I'm American and I can't help but think many of you just lack social skills. It's very convenient to think that everyone's hyper-sensitive and there's nothing you could do to change that, but usually people are pretty receptive to just about anything as long as you respect them. Avoid leading/gotcha questions, don't smirk, appear to genuinely listen and seek to understand the other person, resist the urge to tool on them if it's shown they're lacking basic knowledge, try to find common ground. I'm relatively conservative and I've never had a problem.

> usually people are pretty receptive to just about anything as long as you respect them.

Non-American here.

I lived in the United States for over thirty years. My experience was different.

I lost a lot of friends in the last ten years, because they started posting completely ridiculous, crazy stuff and were completely defensive of even the most reasonable objections.

I'd put up with "Obama is a Muslim" for a long time, but then it started to escalate. People would get hostile when you mentioned that there were records showing otherwise. After the election, some people become convinced that Michelle Obama was in fact a transgender man and let me hear all about it.

And you know, it's hard not to get a little pissed off about such blatant lies, hmm?

A long-time friend of mine started posting about Sandy Hook being a hoax - that the school had never existed. I pointed out that a friend-of-a-friend of mine had lost two children there, and my friend just went ballistic and started calling me the most unbelievable names, "Do your homework!" I unfriended her. You could see her get more unhinged on other people's pages and unfriended, and I haven't heard anything from her in years.

And now we have terrible lies about medical data, and again, people become incredibly defensive. At least two acquaintances accused me of being a pharmaceutical company shill! (I've never worked anything remotely like that.)

Sorry, it's not just "politeness" - a significant portion of Americans just went off the rails in the last decade.

Spot on.

I finally a cut a relative off after his long slide deeper into extremism culminated in posting Facebook memes demeaning me and people I cared about leading up to the 2016 election. I'm sure he thinks it was out of nowhere because he brushed me off when I asked him to stop saying such cruel and ignorant things.

Said relative was completely unmoved every time I said "that's me. You know me. Why are you saying these things about me? Why are you saying these things about people who matter to me?"

We were strangers long before I realized it. 2016 was just the wakeup call. There's no difference to me between people claiming relatives cut them off out of nowhere "over politics" and estranged parents in estranged parent forums who don't understand why their kids went no contact. They know or were at least told. But they didn't listen.

Growing up I was told hundreds of times "not to believe everything you read on the internet." Parents, teachers, relatives, and older folks all told me that. It was a cliche, and us younger people made fun of it being a cliche in the same way we made fun of downloading cars. Even so, it stuck with me.

Then it stopped. No one said it anymore. What happened?

Unscrupulous marketing people discovered the effectiveness of doublespeak. They turned the natural suspicion of internet information back at itself by implying that “the other people on the internet are lying to you, I’m going to tell you the real truth” and because everyone knows you can’t trust the internet they are subtly manipulated into being more likely to believe something new that is untrue.

every one connected to Facebook>

"A long-time friend of mine started posting about Sandy Hook being a hoax - that the school had never existed. I pointed out that a friend-of-a-friend of mine had lost two children there, and my friend just went ballistic and started calling me the most unbelievable names, "Do your homework!""

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Hook_Elementary_School_s...

I see no siblings on the list of victims. Your friend-of-a-friend story sounds like some information was omitted which impacts credibilty.

> I see no siblings

Siblings is not the only combination possible, people can mourn a son and his cousin for example, or the best friend of your son, or the son of a close friend. Most people would describe the experience as losing two children.

I'm not claiming that the history is neither real or is false, just that the data don't point clearly to one or the other option

Siblings IS the only combination, unless you are playing word games. You have a job, with benefits available. Go to HR, tell them you want the additional coverage for your children. Mention that one is your best friend's child. Or your daughters best friend. When concise wording matters, this choice will become important. Else it is like the collective "we lost favorite actor|humanatarian|humorist|etc person this year" stuff in clickbait headlines. The collective "we" is about manipulation of perception and feelings.

This is not to minimize the loss felt by the poster I replied to's friend-of-a-friend. Its about not misleading by choice of words. Isn't that a big part of the original post?

You don't know that, you're going off of last names. Why are we justifying conspiratorial thinking

Ah. But the people making the outlandish accusations were your friends, right?

Imagine if it was the media. (Remember the Steele dossier?)

Or if the people making the most noise were actually the worst offenders. (Harvey Weinstein, Michael Avenatti, Mario Cuomo, Chris Cuomo, most recently John Griffin.... 'Party of Women', anyone?)

There is enough craziness to go around, I assure you.

I have crazy friends on both sides. I hope a return to sanity can happen.

My close friend used to be a democrat, then became a Trumper and even worked in his administration. We got into a lot of heated debates, and our friendship finally about ended when he recently told me I was “lying to protect my political allies,” which is about the most rediculous statement I could imagine. Not only do I not have political allies (I’m not in politics), but I’m also giving pointing out opinions and evidence contrary to his viewpoint, which he dismisses as a lie (versus debatable points). It’s gotten so absurd, and I blame media on this one. People go into self-reinforcing areas that just get more and more extreme as people try to score points within their own clan. It’s sad, as he was one of the only people I knew that voted for Trump that I could have a real discussion with. Now I just watch it all from afar.

It’s as if an evil sorcerer kidnapped our friends and family members and turned them into minions.

We could say that brainwashing and propaganda are black magic - after all they turn brother against brother and mother against daughter. Extremism, dehumanization, division often end up in violence on massive scale.

Being able to cheaply and efficiently hypnotize people into an alternate reality and maintaining that is… what kind of power?

I think in person it's easier to adopt this approach because there's a lot more context available. If you ask someone a question in person you can look them in the eye and they can assess if you're being genuine. Online there is a tendency to second guess what the person really means, especially if they're a stranger (which they often are) and then to assume the worst.

The problem is compounded in forums with a really wide general audience with potentially very little common ground. Not only do you not have shared assumptions you can rely on (e.g. we all believe in free-speech, we all believe that the moon landing happened) but you often don't build up any kind of track record or rapport with someone so you know what they mean by a particular (ambiguous) comment. It's the opposite problem to the echo chamber.

It's both.

I work in political communications/as a civics educator. I also grew up in a purple state in the 90s with a half liberal family and a half conservative one.

The media landscape is completely different now. When I was growing up, my dad and I would do things like listen to Limbaugh and then discuss what points we agreed with + how stuff was covered online (he read the Drudge Report and other conservative online news and I read the opposite).

One difference is that back then if I listened, I could get a genuine idea of what the other side wanted: Watching a liberal outlet would tell me, at least broadly, what conservatives wanted. (Fewer taxes, more religion, greater national security, etc.) Likewise for a conservative outlet re: liberals (Gay marriage, no war, etc.)

Now? The media is just constantly spouting things that are completely batshit.

> The media landscape is completely different now

Not entirely. Right-wing talk radio has been fanning the flames of hatred towards "liberals" (e.g., all "others") for decades. It's taken root and flourished.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/17/us/politics/limbaugh-deat...

I remember. They were the earliest ones acting like that, but now everybody is. The right wing talking heads used to be a novelty; even when people listened to them like my dad + other conservative relatives, there wasn't a media ECOSYSTEM built around filter bubbling those opinions. The idea of somebody being informed with only what they knew from Limbaugh would have been absurd.

You're right that it's been building for a long time; in hindsight we can identify key points (like the development of AM talk radio, the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine, the introduction of CNN/the 24 hour news cycle, digital media's embrace of the advertising funding model), but it's a trend.

Both sides are doing it now because it pays.

I agree with the premise that most people are reasonable, but there is a sizeable minority that are extremely vocal and unreasonable that can make you the black sheep at family gatherings or get you fired for saying the wrong thing, etc. The rest of this reasonable population you speak of stays in their lane because of this.

> It's very convenient to think that everyone's hyper-sensitive and there's nothing you could do to change that, but usually people are pretty receptive to just about anything as long as you respect them.

I think a lot of people are willing to listen, but there is a some amount of evidence that indicates political leanings may have some basis in biology:

> Studies have found that subjects with right-wing, or conservative in the United States, political views have larger amygdalae and are more prone to feeling disgust. Those with left-wing, or liberal in the United States, political views have larger volume of grey matter in the anterior cingulate cortex and are better at detecting errors in recurring patterns. Conservatives have a stronger sympathetic nervous system response to threatening images and are more likely to interpret ambiguous facial expressions as threatening. In general, conservatives are more likely to report larger social networks, more happiness and better self-esteem than liberals. Liberals are more likely to report greater emotional distress, relationship dissatisfaction and experiential hardship and are more open to experience and tolerate uncertainty and disorder better.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biology_and_political_orientat...

* https://www.routledge.com/Predisposed-Liberals-Conservatives...

> The book is intended as an objective study of the conceptual metaphors underlying conservative and liberal politics although the closing section is devoted to the author's personal views. Lakoff makes it clear however, that there is no such thing as an Objective study of politics, as politics is based in subjective morality.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_Politics_(book)

People are really suffering from this attitude. They think “well a leftist was smug about vaccines on twitter, so it’s their fault I’m not vaccinated” and then they die.

Usually, however it would be more among the lines of "I heard a leftist[1] was smug about vaccines on twitter, so ..."

[1]: the leftist was actually fiscally conservative centrist, which would have been in the right wing of any european conservative party, but who cares about the meaning of words anymore, right?

Yes and: Ezra Klein provides a lot of context in the book Why We Are Polarized.

It was long argued that partisanship (Dem v GOP) should become polarized, so that voters knew what they were getting. (Careful what you wish for.)

Sorting proceeded polarization, then became self reinforcing.

To your point about identity, somehow sorting and polarization led to a stacking of our identities, creating super identities. So that any given belief becomes strongly associated with many others. Like a NASCAR fan is more likely a GOP voter. This is somehow like homophily and schismogenesis.

Klein concludes by punting on how to unwind polarization. Instead, he advocates majoritarian rule by ending the vetocracy. So then our polarized parties are better held accountable.

--

This paper's Attraction-Repulsion Model is worth considering. I really like their use of dynamic simulations. Coolness. Alas, I currently have no clue if ARM has any predictive power (real world use cases).

To noob me, sorting and polarization -- tribes and wedge issues -- kinda look similar to k-means clustering and bee colony optimization. ARM isn't so different.

I've been reading about voter behaviour modeling. Starting with William McPhee's work. Again, I have no idea if what they're actually doing is any better than phrenology.

Having worked on campaigns, I actually know the mechanics of polling, profiling, GOTV. But the work of orgs like Data for Progress, fivethirtyeight, and our local party's quants has always struck me as black magic. (Or complete bullshit. I still haven't decided.)

Not dismissing your point, but you may be hitting at words that have ambiguity when translated. I am not a german speaker but would it be grammatically correct to say "Ich bin CDUer"? From my elementary school german it does not feel right.

On the other hand you can perfectly say "Ich bin christdemokrat" and here you are back to the American case with political support equaling identity.

An equivalently polarized country, Poland, does not have PiS supporters saying they are "Jestem PISowcy"(I am a Piser) or "Jestem POsy")(I am a POer). According you our theory I would expect Polish to identify themselves as written above.

In Portuguese, party names are also mostly abbreviations, and people will just say "sou do PS"(i am from PS/I am a PSer) for actual militants as well as supporters. This would hint at identity and support being the same. As a Portuguese i can tell you Portugal is outstandingly homogeneous and not polarized. This would falsify your theory as well as you would expect conflating support with identity would reflect polarization.

I dont think anyone would ever say „Ich bin christemokrat“, a much more common saying (at least in the area where I live or the area I grew up) would be „Ich bin CDU-Wähler“/I am a CDU-Voter. This is coincidentally how my parents would describe their political leanings (SPD).

Certainly some people do say "Ich bin Christdemokrat", but that would usually be active party members, not just voters.

In Brazil people say "I'm Petista" and they're extremely polarized, very similar to how the US looks like.

It's amazing that both sides' (right and left) ideas, at this point, lead to the same results in the long run, but they vehemently fight eachother like they were extreme opposites. Just because the short term presentation of the ideas is different.

Fair point, in Poland I wouldn't expect someone to call themself "PISowiec" ("PISowcy" is plural) - those terms are often used as derogatory. On the other hand, it's quite common to label either yourself or them as "prawicowiec/lewicowiec" (right-winger/left-winger).

I was reading about this just yesterday, and was intrigued to learn that the backfire effect may not be real and/or may be very weak. Here's one meta-study:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7462781/

As I understand it (I am far from deeply knowledgeable about the literature! I'm just reading a book on this right now), Porter and Wood's 2017 study was one of the first that called into question the strength or existence of the backfire effect:

Wood and Porter. "The elusive backfire effect: mass attitudes' steadfast factual adherence." Political Behavior, Jan 6 2018. https://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2819073

That still does not explain why such identity beliefs appear to be spreading. My own hypothesis is that most things are now too complex for most people, i.e., how things work is largely "magic". This then might allow people to actually belief a lot more things as a lot of how the real world works is already untethered from reality for them.

Look around: social media is pervasive and most (all?) of its goals are to propagate conflicting views, as they are the one bringing the holy click. Division is a logical consequence of that and no social media company feels at all responsible. Yeah one can (and not wrongly) blame the human nature but so far we've been able to enact laws to protect us against some other human nature shortcomings - we call them "crimes".

Conflicting belief systems and views with massive real world consequences far predate current social media, hence I struggle with the idea of social media being the sole causal agent/accelerant. And social media also do seem to impact different societies differently. On top, the US has had a real world "violence problem" for a long time (even compared to societies with similar levels of gun ownership), i.e., I would not discount specific societal factors.

The "sole" - that's what nobody said.

Fair enough: should have said "strongly relevant" instead

That has been the case since the industrial revolution, though. My theory is that political affiliation has taken the place of religion. Particularly on the left, but you can see a lot of it happening on the right now too since Christianity has declined in influence in the Republican party.

Spot on. At the end of the day it's a lot less harmful to worship an invisible being than an idealised visible entity

I think you may be on to something here. But I think that in terms of US politics, the stabilizing factor was that, until recently, both parties shared the same religion. Even up to the 90's, being Christian was very much a requirement for Democratic presidential candidates.

How is it not now? Dems never nominated a non-Christian candidate for Pres.

Hard disagree. The visible entity is still human, and can be wrong, even if it takes a lot to recognize it. God's can't be wrong whatever they do, however inhuman it is.

As a leftie, but who can't relate to the many demands they now have (e.g. cancel culture), did Christianity influence the GOP? Or is it more the GOP saying "We are Christians" and what "Christianity" means to them is whatever they say it is?

I think it used to be the former, and is now more like the latter. And I think that as Christianity, independent of the GOP, continues to be less of a political force, you will see a brand of Republican religion without reference to Christianity. I think the beginnings of this can be seen in the purging of Liz Cheney, who, until very recently, was a canonical Republican. Now it is basically heretical in the Republican party to go against Trump. Also Trump is the first Republican presidential candidate that I can remember who didn't make a show out of his Christian faith, and didn't seem to be hurt by it.

But he still kind of did just by choosing Mike Pence as VP.

And Trump is a perfect demonstration of a political party having "religious zeal" unanchored to a religion. He's close to a God figure to some people. Those people and Christians really need to be in separate political parties.

Not sure that is totally true since the industrial revolution. 50 years ago when learning how to drive there was a lot of learning on how a car works, for example. That is completely gone now.

I don't quite understand this argument. Our ancestors were able to get themselves very polarized in their (technologically) simpler times. They believed really wild and counterproductive things too.

We have increased in our polarization compared to 25 years ago, but compared to the many civil wars across time and space we aren't so bad (yet we are at peak incomprehensibility).

Exactly, and in those simpler times a lot of things where indeed pretty much assumed to be Devine/magic etc. Back then things where also very incomprehensible otherwise.

So my point is we are going back to that stage after a short "interregnum" where the machines in our daily lives where somewhat more comprehensible.

As someone from outside the US, the US seems to have a particularly bad case of identity beliefs. Will you test your hypothesis against other developed nations and see how much of it is explained by the current trajectory of US's national culture and politics and how much is explained by fundamental environmental complexity?

> why such identity beliefs appear to be spreading

There's a loneliness epidemic (even before the *-demic words became used for something else...), my theory is that lonely people were looking for a tribe to feel a sense of belonging and found political tribes to be one.

It also seems to me people take a lot of political positions not because they believe it, but because "the other side" takes the opposing view. Anything the "enemy" likes, I don't support. But the root cause would be to find that sense of belonging. Or it'd be because of insecurity: if I think the other side have idiotic opinions, I can walk around having the smug feeling of supremacy, and hey, at least I feel better, right?

It's the same issue with second generation Muslim migrants in Western Europe who feel "lost" and then found Jihad, they'd start as troubled youths who were shoplifters, who end up in jail, find the charismatic hate-preacher/Imam there and then are inspired and find their lives' cause, which is sadly Jihad. IMO white supremacist terrorists go through the same motions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlbirlSA-dc or a text that's the same idea (by the same guy): https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2010/jul/19...

I'd agree with this. I've met many people who have identities and can get along with people just fine. However, when we identify as enemies of other people, things tend to go a bit haywire.

I'm surprised nobody's mentioned yet a key (admittedly not only) part in making the US so polarized: first past the post voting system which inevitably leads to a two party system. Good luck having nuance in that system. It literally pits people against each other in two umbrella teams. The internet's echo chamber mechanic has only amplified this.

People need to challenge their own beliefs more often. You vote Democrat? Whatever. Who do you vote for in the primaries? Nobody cares... they should.

It might open the eyes to the foundations of disagreement not being dehumanizing.

I did actually touch on it briefly in [1] but it was not my only focus so perhaps you missed it. But I fully agree our voting system is one of the primary reasons for our polarization (social media is probably another but that's mainly an instinctual hypothesis). Unfortunately the alternative with the most support currently is ranked choice/IRV which does not really solve polarization (perhaps it might help it due to external societal factors, but in a mathematical vacuum I believe IRV is just as polarizing as first past the post). As far as single winner methods go, approval and STAR are gaining momentum and they do address polarization, so if one of these catches on I expect it to help slowly improve our current situation.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29550838

Yup, I've missed it somehow. I'm also a fan of approval and particularly star voting compared to IRV. It's good they're gaining ground.

> Who do you vote for in the primaries? Nobody cares... they should.

This is a mechanism that in the past limited polarization at the final election. Now, there's ideological policing-by-harassment within both parties.

I find the paper a bit ironic, but I think the problem isn't identity beliefs per say, the problem is more innate than that. And the innate problem is merely a conflict in individual wills as Thomas Hobbes argues in his state of nature. Or put more simply, politics is entirely just a conflict in personal wants, and the problem is that other people don't always share the same wants as you do.

To demonstrate Hobbes point: imagine living on a desert island, alone by yourself. You can do whatever you desire, as there is no one to stop you from doing it. No law, no opposition whatsoever. If you want to burn everything on the island, no one to stop you! There is no politics to be had!

Now, imagine you're on an island, and suddenly there's another person on that island. And all that's on the island is a stack of resources, just enough to either build a boat to safely transport one person off the island, or enough to build a hut to shelter one person so they can live on the island. You want to build a boat to get off the island, however the other person wants to use the resources to build a hut to live on the island. Notice what you want and what the other person wants, is at conflict with another! How do you resolve this conflict in wills? If you compromise, and share the resources, there won't be enough for either of you to get the outcome you want. Additionally, who is righteous to say whichever outcome happens is just/fair? Is it what you both agree on? Well that's both what you will isn't it?

Anyhow, being against "anything that undermines democratic norms" is a will of itself. So is the desire to "prevent extreme polarization...", which is really just a roundabout way of saying "Preventing the opposition from doing what it is I want."

| For example, in America you say "I'm a Republican." or “I’m a Democrat.”

I’ve lived in the US all my life, and I feel like I must have missed the day at school that they trained everyone to identify this way. It has always been completely bonkers to me to take on identity defined by a political corporation subject to the whims of the populace (at best) and monied/powered interests (at worst).

There are probably vast tomes being written by psychologists and sociologists about how it’s an outgrowth of our lack of community and need for belonging, but at the end of the day I find it all rather sad in the now.

Not sure about that, I've been member of the German Green youth organization and at least when I was younger identified as Green. During that time I had a lot of vivid discussions with people from far left over neo-liberal to right conservative. The discussions were actually often heated but without exception respectful.

Nowadays I rather observe something different which leaves a rather chilling sensation. Discussions don't happen or happen just passive-aggressively. People hide their political beliefs and best you get an indication from cynical remarks that often become personal.

It's not fun to discuss politics anymore and I usually rather prefer not to.

> e.g. incels, preppers, anti-vaxers, jihadists, etc

If you take the argument to the extreme, hot heads are not the people who run amok. But rather people who never speak up outside of their peers, hide anonymously and are not properly organized with open meetings, regular sessions and all that...

I think it might be stronger than just "identity". Say I am a Republican, and you are a Democrat. That's still OK. We might not be able to have a conversation about politics, but we don't have to be at open warfare with each other. We can still coexist, we just cant talk about politics.

But now comes an issue like, say, abortion. You feel like you have to have a country where abortion is freely available, and I feel like I have to have a country where fetuses are safe from being aborted. Now we're at open war with each other. We can no longer coexist.

So I think it's a step past identity. It's this idea/feeling that one must have some political result.

In politics, sometimes you lose. In fact, in a two-party system, about half the time you lose. People no longer consider that acceptable. That makes it really hard to have a functioning political system.

Most people are willing to draw compromises, even on abortion. Most people who favor the right to an abortion will accept a line somewhere; many are content to accept the trimester system. Most people who wish to ban it still allow exceptions, such as rape, even though that seems inconsistent with it being really about murder.

It's an issue that easily admits being amplified by tribalism, but it doesn't have to be. We don't have to be at war over it. There exist compromises that aren't internally consistent but satisfy the moral intuitions of a large majority of the country.

Instead, we're at war -- not because of the issue itself, but because the issue is presented as one where we have to be at war about. They're not looking for a compromise, even among their partisans who would accept one. They're looking for a war, because that war is used to keep their opponents out of office on all issues.

It's an effective strategy for winning. Compromise doesn't make you run out to the polls. It doesn't matter how many parties there are. The winner is the one with the most votes. It's easiest to get the most votes when you believe that you are the only ones who are morally righteous, and everybody else is guilty of the one crime that every single person thinks is wrong all the time -- murder.

So I believe that it's not stronger than "identity". Identity is how you win elections. Abortion happens to be a great issue for sharply defining identity, but if it weren't that, it would be something else. And along with it comes every other issue that you've managed to agree with your partisans on: you win every argument for free.

I agree with you 100% on the "backfire effect", and I think it's not really difficult to understand the mechanism behind it. But I don't think the US is really much different in that regard than anyone else, the differences there are maybe cultural at best, but in any case superficial. E.g. when I was looking at a flat in Germany, a landlord told me he subscribes to many newspapers, including the Süddeutsche Zeitung, but only to "monitor the left". That person identifies clearly with the right, and it doesn't matter how he phrases it.

Say "I support the AfD." (which is a bit like the German equivalent of saying "I support Trump") in Germany though and you are villified beyond belief and declared an Unperson, so while I may agree with your point in general, Germany certainly isn't a great example to support it.

Where I live, people pulled down AfD signs or defaced them. The unpersoning is not helpful. The ideas won't go away, and the people who think the AfD raises good questions will only feel persecuted (because they are).

The worst part is that the ones who hate the AfD don't know why they do and are unable to counter their arguments.

I see everyone's forgotten the reason the far right are banned in Germany. Remember, Hitler won a democratic election, and (by implication) the popular debate.

I don't remember any elections Hitler has won, neither does Wikipedia. What did you have in mind?

He was elected Chancellor in 1933.

He was not. Hitler was appointed Chancellor by the president Hindenburg, it is not some obscure fact and can be googled in 5 seconds. I am confused why people keep insisting on such an obvious lie to be honest. Especially in this topic: Weimar Republic experienced the same degree of polarization and the breakdown of political process as the US is experiencing now. Instead of trying to make a new history it's worth reflecting on what is the next step after the political parties decide that their opposition is not worth any argument and needs to be eliminated.

While this is true, that he was in charge of the party which won more votes than any other in an election is definitely something I count as “winning an election”.

While I am also concerned about the breakdown of political discourse in the USA (and, to a lesser degree, the UK), I don’t think it’s reached the level of late Weimar Republic.

It's fine that you count somebody doing something other than winning an election as winning an election, that's why I asked the original poster what did he mean by that.

And, in the same sense, we do not have the same level of polarization: we don't close the opposition newspapers, only websites/social network accounts, so definitely not the same, we don't ban parties yet (just harass them through selective law enforcement and impede their ability to raise funds) and only one party so far has the enforcers (coincidentally borrowing the name and attributes of the one of KPD from 1920s). Also, economically, we have much lower inflation.

> Hitler was appointed Chancellor by the president Hindenburg

In the same sense that Boris Johnson was appointed PM by Queen Elizabeth II; constitutional systems in which the head of government is appointed by the head of state, based largely on control of Parliament, but sometimes with bounded discretion where there is no clear parliamentary majority, are rather common models.

Had Hitler’s party not won the plurality of seats, or had other parties that could work together in a coalition had more seats, he would not have been appointed chancellor.

Controlling the largest bloc that can work together is winning a parliamentary election; not as total a victory as winning an outright majority, but—in the constitutional and political context in which the Nazis did it—a rather sufficient one.

In Germany you can vote for lowering taxes without voting for AfD, while in USA the entire right wing block gets the same hate as AfD does in Germany. That makes the American situation extremely different, most people who vote for Republicans aren't racist etc, they just care about lowering taxes and Republicans is the only party that you can vote for to get that. USA's political system causes this issue.

Lowering taxes is racist.

> When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a European, or anything else, you are being violent. Do you see why it is violent? Because you are separating yourself from the rest of mankind. When you separate yourself by belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence. So a man who is seeking to understand violence does not belong to any country, to any religion, to any political party or partial system; he is concerned with the total understanding of mankind.

—Jiddu Krishnamurti, Freedom From the Known, Chapter 6.

I never thought I would be pro-violence, but if separation from the undifferentiated is violent, then violence is a good thing.

> Guess in which of these countries you can have polite (even if heated) dinner conversations about politics!

Yes, but that was before vaccination scepticism and AfD (new-ish right wing party that made waves the last few years and now sits in the Bundestag too). Now we (Germany) see similar vitriol. We even had murder (some guy murdered the cashier at a petrol station because they were outraged he asked to wear a mask) and as recent as this week headlines about violent anti-vaccination protests. We also read about splits in families similar to what we were used to reading about from the US. Looks like we are catching up.... /s

https://www.thelocal.de/20211207/germanys-new-government-con...

https://www.ft.com/content/f04ac67b-92e4-4bab-8c23-817cc0483...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_for_Germany (AfD party)

In Czechia and Poland, the same vitriol seems to be catching up. Well, in case of Poland, it might actually already be on the US level.

At least we are multiparty countries, so switching allegiance is not as hard as in the US/UK system.

But social networks are really good in their role of Shiri's scissor [0]. We shouldn't feel smug; as you say, we may just be slightly behind in the trend whose shockwave travels through the U.S. first.

(A darkly funny observation: polarization and obesity seem to develop in a similar fashion. Maybe a diet of unhealthy shit and a diet of horrible info content go hand in hand, hacking the same circuits in our brains.)

[0] https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/10/30/sort-by-controversial/

> For example, in America you say "I'm a Republican." but in Germany you say "I support the CDU." Notice the difference? One is an identity, the other is an action. Guess in which of these countries you can have polite (even if heated) dinner conversations about politics!

I doubt that element of linguistics has any real importance. In Romance languages you'd say « I'm a left/right winger », « I'm a socialist » etc. and the social culture is very much less radicalized than in the US in that respect. Politics was a normal subject of conversation at the family table when I was a kid, and it's a normal one at the bar as an adult. If anything the inability to be able to talk about politics is taken as a sign of immaturity or poor education.

This being said, I do think your original point about identity stands and touches upon the core of the issue.

For anyone interested, there is a book named "Identity Theory" from Peter J. Burke and Jan E. Stets.

I agree with you but I think you are a little harsh regarding the conclusions which are drawn by the authors of the paper. There are actually two types of polarisation: ideological and affective. The paper, as far as I understood it (and you seem to agree), mainly concerns itself with ideological polarisation (i.e. polarisation on policy issues). Affective polarisation on the other hand describes animosity against a certain group because members of that group are members of that group (= "identity"). The authors of the paper clearly state how to incorporate affective polarisation in their model and I am very interested whether someone actually takes up that challenge and what the outcome is.

>Ah yes, the identity politics caused by people who are Republicans is the problem

you're reading too much into it. from my reading of it, "republican" was only given as an example, not as the cause.