Rachel Bitecofer: We Didn't Start The Fire

[Nevilledog]

https://thecycle.substack.com/p/we-didnt-start-the-fire

Let’s set the table with what the research actually says, not what the right-wing infotainment machine screams. Political science has been measuring polarization for decades and the verdict is not that it came from Democrats.

Scholars have been warning for more than a decade that our polarization is asymmetric. Mann & Ornstein called it out plainly; Grossmann & Hopkins explained the structural why—ideological Republicans versus group-interest Democrats create different incentives, media diets, and tactics. That’s your “who started the fire” origin story in the literature, not on cable.

If you’ve been alive for the last twenty years, you’ve lived the asymmetric script in real time. Republicans normalized calling Democrats “socialists” and “communists” as baseline branding while supercharging moral panic politics—lately by conflating gender-affirming care with “mutilating children.”

After Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law, use of the “groomer” slur exploded on social platforms, and major right-wing outlets now casually label mainstream Democratic positions as “genital mutilation.” This isn’t fringe; it’s the party’s communication bloodstream.

That was the currency that made Charlie Kirk a very wealthy man and though I mourn his death and the pain his poor family is going through, we also can’t white wash the fact that Charlie Kirk held racist, sexist, and bigoted views and used his significant power and influence to radical college students.

Kirk was a free speech advocate, but that speech was hate speech.

*snip*