About "moderate extremism"
There are several ideologies that have "extremist" and "moderate" proponents.

Some examples:

- Ideology is Marxism. Extremists are communist revolutionaries, moderates are social-democratic parties.

- Ideology is patriotic nationalism. Extremists are nazis, moderates are right-wing nationalist parties.

- Ideology is Islam. Extremists are jihadist terrorists, moderates are (for example) variously reformed Islamic imams in Western countries.

- Ideology is Christianity. Extremists are Christian fundamentalist cults that deny science, moderates are "normal" Christians who are well integrated into most societies.

Two features are common among all these cases:

- If the ideology comes to dominate the political scene, the extremists take control and create a totalitarian state ruled by the extreme version of the ideology. When domination is not achieved, it's the moderates who represent the ideology on the political scene, while the extremists remain marginalized.

- The moderates are markedly reluctant to denounce the extremists of their own ideology. The extremists are criticized but never considered enemies. For moderates (just as for the extremists), true enemies are the extremist proponents of other ideologies.



For someone who escaped from the Soviet Union, the evils of extremist Marxism are obvious. Social-democrats are then forever suspect. Social-democrats celebrate the same communist holidays and revere the same communist "saints" (Rosa Luxembourg etc.). They never denounce Lenin, Stalin, or Mao but instead seem to hold a somewhat favorable view of, say, life in the Soviet Union. For some reason, social-democrats' main enemy are right-wing extremists (who seem to be completely marginal and unimportant). The danger seems to be that, once "moderate" social-democrats come to full power, they will allow extremist Marxists to take control.

For someone who escaped from a Nazi concentration camp, the evils of extremist nationalism are obvious. Any right-wing parties are then forever suspect. They never truly condemned Hitler collaborationists or former Nazi party members; they continue to push "moderately" racist and nationalist agendas. Their main enemy seems to be communist or Islamic extremists, who appear to be politically unimportant. The danger seems to be that once a "moderate" right-wing party comes to power, it will allow truly radical nazis to take control.

For someone who escaped from an Islamic state, the evils of extremist Islam are obvious. Any "moderate Islamic scholars" are then forever suspect, for they never truly denounce the terrorists or condemn radical Islam. The danger is that, once "moderate Islam" comes to political power, it will allow the Islamic extremists to take control.

And so on.

So, the question: can there be a truly moderate version of an ideology that is not suspect of sympatizing with the extremists, such that it is not politically dangerous to give those "moderates" political power?

My answer is: no, there cannot be such "fully harmless" moderates. Every party that follows an ideology will tend to follow the same pattern. This is because their ideologies are, at the core, totalitarian: they require everyone to believe in their worldview, in order to achieve the happy state of affairs. Dissenters are viewed as people who actively destroy the happiness that should have been achieved otherwise.

There are two solutions to this:

- Marginalize the extremists and never allow any of the "moderates" to dominate the political scene.

- Find a political party that does not follow an ideology, or one that follows a non-totalitarian ideology. Allow that party to dominate.