Are radicalism and fundamentalism the same thing?

Joy (reluctant academic, wannabe radical, sometimes pragmatist): Can you be a radical or an activist inside of a bureaucracy?

Can you “fight the man” when you are “the man”?

I’ve been giving a huge amount of thought lately to how you subvert a system from inside it, while still furthering your own career. How is participation implicit endorsement; is complaining about the bias and illegitimacy of systems simply a way to make yourself feel better, without having to actually take action and make any sacrifices?

MQ (lawyer and activist): Well, take a step back. What do you mean by “radical”? Are you associating radicalism with the left?

Joy: Good question. I suppose I tend to associate radical thought with critical thought. Rejecting things we usually take for granted, extreme questioning of the fundamental basis for power structures. I suppose I define “radical” egocentrically, as an extreme orientation towards things I’m generally down with. I often use it as a compliment. Like, “she’s a really radical thinker.”

Jia Jia (military brat of the People’s Liberation Army, cynic, idealist): That’s different from the way I’ve been hearing the word lately, associated with radicalized Islamic youth.

Joy: Ah, and I’d been thinking more along the lines of the Black Panther Party and Che Guevara.

MQ: So, then, if you code radicalism as “left,” do you consider right-wing radicalism more as “populism” or “fundamentalism”?

Joy: Well, in that sense, I tend to associate “radical” with the left because I see conservative fundamentalism as confirming and reinforcing social systems of power and oppression, just taking them even further. Say, an extreme fundamentalist position opposing gay marriage.

Proper radicalness, in my head, is about questioning, confronting, and dismantling these systems.

Jia Jia: Definitions…definitions…I wonder if it’s an American thing to associate “radical” with the left. In my mind, “radical” simply means extreme. The border between liberalism and illiberalism isn’t always clear and I think that radicalism permeates both. Marxism was progressive radicalism in its day but the way it got hijacked by authoritarian leftist regimes was not progressive. The communist and fascist totalitarian states around the World War II and Cold War eras actually had much more in common with each other than with more liberal centrist governments.

Joy: Very true.

Jia Jia: 

In that case, we could see “radical” as “extreme new thinking” and “fundamentalist” as “extreme old thinking.”

When we’re talking about radicalism, we’re talking about the impulse to continually undo power, whereas extremism/fundamentalism is the impulse to accrue it. Though, then I wonder, at what point does the strength required to undo power itself become repressive? When it becomes the dominant view?

Which brings me back to your original question about radicalism within the bureaucracy. Isn’t radicalism always within a bureaucracy? Since it’s about challenging an established order? Unless that order is anarchy, in which case, I suppose it’d be radical to create order.

Joy: It’s a good point:

you can’t have a radical without something to be radical in reaction and contrast to.

This actually fits with my definition of “radical” as genuinely questioning the hegemonic assumptions of society.

Jia Jia: Though, really, hegemony isn’t a bad thing. It’s just a natural thing. That said, systems can be optimized for different things—uneven vs. even distribution of resources or power; flexible vs. rigid; interconnected systems vs. one big integrated system, etc. Critique is essential to keep a system evolving, and I think sooner or later, a system will collapse and be re-born, same as in nature. When we’re at one of those moments, radical thinking produces the revolutions that we saw at the start of the twentieth century. The rest of the time, radical thinking probably doesn’t feel as “radical” as it’s supposed to be, but that’s ok.

MQ: Word.

Can you be radical without being hypocritical?

Joy: Agreed. Ok, so, it’s an issue of dominance, of the rise and fall of power systems.

But there’s also the issue of complicity. For instance, if we critique the system of capitalism, patriarchy, colonialism, white supremacy, or whatever that we’re in, we can’t really opt out if we still want to live in society.

We’re complicit, and despite whatever valiant efforts, the systems are probably not going to shift too much in our lifetimes. But, acknowledging that, what does it mean to be a radical, or an activist, within this understanding? When we’re hypocrites by definition?

MQ:  The reason it’s difficult to take any principled belief is that it subjects you to exactly these attacks of naivete and hypocrisy.  This problem is magnified when that belief requires a large departure from the status quo.

But that’s the point of radicalism—to be a thorn in the side of complacency.

Radicalism constantly shifts depending on the mainstream; it only exists in relative terms.

Jia Jia: I wonder if that’s why radicalism is sometimes seen as elitism, because it’s necessarily not part of the main stream?

Joy: Maybe because if you want to try to live any of your radical ideas, you probably need resources. This would be less the Black Panthers brand of radical, and more the “go to an Occupy protest and tweet about it on your iPhone” brand of radical.

Jia Jia: In my experience, when you’re poor you don’t have time to think through radical theories. You either try hard to get rich or you mobilize others like you to make a change. Oh, and once you have something, you’re always afraid of losing it, hence the conservatism of the middle class.

If you’re born with resources, you can think or be as radical as you want, but then go back to a comfortable standard of living should your radicalness be just a phase…as it was with those hippies who went back to corporate America in the 80s.

So I suppose the question I have regarding radical thinking is: “Should we be worried about “how” radical we are? Maybe taking any action at all is more radical than thinking radical thoughts? Maybe being simply critical is more honest to our context than trying to be radical?

Joy: A point. But then you have the academics who spend all their time being self-congratulatory about the criticalness of their thought, and reading whatever New Left Review comes out, but they don’t live it.

Jia Jia: You mean they do too much of this?

 Joy: Ha! Exactly.

MQ: It’s so true.

There’s a part of the crisis of radicalism that, like every other nice thing in the world, has been partially co-opted by privileged white men, which has compromised its appeal to pretty much everyone else.

You can be a good radical thinker and a completely out-of-touch, hypocritical asshole at the same time.

Less talk, more action.

Joy: Yep, you meet a lot of those in academia. But is there a point beyond questioning that you have to arrive at to truly be radical? To drop a Marxist cliche up in here, stop trying to interpret the world and actually work to change it?

Jia Jia: Exactly. Really, “radical thinking,” “critical thinking,” and “activism” are different concepts. “Critical thinking” is about questioning everything, “radical thinking” is about believing in something that’s quite different from the status quo, and “activism” is about acting on whatever you believe in.

Critical thinking is usually the starting point for radical thinking and activism but to move into either, ironically, I think you have to switch off some critical thinking and switch on some ideology. Because critical thinking is purely deconstructive—you pick things apart and identify the flaws; you may posit some improvements but they don’t “radically” change the system. Radical thinking and activism are constructive. Radical thinking involves offering up a very different vision of the future— an ideology. Meanwhile, activism means believing in something strongly enough to act on it. That’s the opposite of critique.

So, to be glib, pure critical thinkers are armchair critics (like myself), pure radical thinkers are wannabe ideologues, and activists are the only real doers out there. But to “do,” activists have to get their hands dirty and be ruthless.

That’s something too tough for my delicate idealist sensibilities to handle which is why I’m just an armchair critic well-versed in 100% deconstructive critical thinking.

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By Jia Jia, Joy, and MQ
Image by Banksy