While the 2024 presidential election is finished, the polarization that marked the election period is far from over. Experts point out that Americans are increasingly divided over key issues, are unwilling to engage with those they disagree with, and that political speech has become increasingly violent. Growing divisions over what it means to lead a “moral life,” said Paul Simmons, a professor and director of The Narrative Transformation Lab (TNT Lab) at George Mason University, have led political debates to become increasingly high stakes. When faced with an opponent that is thought to represent an existential threat, people perceive that there is “only one thing to do, and that is to win,” said Simmons, precluding any possibility of cooperation or compromise. Polarization, he added, was once an elite phenomenon, but it now affects society as a whole.
American political debates have changed fundamentally over the past decades, Simmons said. Since World War II, according to Simmons, political clashes have shifted away from class disparities to issues of “social status” associated with race and gender. While this was linked to an increased emotional appeal in politics, and that “rational choice is not the whole game.” Also, peaceful anti-extremist narratives can bridge emotion and rationality, and help address the concerns of white working-class Americans that might otherwise turn to right-wing extremism.
Rabbi Rachel Gartner of Georgetown University thinks that young people are often not inclined to spend time with people they disagree with and lack interpersonal skills and trust to cross divides. As Co-Director of “In Your Shoes”, a program that uses theater to bring participants of diverse backgrounds together, Gartner asks the “actors” to be vulnerable with each other as they create joint storytelling exercises to transform into a “we”, a cohesive community across differences.
The In Your Shoes experience has led to the development of a course bringing together Georgetown students and students from Patrick Henry College, a conservative Christian university in Virginia. Gartner said that the exercise highlighted key differences between the two student bodies around issues of faith and sexuality. She called for greater empathy and trust across political differences, as she found that students “don’t trust that the other side is hurting.”
The course had surprising effects even after the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, with students across both institutions reaching out to In Your Shoes to make sense of the violent attempt to keep former President Trump in power.
Rabbi Seth Limmer, the Director of Public Affairs for the Polarization & Extremism Research and Innovation Lab (PERIL) at American University, said that the main indicator of unstable democracy is the acceptable degree of violence and violent speech. As violent threats and imagery in American political discourse have increased, the stability of American democracy has been undermined.
The internet can have particularly polarizing effects, Limmer argued. He said that social media echo chambers tend to pull people towards extremism and that the drive to capture attention encourages them to publicly adopt provocative positions.
Limmer also said that the phenomenon of “digital inoculation” might be effective in countering online disinformation. “No one likes being manipulated,” he said, so internet users could be exposed to a small example of disinformation that is then debunked and explained to help them detect future falsehoods. Limmer said that this practice has been adopted by social media companies, with some of them introducing “prebunking” videos into the feeds of users consuming a large amount of COVID-19 misinformation.
In terms of the future of polarization, Simmons was pessimistic in the short term and believed that the U.S. has not yet “hit the bottom”. However, he remained optimistic in the long term about the possibility of collaboration and peace between world leaders.
Gartner lamented the lack of major financial investments in peacebuilding, arguing for a “peace economy” that can sustain efforts to reach across political divides.
Limmer said that a lack of interest by political leaders remains an impediment to peacebuilding programs, with most of the effort still coming from grassroots activists.
Simmons said that peacebuilding did not mean disagreements should be abandoned. Constructive conflict, he argued, remains a key feature of democratic politics, but people should be able to effectively diagnose when peaceful competition or cooperation is preferable.
The views in this article were expressed during a panel that took place on October 9, 2024, as part of Academics Bridging the Divide, a series of panels bringing together researchers focusing on peacebuilding, political violence, and polarization. The event was organized by Randy Lioz of George Mason University’s Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School of Peace and Conflict Resolution. The panels were held at Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg Center in Washington, D.C.
Pablo Molina Asensi
Pablo Molina Asensi is a Freelancer and Grants Manager for Peace News Network. He earned his M.A. in Global Communication from George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs in 2024, concentrating in Conflict and Conflict Resolution. He also graduated from The American University's School of International Service in 2022, with concentrations in Peace, Global Security, and Conflict Resolution in addition to Global Inequality and Development. Pablo is particularly interested in issues of human rights and refugee policy. He has carried out research into the situation of DRC refugees in Uganda and has written extensively about Western Sahara.
