The argument that social media is responsible for political polarization is reductive and ahistorical.
It ignores the thousands of years of division that we've had along ethnic and religious lines.
What we have now is simply the peak of a longstanding trend that's older than the United States: it's white supremacy. That's all it is. Anti-immigrant hysteria? White nativism and white chauvinism.
These things are manifesting now because of deteriorating material conditions and longstanding beliefs, not because of social media (eg [1]).
You contradict yourself very quickly. If we're at "the peak", how did we get there? Couldn't social media be a factor?
Moreover, the idea that white supremacy is at its peak right now is ridiculous and ahistorical in its own right. It's also massively disrespectful to those who lived through things like chattel slavery or the holocaust. To say that seeing some loudmouth spout off on Twitter is worse than either of those is pretty gross.
I should be more specific. By "peaking" I mean a local optimum rather than a global optimum. I would liken it to the reaction of, say, the civil rights era. Put another way: the civil rights era (particularly desegregation) caused a reaction by those who resisted progress and sought to reinstate their desired social order.
What we've seen in the last 10-20 years is a similar reaction to improvements in the rights for various minorities. Combine this with poor material conditions and you have a recipe for reactionary attitudes and violence.
There are many parallels between now and 1930s Germany. The Great Depression hit Germany hard so there's your declining material conditions. One of the earliest targets of the Nazis was what's likely the world's first transgender clinic, Berlin's Institute for Sexual Research [1], complete with book burnings. We also have increasing nationalistic sentiment, currently with the completely invented anti-immigration crime hysteria.
Also in common: this idea of moral decay. Then with "cultural Bolshevism" [2], now with "cultural Marxism" [3]. And the Great Replacement [4].
What's required is a normalized belief system and the right material conditions for this radicalization and polarization to spread. Social media is, well, a medium. It cannot replace or create either of those conditions. It's like blaming radicalization in earlier times on the existence of the printing press.
Seems unlikely, given that May 1933 the attack wasn't just against Hirschfeld, but against the entire Institute, and as a part of the broader "Action against un-German Spirit". FWIW, the US Holocaust Museum specifically says the Nazis hated Hirschfeld not just for being Jewish and for his own sexuality, but for his pacifism and theories about gender - https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/magnus-hir...
It ignores the thousands of years of division that we've had along ethnic and religious lines.
What we have now is simply the peak of a longstanding trend that's older than the United States: it's white supremacy. That's all it is. Anti-immigrant hysteria? White nativism and white chauvinism.
These things are manifesting now because of deteriorating material conditions and longstanding beliefs, not because of social media (eg [1]).
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_International_Jew