Thread by @tzimmer_history

This perfectly encapsulates the fallacies of the “polarization” dogma: Zero engagement with the substantive issues that define the political conflict, just empty #BothSides rhetoric that dissolves everything into “Let’s be nice to each other” nothingness.

https://twitter.com/startswithus/status/1655203037369991168

I don’t know the people behind this initiative, so I am not going to question their motives. But there are so many of these kinds of #unity projects, and if the goal actually is to get this country to become a functioning multiracial, pluralistic democracy, this isn’t helpful.

Apparently, everyone who approvingly responded to a thread in which I outlined the key arguments of our latest @USDemocracyPod on the problems with the pervasive #polarization narrative is now being addressed by these people and their empty unity gospel.

Unfortunately, they’re not engaging with any of our criticisms. We emphasize how the #polarization dogma privileges stability, and social cohesion over social justice and equality while never grappling with the fact that the former stifles the latter. Their response? “But unity!”

https://twitter.com/startswithus/status/1655209188992118784

All of this “lower the anger” stuff sounds good in a vacuum - yet completely distorts the reality of the political conflict while being entirely oblivious to the fact that “polarization” is the price U.S. society has had to pay for real progress towards multiracial pluralism.

We discuss in the episode why these people are so determined to cling to the “polarization” dogma: Because the narrative’s inadequacy is not a bug, but a feature – it’s precisely the fact that it obscures rather than illuminates the actual problem that makes it so attractive.

https://twitter.com/tzimmer_history/status/1653384718639874049

The “polarization” concept is useful if you want to lament major problems, but can’t bring yourself to address the fact that the major threat to democracy is a radicalizing Right, is the threat of rightwing authoritarian minority rule. Instead, you just go “Oh, so much anger!”

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.

As a master narrative of what is wrong with America, “polarization” is not just analytically inept – it is highly misleading. It feeds a nostalgia that is being weaponized by reactionaries, and it allows the Right to deflect and completely distort the picture.

At the core of the “polarization” narrative - and the “cancel culture” tale too, btw - is the idea that it used to be better, that America is on a dangerous path away from a golden era of unity in the recent past. It’s perpetuated by willfully oblivious political nostalgia.

There is absolutely no need for polarization-induced “consensus” nostalgia. But that’s exactly what characterizes much of the broader polarization discourse. And it primes people to accept a politics focused on turning the clock back to a supposedly better past.

Once you’ve convinced yourself that the country is coming apart, you might decide it’s ultimately preferable to lend your support to those who promise to turn the clock back rather than to the “radical Left” – even if it means you’ll have to hold your nose while doing so.

Nostalgia is a powerful part of the human condition. It can easily become a filter through which every political, social, and cultural information is absorbed. And if a political movement offers to bring back what has supposedly been lost, that can be hard to resist.

In U.S. history, the price for extending democracy has always been political instability - or: division, “polarization” - because demands for equality and social justice are inherently destabilizing to an order based on traditional white Christian patriarchal authority.

American democracy was stable whenever and as long as it didn’t interfere with a political, social, and cultural order in which white Christians – and white Christian men, in particular – got to be on top and got to define what did and what did not count as “real America.”

Conversely, moments of racial and social progress – or even just perceived progress – have always been conflictual, have always led to a reactionary counter-mobilization that threatened to abolish democracy altogether rather than accept multiracial pluralism.

Nostalgia is a common reaction to change. Weaponized nostalgia is a powerful tool of reactionary politics. It currently constitutes a key threat to democracy. Let’s not fall for it. Absolutely no need to mythologize past eras of stable white Christian patriarchal elite “unity.”