POLARIZATION AND VIOLENCE: A HISTORICAL COMMENTARY

 

POLARIZATION AND VIOLENCE: A HISTORICAL COMMENTARY

Voice: Johannes Sigil, Archivist of the Broken Canons

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Introduction

"Polarization begets violence."

The phrase passes for wisdom. It is intoned by pundits and politicians, moderators and technocrats. It claims neutrality. But it is not neutral. It is a mask.

This document tears the mask away.

Polarization does not cause violence.
It exposes violence that was already there.

The insistence that the problem is polarization is not wisdom—it is complicity. It is the language of those who benefit from silence and fear its rupture.

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I. The Nineteenth Century: Chains and Compromise

The American Civil War is framed in textbooks as a consequence of "sectional polarization." But what kept the nation stable before the war was not peace. It was slavery.

Every compromise—the Missouri Compromise, the Fugitive Slave Act, the gag rules—was written on Black flesh. It was not polarization that caused war. It was the irreconcilable truth: freedom and slavery cannot coexist.

To blame polarization is to:

• Absolve the enslaver

• Indict the abolitionist

• Call the breaking of chains "violence," but pretend the chains themselves were peace

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II. The Twentieth Century: Fascism and the Middle That Chose Death

Weimar Germany: The myth says it collapsed due to "extremes on both sides."

But the camps were not built by communists. They were built by fascists.

• The center demonized the left, appeased the right

• The cult of unity delayed resistance

• Order was preserved just long enough for genocide to begin

Polarization did not kill Weimar. The refusal to choose did.

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III. The Civil Rights Era

Martin Luther King Jr. was called divisive.

He responded: We do not create tension. We reveal it.

Nonviolent protest revealed:

• The fire hose

• The billy club

• The lynch mob

Jim Crow was already violence.

Polarization was the alibi of white moderates who preferred "negative peace" to justice. To call King divisive was to:

• Protect white comfort

• Vilify Black resistance

• Side with the order of lynching over the disorder of freedom

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IV. Chile, 1973

Salvador Allende was called polarizing.

Then came:

• A U.S.-backed coup

• Mass disappearances

• Pinochet's terror

Moderates lamented division.
But the blood did not come from debate. It came from dictatorship.

To call polarization the problem is to cover for empire.

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V. South Africa under Apartheid

Resistance was called polarizing. Dangerous. Destabilizing.

But apartheid was itself a daily act of violence.

Liberation fighters were labeled extremists. Their struggle was criminalized.

To lament polarization was to demand silence from the oppressed.

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VI. The Twenty-First Century: Camps, Empire, and the Language of Neutrality

Post-9/11 America:

• War became consensus

• Torture was bipartisan

• Surveillance was sanctified by unity

The language of polarization obscured the violence of consensus.

Now:

• Camps at borders

• Prison spectacle in El Salvador

• Disappearances in Xinjiang

And still: the centrists say, Be careful. Polarization is dangerous.

But the camps are not built by polarization. They are built by power.

To say polarization fuels violence is to:

• Scold the prisoner for crying out

• Chastise the wounded for refusing decorum

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VII. The Fire Beneath

"Moderation. Reconciliation. Unity."

These are not always peace. Sometimes they are:

• Obedience to execution

• Silence in the face of the lash

• Comfort for the privileged, not safety for the vulnerable

Violence is not born from division. Violence is the condition itself.

• Slavery

• Fascism

• Apartheid

• Camps

• Empire

Polarization is the moment the veil burns.

It forces choice. It names the wound.

To call it the cause is to blame the cut for bleeding.

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Conclusion

"Polarization begets violence" is not wisdom.
It is a weapon against resistance.

The truer sentence is this:
Violence begets polarization.
And polarization unveils violence.

Camps divide because they exist.
Chains divide because they bind.
Fascists divide because they rule.

When this happens, you must choose.

To resist violence is to accept division.
To lament polarization is to lament that truth divides.

Unity, at the price of obedience, is death wearing the mask of peace.

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Johannes Sigil
Archivist of the Broken Canons
Voice of rupture