Thread by @tzimmer_history

“Polarization” Is Not the Problem. It Obscures the Problem.
 
We need to be a lot more critical towards the pervasive #polarization narrative as the central diagnosis of our time.
 
New episode of @USDemocracyPod – with @shannimcg:

“Polarization” not only obscures what the key challenge is – the anti-democratic radicalization of the Right and the threat of authoritarian minority rule – but also transports a misleading idea of America’s recent past and how we got to where we are now. 2/

We start by outlining the central arguments and claims of the #polarization narrative, looking both at how it’s been conceptualized in the political and social sciences as well as at how the idea of “polarization” has shaped the broader public and political discourse. 3/

Our point is not that there aren’t specific aspects or dimensions of American politics, society, and culture that are adequately described as “polarized.” But once the “polarization” concept is adopted as an overarching diagnosis, it becomes really problematic. 4/

We offer an empirical, normative, and historical critique of the polarization narrative. On the empirical level, the pervasive polarization narrative completely obscures the fact that we find relatively broad consensus on some key political, social, and cultural questions. 5/

It is true that in many areas, the gap between “Left” and “Right” is very wide, and has been widening. But where that’s the case, it has often been almost entirely a function of conservatives moving sharply to the Right, and the Right being extreme by international standards. 6/

Most importantly, the “polarization” narrative completely obscures the fact that on the central issue that is at the core of the political conflict, the two parties, and Left and Right more generally, are very much not the same – that issue is democracy. 7/

Republicans are willing to abandon and overthrow democracy because they consider it a threat to traditional hierarchies and their vision of what “real” (read: white Christian patriarchal) America should be. Many of them are embracing authoritarianism. Democrats… are not. 8/

One party is dominated by a white reactionary minority that is rapidly radicalizing against democracy and will no longer accept the principle of majoritarian rule; the other thinks democracy and constitutional government should be upheld. That’s not “polarization.” 9/

On the normative level, the “polarization” paradigm privileges unity, stability, and social cohesion over social justice and equal participation. It doesn’t adequately grapple with the fact that the former tends to stifle the latter. 10/

“Polarization” ignores the fact that calls for racial and social justice are inherently de-stabilizing to a system that is built on traditional hierarchies of race, gender, and religion – they are indeed polarizing but, from a democratic perspective, are necessary and good. 11/

As a historical paradigm, “polarization” tends to mythologize past eras of “consensus” and supposed unity. But in U.S. history, political and social “consensus” was usually based on a cross-partisan agreement to leave a discriminatory social order intact. 12/

The era of “polarization” began when the white male elite consensus that had dominated both parties and society started to fracture.

In many ways, “polarization” is the price U.S. society has had to pay for real progress towards multiracial pluralistic democracy. 13/

Why do scholars, politicians, journalists, and pundits cling to the idea of “polarization”? Because the narrative’s inadequacy is not a bug, but a feature – it is precisely the fact that it obscures rather than illuminates the actual problem that makes it attractive. 14/

The “polarization” concept is useful if you want to lament major problems in American politics, but simply can’t bring yourself to address the fact that the major threat to American democracy is a radicalizing Right, is the threat of rightwing authoritarian minority rule. 15/

In this way, the concept even provides a rhetoric of rapprochement since it does not require agreement as to what is actually ailing America, only that “polarization” is to the detriment of all. The “polarization” narrative never breeds contention, it engenders unanimity. 16/

The genius of the #polarization narrative: It provides the language for a lament that blames nobody and everybody, it satisfies the longing for unity – which it constantly fuels in turn! – by offering a consensual interpretation; consensus re-established through the back door.