Polarization Quotes

“If riotous protests create rampant polarization, fear may create fear, fear of the others, and fear of oneself. In the end, it might kill healing feels, universal goodwill, and mutual understanding. (“Because the world has corona”)”
― Erik Pevernagie

“See the system. When you find yourself stuck in an oversimplified polarized conflict, a useful first step is to try to become more aware of the system as a whole: to provide more context to your understanding of the terrain in which the stakeholders are embedded, whether they are disputants, mediators, negotiators, lawyers, or other third parties. This can help you to see the forest and the trees; it is a critical step toward regaining some sense of accuracy, agency, possibility, and control in the situation.”
― Peter T. Coleman, The Five Percent: Finding Solutions to Seemingly Impossible Conflicts

“With the world hyperconnected through smartphones as extensions of our bodies, today it is possible to package, productize, and transmit information instantly at scale to the entire planet.”
― Roger Spitz, The Definitive Guide to Thriving on Disruption: Volume I - Reframing and Navigating Disruption

“But as the digital revolution has created new forms of communal engagement, it has accelerated a rot within society. Digitalization has decimated local communities, and traditional affiliations have weakened as younger generations have shifted their lives online. Was this a Faustian bargain? We have gotten convenience and efficiency at the cost of losing civic engagement, intimacy, and authenticity. In this we again hear the echo of the poet Oliver Goldsmith: 'Wealth accumulates, and men decay.' Amid such dislocations, people are drawn to fringe online communities--or even reject modernity itself, turning away from liberal democracy, economic growth, and technological progress.”
― Fareed Zakaria

“In situations of polarization and heightened anxiety, people tend to regard their own fears as authentic and those of their opponents as manipulated.”
― Christopher Clark, Revolutionary Spring: Europe Aflame and the Fight for a New World, 1848-1849

“War and terrorism not only perpetuate the rift between the two peoples, they polarize sentiment in such a way as to strengthen the determination of each to survive at any cost.”
― Irene L. Gendzier

“A tweak here and there and the video was being viewed by twenty million people worldwide. He surprised even himself by
how easy it was to make people do things by controlling online content.”
― Peter Clifford Nichols

“A “bubble culture” develops whereby corporate types associate with other corporate types in corporate suburbs. The artists flee to their own enclaves. This process culminates in the self-imposed ghetto, a system whereby suburbs are defined and characterised by the people who live there.”
― Joshua Krook, Us vs Them: A Case for Social Empathy

“I can pay one half of the working class, to kill the other half.”
― Jay Gould

“People concerned about worst-case scenarios — like threats to democracy, authoritarian actions, high levels of political violence, or civil war-like scenarios — should want to reduce toxic polarization in America because that's how we’ll make those things less likely.”
― Zachary Elwood, How Contempt Destroys Democracy: An American Liberal's Guide to Toxic Polarization

“Polarization becomes a serious and dangerous problem when many people have very negative views of people on the “other side” — not just disagreeing but hating and fearing them. When high levels of contempt and fear are involved, this is what’s referred to as toxic polarization (and by other names, like psychological polarization, affective polarization, and pernicious polarization). In countries that are toxically polarized, it’s common for people to call their political opponents “horrible” and “evil,” and use other dehumanizing language. High levels of contempt and fear lead to the behaviors that can tear countries apart.”
― Zachary Elwood, How Contempt Destroys Democracy: An American Liberal's Guide to Toxic Polarization

“A simplified way to think of toxic polarization is as a feedback loop of animosity. One group’s animosity creates more animosity in the other group, which in turn creates more animosity in the first group, and so on. As more and more insults and threats are produced, both groups view the other group as more immoral and dangerous, which makes more people speak in contemptuous and insulting ways. As each group’s views of the “other side” get more and more pessimistic, contempt and fear grow.”
― Zachary Elwood, How Contempt Destroys Democracy: An American Liberal's Guide to Toxic Polarization

“Insults and threats are the raw materials of our contempt and fear; they’re what we use to build our stories of the other side’s badness. And as conflict progresses, that can start to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Because we see the other side as dehumanizing and threatening us, we in turn can justify dehumanizing them. Some people on both sides start to become the hateful, threatening people the other side imagines they are.”
― Zachary Elwood, How Contempt Destroys Democracy: An American Liberal's Guide to Toxic Polarization

“When talking about polarization, many people will try to assign blame to various groups: “It’s the media,” “It’s politicians trying to get power,” “It’s the political party machines manipulating us,” “It’s the rich trying to divide us,” “It’s the colleges.” And there are valid points to be made about how various organizations and systems and institutions amplify the effects of polarization — but it’s also true that those systems and organizations are made up of people. The same dynamics that can make individual people become polarized can make groups of people and organizations become polarized.”
― Zachary Elwood, How Contempt Destroys Democracy: An American Liberal's Guide to Toxic Polarization

“When liberals confidently arrive at highly pessimistic narratives about what drives conservatives’ behavior, it will arouse conservatives' anger and amplify the toxicity of our divides.”
― Zachary Elwood, How Contempt Destroys Democracy: An American Liberal's Guide to Toxic Polarization

“Human conflict is not like chess, where each side has the same exact pieces and follows the exact same rules. Human groups are messy. Human groups can have very different traits, motivations, and methods of engagement.

Another way to put this is that human groups in conflict are asymmetrical: they don’t match up exactly.

When in conflict, people on both sides will try to compare the groups, often in order to build a case for why “the other side is much worse.” But the asymmetrical aspects of the two groups means that they’ll often be making bad and biased comparisons.”
― Zachary Elwood, How Contempt Destroys Democracy: An American Liberal's Guide to Toxic Polarization

“If you’re someone fighting for fair and just outcomes (however you define that), if you fight in a way that amplifies political animosity, you may end up helping create a world that is less fair and less just. This is why it’s important to pursue one’s political aims in depolarizing, de-escalating, and persuasive ways. And this is entirely possible: You can work toward any political goal while avoiding dehumanizing and insulting your political opponents, and while speaking in persuasive, respectful ways.”
― Zachary Elwood, How Contempt Destroys Democracy: An American Liberal's Guide to Toxic Polarization

“Within each public issue, the clearest division is between moderates and extremists. As such, the right third parties in a negotiation are moderates. They, more than extremists, are focused on building a better way of life (tomorrow), whereas most extremists are focused on tearing things down as a penalty for yesterday.”
― Stuart Diamond, Getting More: How to Negotiate to Achieve Your Goals in the Real World

“The divisions separating the parties have grown so sharp, and our politics so closely divided, that Congress has become dysfunctional. Along the way, the Supreme Court, an institution designed not to be political, has become our nation's most coveted political football.”
― Maxwell Stearns

“If we can do a bit better tomorrow, we will be doing much, much better than we have ever done before.”
― Ezra Klein, Why We're Polarized

“As for the killings, they were the usual, meaning they were not to be belaboured, not because they were nothing but because they were enormous, also so numerous that rapidly there became no time for them. Every so often, however, an event would occur so beyond-the-pale that everyone - "this side of the road", "that side of the road", "over the water" and "over the border" - couldn't help but be stopped in their tracks. A renouncer-attrocity would send you reeling with "God o God o God. How can I have a view that helped on this action?" which would be the case until you'd forget, which would happen when the other side went and did one of their awful things. Again this was reeling and spinning. It was revenge and counter-revenge. It was joining peace movements, showing commitment to cross-community discussions, to those all-inclusive marches, to true, good citizenship - until the point it was suspected that these peace movements and goodwill and true, good citizenship were being infiltrated by one faction or the other faction. So then you'd leave the movements, drop hope, abandon potential solutions and drift back to the view that was always familiar, dependable, inevitable.”
― Anna Burns, Milkman

“I concluded that in politics, as in life, the real struggle is not us-versus-them. It is us-versus-us.”
― Miles Taylor, A Warning

“I think all of us need to do a better job of seeing the humanity of people on the other side of the aisle. Because I think what happens in this country right now is: The left says to the right, “What do you know about pain, white straight man? My pain is real, as an L.G.B.T.Q. person.” And the right says to the left, “What do you know about pain, college-educated, cosmopolitan élite? My pain is real, in a post-industrial community ravaged by the opioid crisis.” And I know that, when I am upset, the worst thing that someone can say to me, even if it is said with the best of intentions, is “It’s not as bad as you think.” Any therapist will tell you that the first step to healing is to have your pain seen and validated. And I think all of us have to do a better job of recognizing that people don’t have to be right in our mind for what they’re facing to be wrong. And people don’t have to be right in our minds for us to try to right that wrong. That comes down to sort of a core recognition that every single person is more than just one thing about them. And every single person is more than even beliefs that might personally hurt many other people.”
― Sarah McBride

“Hope is not always an organic emotion. Sometimes we have to consciously find it and consciously summon it. And, yes, there are big challenges right now. Maybe those challenges are insurmountable. Maybe we will be, because of social media, incapable of restoring our capacity to have a national dialogue. Maybe because of the culture that we live in right now, we will no longer be able to have conversations across disagreement. Maybe because of unchecked wealth and corporate power, we won’t be able to conquer climate change. The list goes on. Maybe. But we would be the first generation of Americans to give up on this country, and we would be the first generation of Americans who were unable to find the path forward. And I just don’t believe that we are. And I certainly believe that we don’t have to be.”
― Sarah McBride

“The most dangerous injustice is the one that flatters the educated while erasing the vulnerable.”
― Adeel Ahmed Khan

“When describing the opposition, remaining true to the regime narrative, Sisi coined a new term: ‘The people of evil’ (BBC, 2016). The term started to gain currency in 2016, when popular opposition to the transfer of the two islands in the Red Sea, Tiran and Sanafir, from Egyptian to Saudi sovereignty became apparent. However, it first made an appearance during Sisi’s speech inaugurating the nee Suez Canal in 2015 (Armbrust, 2019, p. 223). Even though it was never explicitly defined, it became clear that Sisi used it to describe the opposition in general, with specific mention of those who doubted and criticized the regimes ‘achievements’ (RT, 2019). Sisi used a rhetoric that not only framed the opposition as evil but also framed the regime as good, and the conflict between them as an existential struggle between good and evil: a biblical image par excellence. The framing of the opposition as evil and treasonous was not only a rhetorical device but also laid down the foundation of mass repression.” Chapter “Genesis”, Pages 37-38”
― Maged Mandour, Egypt under El-Sisi: A Nation on the Edge

“To remain human in the age of the modern nation-state is not to resist violently, but to perceive truthfully. It is to reclaim the inner autonomy to witness what the state has unmade: the invisible life, the unsanctioned grief, the unspoken past.”
― Adeel Ahmed Khan

“Ich spüre nicht mehr diese Leichtigkeit, diese Zuversicht, diese Sicherheit, die ich vor vier
Jahren fühlte, als ich ankam, um mein Leben hier zu beginnen.
Das Israel von damals kommt mir vor wie einem Traum entsprungen. Zu schön, um wahr zu sein. Zu sonnig, zu liebevoll, zu willkommen heißend. Zu friedlich. Das Israel, das ich in den vergangenen Monaten erlebt habe, ist ein Land der Extreme. Wütend. Unversöhnlich. Ein Land kurz vor dem Bürgerkrieg. Milchemet Achim lautet der Ausdruck im Hebräischen, übersetzt heißt das «Brüderkrieg». Ich habe ihn zu oft gehört in den vergangenen Monaten. Tatsächlich ist es ein Konflikt zwischen Nachbarn, Familienmitgliedern, Freunden, zwischen Menschen, die plötzlich zu merken scheinen, dass sie entgegengesetzte Vorstellungen davon haben, wie ihre gemeinsame Heimat aussehen soll. Und die keine Toleranz für jene haben, die das anders sehen. Radikale Politiker – und es gibt auf einmal so, so viele von ihnen – schlagen mit spaltenden Worten auf das Fundament ein, auf den Gesellschaftsvertrag dieses Landes. Sie gedeihen am Hass, am Misstrauen, an der Unvereinbarkeit. Mit vergiftenden Ideen und manipulativen Worten greifen sie das Mosaik der Gesellschaft an, das sowieso schon brüchig geworden ist. Die aufgeheizte Stimmung in diesem Jahr hat mich misstrauisch gemacht, oft Schlimmes befürchtend. Das geht über die normale Muttersorge hinaus. Ich kann das Gefühl nicht mehr abschütteln, dass Israel sich auf einen Abgrund zubewegt, und ich frage mich nicht mehr ob, sondern: Wann gehe ich, bevor ich mitgerissen werde? Doch ich treffe Entscheidungen nicht mehr für mich allein.”
― Sarah Levy, Kein anderes Land: Aufzeichnungen aus Israel

“Ich spüre nicht mehr diese Leichtigkeit, diese Zuversicht, diese Sicherheit, die ich vor vier Jahren fühlte, als ich ankam, um mein Leben hier zu beginnen.
Das Israel von damals kommt mir vor wie einem Traum entsprungen. Zu schön, um wahr zu sein. Zu sonnig, zu liebevoll, zu willkommen heißend. Zu friedlich. Das Israel, das ich in den vergangenen Monaten erlebt habe, ist ein Land der Extreme. Wütend. Unversöhnlich. Ein Land kurz vor dem Bürgerkrieg. Milchemet Achim lautet der Ausdruck im Hebräischen, übersetzt heißt das «Brüderkrieg». Ich habe ihn zu oft gehört in den vergangenen Monaten. Tatsächlich ist es ein Konflikt zwischen Nachbarn, Familienmitgliedern, Freunden, zwischen Menschen, die plötzlich zu merken scheinen, dass sie entgegengesetzte Vorstellungen davon haben, wie ihre gemeinsame Heimat aussehen soll. Und die keine Toleranz für jene haben, die das anders sehen. Radikale Politiker – und es gibt auf einmal so, so viele von ihnen – schlagen mit spaltenden Worten auf das Fundament ein, auf den Gesellschaftsvertrag dieses Landes. Sie gedeihen am Hass, am Misstrauen, an der Unvereinbarkeit. Mit vergiftenden Ideen und manipulativen Worten greifen sie das Mosaik der Gesellschaft an, das sowieso schon brüchig geworden ist. Die aufgeheizte Stimmung in diesem Jahr hat mich misstrauisch gemacht, oft Schlimmes befürchtend. Das geht über die normale Muttersorge hinaus. Ich kann das Gefühl nicht mehr abschütteln, dass Israel sich auf einen Abgrund zubewegt, und ich frage mich nicht mehr ob, sondern: Wann gehe ich, bevor ich mitgerissen werde? Doch ich treffe Entscheidungen nicht mehr für mich allein.”
― Sarah Levy, Kein anderes Land: Aufzeichnungen aus Israel

“The stifling of opportunities for mass participation in America has inevitably meant the throttling of interest in America as such. Social interests have been displaced by selfish interests. The people no longer think as Americans for America. They no longer speak as Americans for America. They speak for their interest cliques. The welfare of their narrow groups completely overshadows any thoughts of national welfare.”
― Saul D. Alinsky, Reveille for Radicals