Even from here in rural Scotland, the death of a 31 year old hard right Christian gun advocate has been inescapable. Perhaps it was the horrific irony of the moment of his death- shot during a discussion about gun violence, or the controversial nature of many of his views, most of which where framed in Christian language as if from some kind of MAGA prophet.

For many on one side of the political divide, he is a martyr for his faith, achieving the Protestant equivalent of sainthood. His ’cause’ is a like a flag to be picked up on the battlefield against rising hoards of athiest islamic left-wing nut-jobs massing at the border seeking to replace the great American theocracy with trans-gender abortion and lesbian weddings.

Meanwhile, over in the other camp, people are actively celebrating Kirk’s death. A young father, aged 31, cut down in his prime is an evil that has been greeted with glee. There have been righteous protestations of condemnation of violence, but always these have been posed alongside discriptions of the outrageous things that Kirk said and represented. The message is clear- he brought this down on himself.

What might this moment represent to us with the hindsight of history? Might it be the moment when we realised that the politics of polarisation an only ever lead towards violencehat – that this kind of language, when used quite deliberately as a political strategy to breakthrough democratic deadlock, might destroy our fragile peace?

Or will it instead mark the point when that destruction entered a new phase towards the end game that was to come? Only future-us can know the answer…

Two important issues stand out to me. The first is this one;

Hyper-polarisation

Perhaps this article from back in 2016 – which already feels like an age ago – is a good place to start in understanding this phenomenon.

Bringing all of this together in Why Washington Won’t Work, Marc Hetherington and Thomas Rudolph paint a picture of a nation overwhelmed by dislike and distrust of the other side and, consequently, a political process incapable of compromise and mired in gridlock. It is easy to see how this sort of distrust and dysfunction manifests itself in assumptions about the motivations (malice, greed, bigotry, moral bankruptcy, or most charitably, naiveté) of those on the other partisan team. Those on the other side no longer just disagree about the issues, they are bad people with dangerous ideas. This paves the way for efforts to delegitimize electoral outcomes and the leaders they produce by way of conspiracy theories and claims of fraud and rigging. Perhaps most dangerously, it also can be used to justify nearly any effort to thwart the opposition.

Let’s be clear- this phenomenon is not going away. In some senses this is because it is a deliberate political strategy- create division using simplistic fear-based stories then exploit this opening by offering a ‘solution’. This is pretty much the whole strategy of The Reform party in the UK, but you can find plenty of examples on the left too. The Cambridge Analytica saga should have been the moment of awakening on the danger to our democracy of this kind of politics, but this seems to have been largely forgotten. Rather than choosing to find ways of regulating and reforming, we moved on.

Polarisation is also an emergent property of our increased reliance on social meda, both in terms of the way that algorythms feed us ever more extreme versions of what it feels will engage our interest, and also because of how we increasingly export a part of our ‘selves’ in the form of on-line avotars that then become places of disembodyment and almost ritualistic tribal defence and offence cycles.

Polarisation perhaps also emerges from our own fragile bruised humanity. This from here;

 central theoretical assumption is that ideological extremism is rooted in a psychological quest for personal significance: A desire to be respected and to matter in the eyes of oneself or important others (Kruglanski et al., 2014; see also Webber et al., 2018). People can acquire such a sense of personal significance through the combination of many sources, such as family, work, and the pursuit of meaningful goals. Sometimes people may experience a loss of significance, however, when they encounter grievances such as humiliation, injustice, or insecurities. Such grievances prompt a sense of meaninglessness, and therefore stimulate a desire to restore a sense of personal significance through a worldview in which perceivers are focally committed to specific ideological goals. Put differently, extreme ideologies help perceivers to restore a sense of significance through a worldview in which they appear to be supporting a meaningful cause.

Some studies have pointed out the way that this ritualistic process might be compared to religion, in the way that it becomes a set of goggles – or a hermaneutic – through which all facts or opinions become mediated, and this takes us to the second of the issues that occupy my thoughts in relaiton to this dreadful shooting.

Christianity and extreme ideology

Kirk’s avowed and much proclaimed Christian faith has been a central part of both his political activities and the subsequent narrative around his death. As someone with many friendships and social media contacts with people across the spectrum of the Christian faith, I was still a little shocked when I read a post this morning that said something along these lines;

So touched by his life and story. At his heart was communicating deeply held truth and wisdom in many matters, in spite of the flack, and the risk. He might have been outspoken but to me he clearly had a heart to teach, demonstrate and guide a generation of whom so many are lost. When society is chaotic and unstructured people suffer, when we accept God’s ways for life there is joy, peace, security. Above all of his debating he said faith and finding Jesus is most important. Tonight I’m praying people once again find their identity in Christ, who is a firm foundation to build our lives on. Praying Christians can speak the truth in love to a world that needs to hear it.

My first response to this was through the lens of my own place on the polarised spectrum. Had this person not seen all the lies, the misogyny and racism? Had they no concerns about the rise of American Christian nationalism? Surely they must recognise the disconnect between the way of Jesus and the politics Kirk espoused?

Then I stopped and started to think about how extreme narratives are pulling at us all, particularly in the religious sphere. We, above all, have to find ways of building bridges, not barracades. It seems that – sadly – we religious people are very much part of the problem. This from here.

Conservative and liberal Christians, like all liberals and conservatives, are inclined to denigrate those on the other side of the political spectrum; and each side is convinced that the other side is treated more leniently than their own side in the media, and by other third parties that try to give an objective account of matters under dispute (36–39). However, how have Christians on the two sides of the political divide dealt with discrepancies between their own political positions and the apparent dictates of their faith? Some, no doubt, have felt pressure to moderate their positions to achieve greater congruency with traditional Christian teachings. Others may have narrowed their reference group and, for those whose faith is highly central to their personal identity, engaged in attempts at persuasion and proselytism. However, we argue and attempt to demonstrate empirically, contemporary American Christians also have adjusted their perceptions of Christianity itself. More specifically, they have adjusted their perceptions of the political positions that Jesus of the New Testament would hold if he were alive today.

A provocative series of studies by Epley and colleagues showed that the egocentric tendency to believe that others share one’s beliefs is more pronounced when individuals are asked about God than when they are asked about the average American or various prominent individuals (40). The present research is distinct from those studies insofar as its focus is more specifically on such “projection” in the views and also the priorities that liberal and conservative Christians attribute to Jesus Christ. Our specific hypotheses are very much in the dissonance tradition (26). The dissonance researchers reversed conventional formulations by focusing not on the effects of attitudes on behavior but on the effects of behavior on subsequent attitudes. We essentially reverse conventional formulations by focusing not on the effects of religion on political views but the effects of political views on the content of religious beliefs.

What can we do about it?

There is the question.

The egotistical polariser in me wants to call out the lies and wrong doing of the other. The peace maker in me wants to draw us all back towards compassion and the way of love as a precurser to all things. I want the latter to win, in me as well as the world…

… and so I choose to tread carefully. I try not to do battle, particularly one line. When I do so, I try to make sure that I react in service of justice for others, not myself.

And I fail, regularly.