What’s Wrong with Being an Extremist? On Clarke and Coady’s Conceptual Arguments Against Anti-Extremism

Abstract Extremism often carries “an unmissable and inescapable negative connotation” (Cassam 2021, p.34) and has become “an increasingly convenient insult” (Berger 2018, p.2). But what exactly is wrong with being an extremist? One answer is that the wrongness of being an extremist comes, at least in part, from the extremeness of their beliefs. I assess two arguments, offered by Clarke (2019) and Coady (2024), which reject this view and go further by suggesting that being an extremist is never, in itself, wrong. Drawing on two contrasting accounts of what it means for a belief to be extreme (the edge and outlier accounts) I reconstruct Clarke and Coady’s arguments and explore their implications. I conclude that, although their defence of extremism overreaches, there are nonetheless reasons to challenge the idea that holding extreme beliefs is wrong.