Over the course of 30 years working in the Middle East to amplify the voice of Israelis and Palestinians committed to overcoming extremism on both sides, I have come to realize a recurring pattern afflicting nearly all societies: Even though moderates overwhelmingly outnumber extremists, our will tends to be overpowered by a small group of people whose absolutist vision, passion, and bias toward action win them disproportionate influence.
Amid Hamas’ massacre and the ensuing Israel-Hamas war causing pain and suffering to so many innocent Israelis and Palestinians, as college campuses face turmoil, division, and protests sanctifying violence, and as hyper-partisan vitriol further permeates our culture in this contentious election year, I initially found myself once again pegging hateful extremism (on all sides) as the problem.
Upon further reflection, I am convinced that moderates are also at fault for the division and conflict overtaking our world.
Shortly following Oct. 7, I visited the Muhammad Ali Center, where I was honored with an award for Civility and Compassion. During my time in Louisville, Muhammad Ali’s wife and co-founder of The Muhammad Ali Center Lonnie Ali shared with me a powerful reflection. “The way you yield a crop is by planting a seed and cultivating it. Water, sun, fertilizer—you administer these each day and your plant grows. This is what moderates must do,” she said.
“We must plant the seed of civility and compassion, not only within ourselves, but also among our children, friends, and relatives. We need to nurture those seeds so that what begins as just a sapling soon becomes a forest. This is what extremists do,” she reminded me. “They get up each morning with the intention to further their cause; only theirs is a destructive one.”
For many years, I’ve used another explanation to make a similar point: When extremists get out of bed, they ask themselves, “How can I advance my cause?” Meanwhile, ordinary citizens wake up and ask themselves, “What can I have for breakfast?”
While most people recognize their agency and responsibility to shape their professional and personal lives, they too often fail to step into their important role in influencing civic life. This abdication of responsibility leaves a vacuum that those with extreme agendas are all too willing to fill. Lonnie’s words had me wondering, “What if moderates got up in the morning with the same commitment to change society as extremists?
Of course, neither Lonnie nor I would advocate for the hate advanced by radical absolutists—precisely the opposite. But moderates are losing, and something extremists are doing is rapidly catching on. Could we turn the tables by co-opting the strategies (not ideology) extremist destroyers use to divide, demolish, and diminish to transform from moderates into builders who unite, create, and bring light to the world instead?
Extremists operate with a clearly defined adversary. Builders need to do the same. Rather than peg one another as the problem (as we too often do today), we must be clear that radical absolutism itself is the common threat to all peace-abiding and freedom-loving people. Our enemy is not a person, but rather a mindset—a form of extremist thinking that replaces curiosity with rigidity, compassion with judgmental blame, and courage with fear of the other.
If we are committed to uniting against hateful and rigid thinking, we must do the uncomfortable work to build alliances across perceived religious, partisan, and cultural divides, and we must overcome the blind spots that lead many of us to overlook extremism within our own groups. To replace the “us vs. them” narrative with true clarity of mission, we must stop filling our news feeds exclusively with the perspectives of our own people, work to walk in the other side’s shoes, and commit to holding our own people accountable.
To articulate our unifying vision, we cannot get hung up on semantics. Caught in the crossfire of culture wars, many are struggling to find words that bring people together instead of pushing them apart. To overcome this, we must all assume positive intent from one another and allow each other to speak from the heart, even if our words aren’t perfect.
While extremists exercise relentless determination in pursuit of their cause, the rest of us tend to waver in our dedication. Our immediate needs personally and professionally tend to take precedence. Though we should not seek to emulate the extremist’s detachment from worldly life, which only fuels further out-of-touch radical thinking, we could all afford to do more each day to engage civically. We can do this in big ways by volunteering in our local communities, writing to our representatives, and voting in primaries. We can also do this in seemingly small ways, through interactions with friends, relatives, and co-workers.
Every disagreement or challenging moment is an opportunity to commit to curiosity for ideas we are inclined to disagree with, compassion for those we perceive to be different, and the courage to team up across divides to solve problems. If we hone these skills daily, we will be more likely to spot extremism early on, and to engage in critical listening, hearty debate, and kindness that mitigate moving toward the fringes.
Lastly, in the same way that extremists wield social media as a weapon to spread hate and lies, we must find radical ways to demonstrate empathy, understanding, and rejection of absolutist thinking online. We have to be louder and more attention-grabbing about our constructive actions so that bad actors don’t hog the limelight. Instead of ignoring troll-ish comments in our feeds, we should “call in” the haters and bring them a little closer to our cause.
The stakes have never been higher for moderates to step up, speak out, and commit to becoming Builders—flexible thinkers and constructive problem-solvers who recognize the dignity of all people. Stopping a culture of division and destruction from hijacking our lives will require beating extremists at their own game—and even borrowing a page from their book.
Daniel Lubetzky is the founder of KIND Snacks and Builders, a global platform equipping people with the skills, tools, and network to overcome extremist thinking and toxic polarization.
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