Whoa what a reaction. I wasn't going for validating what they did by criticizing the replacement of information about their political ideas and actions with the word "extremism". But that seems exactly how people understand the term. As if there was a righteous or acceptable "middle" the degree of deviance signified how good or what smth is... The political compass needs to know what things are about, not how "x-treme" they are.
Or we need to use that term on any bombing of people, like for example "the extremism of [any us president]". Step 2 would be picturing what benefit that would add to the conversation
There is a norwegian study that found that isolated beaver babies start piling up sticks and stuff at some point but do not build dams. They concluded (the scientists) that piling up stuff is genetic and building dams is cultural (has to be learned). I have no link but the study was made in Bø