The Genesis Of Hyper-Polarization
What the fracturing of X means for politics
I admit, I am late to this topic, as the mass migration from X to Bluesky began months ago following Elon Musk’s public support of now president elect Donald Trump and the Republican party. However, what has happened just a couple days ago is something more people should have seen coming: the right wing exodus from twitter. In some cases voluntary and in others forceful - as seen with the mass banning of groypers (Nick Fuentes supporters). The spat between right wingers against the so called “tech-right” (who are really just center right libertarians) was captivating to watch unfold. As to why this occurred much has already been written. I am far more concerned about the far reaching consequences.
The key question to ask about watching right wingers become disillusioned with a platform that was already quite favorable to them under Elon’s management is: where will they all go next? The answer is: alternative social media such as Truth Social (not really), Gab and Parlor. Some of this crowd will content themselves just to quit social media or return to 4chan and other messages boards. But realistically, I suspect this percentage will be small.
So what's the point and what's the meaning of the title of this article? Well I assume many of you have heard of an echo chamber and how social media curates them so effectively. The effects of such political bubbles on social media platforms that included users from across the political spectrum such as Twitter/X were significant enough to affect the political polarization and radicalization in the past eight years already. Imagine now what the effects will be when platforms themselves are echo chambers. Where, rather than only rarely bring confronted with an person you disagree with, you now never encounter disagreement. To make an analogy, it's as if political discussions used to occur in a town square where each thought group huddled in their own circle. So one mostly heard the thoughts of his friends but couldn't help acknowledging and overhearing others from time to time. Now these circles have moved into the basements of their respective political headquarters and only get reports on enemy movements via propaganda and strawmen.
By no means do I want to make out that this change was caused by Elon, I thought this was inevitable ever since leftists migrated to Bluesky. Mostly due to their inability to cope with the fact that the site no longer had a left wing bias. It's just that this happened to be the event which in my opinion brings clearly to light the dawn of hyper polarization.
Now it's important to remember that this isn't necessarily the end of the world. But I see it as a near impossibility that those of the right and left will be willing to compromise or “work across the isle” in the near future. My final prediction is that the next step is the fulfillment of a dehumanizing of the enemy, which has already begun (especially on the left with their anti rural and anti white rhetoric.) Now made much easier for both sides due to less exposure and push back experienced within their separate platforms. The issue of bad optics won't exist because there will be no optics, people will stick to their platforms and only those are included to agree will bother to look. After the dehumanization is complete there can only be one result: a massive increase in political violence which we are already seeing the face of. Examples such as two failed Trump assassinations and attempted assassination of Nick Fuentes. However, what the world isn't ready for is right wing political violence, which will surely be more lethal due to the quasi militia organizations that already exist on the right - especially in America.
On that depressing note I leave you and ultimately hope I am wrong and that everything will cool down and blow over. I wish everyone stays safe and thank you for reading.
Note: I notice that I talk about Nick Fuentes a lot in this post. I want to make it clear that I do not support him or his politics and this is meant to be a nonpartisan article. Fuentes just seems to have been provoking a lot of people recently and makes a good example of my point. I have no doubt that this effect applies to other right wingers besides the Fuentes camp.