extremism is not always loud. Sometimes it is hidden in the words we use, in the way we tag every critic as an outsider, in our refusal to reflect on ourselves. And unless we face that, the cycle of violence, suspicion, and division will only deepen.
* Dr Shamaruh Mirza, an Australia based medical scientist, is founder and president, SiTara’s Story Inc. and Founder, Diaspora Alliance for Democracy (DAD)