[jaguar]

You need to get deeper. 2 levels. Lets look at communism and socialism. Where do the activists and radicals come from? The upper middle classes, they have the time and education to understand and the money to effect extreme change, at the time, revolution. However those revolutions would never have worked without the mass support caused by inequity and lack of social mobility at the time. Today, you'll still find the vast majority of far-left activists on uni campuses but you won't be seeing revolution anytime soon, why? No popular support.

Do I need to bother drawing the parallels?

There has and always will be extremists, dangerous extremists of every colour, stripe and creed, driven by fevours as diverse as humanity itself. In general they are importent becuase they lack mass support. When you create circumstances where many turn to their cause as the answer to their plight, then you have a real problem. Thats where the "difficulties of their lives" argument stand up.