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Comment by ploika | Hacker News Reader

That's a pretty silly example. North Korea is North Korea precisely because of the extremism.

I don't understand that statement. I believe North Korea is a totalitarian state with concentrated power in few hands and no tolerance for dissidence. Are you saying they allow non-state actors to speak and take action freely to promote extreme ideologies there?

The poster probably means that NK is NK, because of its own extremist ideology. So the only way to really get rid of extremists seems to be to become more extreme than them.

If that's the meaning, then extremism led to the US, France, and a number of other countries.

I didn't say it was the only way of getting rid of extremism. I'd even argue that getting rid of extremism by installing a extremist regime makes as much sense as chopping a leg off because you want to get rid of a headache.

It is important to remember, that no nation no matter how great its tales of freedom or historic shame might be is immune against extremism.

North Korea became north korea because of censorship. It is the most censored country in the world. And the point is that there is not "extremism" in north korea because censorship allows only "authoritarianism". That's the world you want to live in?

I agree with you that censorship is extremism and it should be fought against.

Extremism to a Westerner perhaps. Certainly, the ideology behind North Korea would be censored in most of the proposals on this thread, but given that the government of north korea would not and it is the only government with any control over the country of North Korea, I don't understand by what metric you could possibly say it's extremism. Unless you're appealing to divine justice or something, which would be great, but I sincerely doubt it.

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