About
Hi, my name is Brett Stevens and extreme politics is my hobby. By “extreme politics,” I mean any political group or idea that has rejected the notion that we can work within the extant political system. Extreme politics demands renovation and “thinking outside the box” of what we consider normal politics.
Extreme politics became my hobby when I was working as a freelance journalist in Modesto, CA. It seemed to me that, in the course of covering stories unrelated to politics, I got given a lot of political opinions. Who’s responsible for what. What “should” be done. How it’s going to turn out, and how “a guy (or gal) like me” has no influence.
Since that time, I picked up a book that I now consider my political Bible. It’s called The Republic, and it’s written by a man who used the pseudonym Plato in ancient Greece over 2300 years ago. Its title means “the political system,” and it’s a comparison of political systems. It also contains a radical notion: that every nation has a birth through death cycle, and that its political system — and what is considered normal, moral politics — changes throughout this cycle.
Based on the interviews I’ve done so far, extreme politics implies the action taken by those who care about our future but believe conventional politics cannot stop its decline, so we must seek other, often taboo, options like anarchy, greenism, libertarianism, nationalism, communism and fascism. I’ve talked to smart people with strong convictions from all sides, and what I’ve learned so far is that they have more in common than not.
This blog is here to showcase their views, so we can spot history being made before our eyes. If we are to think about future politics, it makes sense to take the best ideas from each of these groups and people, and use them to rebuild if the time has come for that — and many believe it has. After talking to many people, I think that extreme politics is not so much about hating “the system” as it is about rebuilding it, and trying to make it better next time.