8 Tips for Activists Who Want to Reduce Polarization

Can we thread the needle of fighting our opponents while also trying to bring down the temperature?

“The idea is to see yourself as others see you. Once you do that, then you get a sense of what makes others so mad at you and willing to fight so hard. And you can then start asking questions about, well, do I really need to do those things? Or maybe if we did it this way, I wouldn’t provoke so much opposition but I’d still get the things that I really care about.”

— Guy Burgess (of Heidi and Guy Burgess), in an episode of my podcast

In February, I had an op-ed in The Hill, Can we lower toxic polarization while still opposing Trump?. Some people asked if I might go into more detail about how one can be an effective activist while trying to reduce political toxicity: how one can fight one’s opponents while also fighting polarization.

In this piece I’ll share some thoughts on how we might pursue political goals (of any sort) while trying to lower contempt and toxicity.

To skip an overview about the nature of conflict and polarization and why you should care about these things, and get to the tips, click here:

The objection: “We can’t fight our enemies and work on resolving conflict”

In my books on polarization, I focused a lot of effort on overcoming common objections. Serious conflict leads to many people having objections to wanting to resolve that conflict. The core objection goes something like this in people’s mind:

Our opponents are horrible and dangerous. They are the cause of all this toxicity and horribleness. It’s not a we-problem, it’s just a them-problem. Your conflict resolution ideas are naive: please go away and let us fight them aggressively.

There are various iterations of this objection. A lighter form is:

Yes, I agree both sides have contributed to the toxicity of this conflict. But the threats posed by our enemies are so bad right we have to focus on that. We need our rage, even our contempt, to arouse more passion and defeat them. The conflict resolution stuff is nice but it can wait until after we win this war.

(If you’d like a good video discussing these objections, I recommend this talk I had with Vanessa Otero, founder of Ad Fontes Media, a media bias analysis company. Vanessa asked a lot of good questions about these common objections.)

Many people see political activism (e.g., trying to defeat Democrats, or trying to defeat Republicans) as something at odds with reducing toxic polarization. They think that you can’t do both. They may even think that contempt and mockery can aid your activism; that those are powerful things that help you accomplish your goals and defeat your enemies.

But this misses that how we engage with each other plays a role in how the conflict plays out. How we treat our opponents can change how they treat us — it can even change their stances. Our stances on issues are directly connected to our sense of threat from the “other side” — and how we treat them will alter their perceptions of the threats we pose.

In other words: the emotional intensity of the conflict is what helps create the very things many of us are angry about. Your best bet of defeating the people you see as extreme and hateful is (maybe counterintuitively) by reducing the us-vs-them contempt in society. That is how you remove the wind in the sails of those who embrace us-vs-them, zero sum views and who take contemptuous, divisive, us-vs-them approaches.

The way I see it, activism and depolarization are aligned. One can do activism while trying to bring down the intensity of the conflict. Or, at the very least, one can do activism while trying one’s best to avoid building tensions more.

The more people pursue persuasive, respectful activism, the more they’ll help others see things in more nuanced ways, and the less divisiveness and extremity we’ll have. The more people pursue depolarizing, de-escalating, persuasive, respectful approaches, the more our divergent narratives will move closer together. We’ll find that how we disagree with each other will improve the things we disagree about. Our debates will be smarter and involve less extreme, one-side-versus-the other framings.

In conflict, many people give up on persuasion. They think, “These people are crazy; their minds can’t be changed; it’s a waste of time to even try.” But this is a symptom of our distorted views of each other: for example, our tendency to see our opponents as all-as-bad-as-the-worst-people-on-that-side. We should see that almost all of us have all sorts of nuanced views, complex narratives, disagreements with “our side,” and the ability to quickly change our minds. Giving up on persuasion is what amplifies the toxicity of conflict — and helps create the very things we’re upset by.

How do we “fight back” in depolarizing ways?

But I realize all that might sound quite idealistic to people who see serious threats and harms presented by their opponents. People can think, “But we are facing serious dangers and harms now; what good do all these conflict-resolution-type ideas do us now? Don’t we have to fight hard?”

And I’d say: Yes, you can fight hard. But you can also, as you fight hard, think about the various ways to persuade others and get others on your side.

Abraham Lincoln provides a good example of this. Even in the midst of war, he was known for never speaking of the “other side” in contemptuous “they’re all bad” ways. He was careful with his language. He sought to speak persuasively.

In the book The Anatomy of Peace, it talks about this concept, too, and gives examples of leaders who, even in war, treated the “other side” as humans, as people like themselves. And this could actually be a big factor in their success. After all, it’s often the people who act most contemptuously and most aggressively that trigger the biggest backlashes against the things they do.

8 tips for doing activism while trying to reduce toxicity

Below are some ways I think political activists can pursue their goals while avoiding amplifying the toxicity of our conflict (and while also avoiding creating more support for their more polarized, angry opponents).

Now, to some extent, conflict is of course necessary. There are some things you must do in the course of conflict and activism that will inevitably arouse anger from your most committed opponents. That’s inevitable, and that’s fine. We’re talking here about trying our best to reduce unnecessary toxicity and escalation. And the truth is we’re surrounded by people, on both sides, who inject a lot of unnecessary toxicity into their activism (often without knowing it).

These are some tips for depolarizing (but effective) activism. (And please let me know if you have some ideas for things I’ve missed; or let me know if you disagree about any of them.)

Tip #1: Ask yourself if you’re really trying to persuade or just vent your anger

The nature of toxic polarization is that fewer and fewer people care about persuasion, and more and more people care about venting their anger and signaling their allegiences. If you’re considering a form of activism, ask yourself if you’re really trying to persuade anyone, or if you’re just venting anger and speaking to the choir. (One of my more popular podcast episodes is a talk with a psychologist about polarization and persuasion.)

Tip #2: Ask yourself how you’d feel if they did it?

A “turnabout test” can help you see if a form of activism is unnecessarily bothersome and polarizing. It means taking a form of activism on “your side” and imagining an equivalent thing on the “other side.” For example, if you’re thinking about attending a protest with a “Fuck Elon Musk” sign, try to imagine how you’d feel about a “Fuck Joe Biden” sign. This is a high-level approach that can help you understand if the goal is persuasive activism or just a desire to vent.

Tip #3: Don’t insult the entire “other side”

When it comes to polarizing language, group-aimed insults are the most incendiary, so this is one of the lowest hanging fruits to avoid. We know that toxic polarization is a self-reinforcing dynamic: one side sees the “other side” as hateful and dangerous, which makes the other side’s hate and anger grow, which makes the first group’s hate and anger grow, and so on. Both groups have an exaggerated sense of the other side’s badness and the threats they pose. If we want to bring down the temperature, we must avoid speaking as if the entire “other side” is made up of horrible people. If you are saying things like, “Trump’s win shows us how racist and bigoted America is” or “Democrats are the real racists,” you are firing broad insults — and, I’d argue, only strengthening your opponents’ commitment to the fight.

You’d think this would be a pretty easy one to understand, but so many leaders and activists around us still lob group-aimed insults (some very direct, some more subtle). If we substantially reduced the frequency of this type of language, that alone I think would go a long way to reducing our toxicity problem. (E.g., if you dislike Trump, consider how much less Trump support there might be without all the “Trump voters are horrible”-type rhetoric.) (If your response is, “but they are mostly all horrible,” I recommend reading my book.)

Tip #4: Be hard on issues, soft on people

The more we use harsh personal attacks against people on the “other side,” the easier it is for them to think we’re motivated by hate and anger: that we’re being irrational and hysterical. Again, just think about how you feel when you hear someone say your preferred presidential candidate is a “lying piece of shit.” You might put together an entire story about what they’re like based just on that: you might feel you can guess their political views, and that you know the disdain they have for you and your views and concerns.

Also, in any conflict, leaders can become proxies for their side. Many Trump voters feel Trump has been treated very unfairly by a liberal-leaning establishment willing to do whatever it takes to bring him down; and that mirrors how they feel their views have been treated. Leaders being proxies isn’t just a Trump thing, either: some fans of Hillary Clinton and Obama and Biden would treat criticisms of those leaders as group-aimed insults, or as representing bigotry, no matter how measured and rational the criticism. This is what conflict does to us; it makes us feel protective of people on “our side.”

Now of course we won’t be getting rid of harsh personal criticisms and insults: this is politics, after all; I’m not naive. But if you want to do activism effectively, you should want to think about how your words will be perceived. Focus on making persuasive arguments about the ideas involved; the dangers you see in the ideas and the policies — and recognize that there can be hidden risks when you use personal attacks.

It’s good to be hard on issues and ideas, but soft on people. It’s just more persuasive.

Tip #5: Seek to understand and acknowledge opponent views and concerns

If you want someone to take something, it can help if you’re willing to give them something in return. If you want someone who doesn’t agree with you on an issue to change their mind, it can help to acknowledge the reasons they have for being distrustful of your views.

A major factor in people’s political preferences these days is they feel their opponents don’t care about their views and concerns. Many people feel their views and concerns are mocked and disrespected and attacked by the “other side.”

In a polarized environment like ours, effective activism requires showing that you understand people’s narratives and frustrations. But conflict makes many of us behave in the opposite way: we feel acknowledging our opponents’ views will give them “points” and help them; we may instinctually feel the concerns of the “bad guys” must be silly and unimportant (even as we’re more respectful when those same concerns are held by our allies).

As Ilana Redstone ( The Certainty Trap) put it: “Critics of Trump, especially on the left, tend to think they’re defending democracy by calling out the damage he’s done and continues to do to its institutions and norms. And yet, when they do so without simultaneously acknowledging how the left created and sustained a culture where non-progressive views are reflexively viewed as racist or bigoted, they’re accelerating the very democratic decline they strive to fight against.”

And, of course, Republicans should also strive to see what makes people see their approaches as insulting and divisive.

For Trump-opposed activists, this would mean trying to understand pro-Trump narratives that are obstacles to your views being taken seriously (e.g., views that Democrats have behaved undemocratically; views that Trump’s aggression in taking the reins of government in ways that Democrats have; views that many interpret everything Trump does in worst possible light; these kinds of things). Again, you don’t have to agree with such views to understand the reasons people have them and to try to speak to them.

Tip #6: Use criticisms that come from their side

Criticism from our opponents (the out-group) are rarely persuasive to us. We’ll instinctively think, “They are being bad-faith in their criticism; they are only saying whatever they think will help defeat us.” Our passionate and genuine fear and anger runs the risk of seeming like purposeful exaggeration or unreasonable hysteria (which it sometimes will be). What is more persuasive to us is criticism from people on “our side” (our in-group). With that in mind, to criticize in maximally persuasive ways, you should seek out and use critiques of the “other side” that come from that side. (For example, if you were trying to persuade your adversaries that Trump’s economic policies were harmful, you’d be a lot better off using a piece by Republican Rich Lowry than you would using a piece by Bernie Sanders.)

Aside from persuading people, such approaches will inject more nuance into the debate, and show people that disagreements on the various issues around us don’t abide by simplistic, binary, us-versus-them dynamics.

Tip #7: Avoid catastrophizing and worst-case framings

Our divides lead many of us to catastrophize: to think the worst is going to happen. Our divides lead many of us to arrive at highly certain worst-case predictions and interpretations. For example, before the 2022 midterms, you could find some Democrats saying they believed many Republican candidates were going to follow Trump’s lead and start not accepting election results en masse. This, of course, didn’t happen. All around us, we can find many people reaching for all sorts of worst-case framings about things their opponents do and say. Our distorted and overly pessimistic views can make us jump to highly certain and worst-case conclusions about all sorts of things. Obviously there’s no objective boundary to abide by here (clearly our views of threat and harm can differ greatly) but if you want to be persuasive and avoid driving people away, you should at least consider whether your concerns will strike many people as hysterical, overstated, and unreasonable.

One example of a worst-case framing I’ve seen a lot recently is speaking as if it’s obvious that Trump and Elon Musk are trying to enrich themselves; as if their actions are driven by greed. As someone who thinks Trump and Elon are highly affectively polarized, divisive, and doing harm to America, I also think that they believe they’re doing good things; I believe they’re genuine in believing they’re helping America. They may have exaggerated views of the threats their opponents pose, yes, but that doesn’t detract from them being true believers in the righteousness of their fight. You don’t have to agree with me; the point is just that when people speak in certain “they’re motivated by greed” ways about such subjective and unknowable things as people’s motivations, it can easily be seen as insulting and polarizing.

Tip #8: Aim your language more at the people who are listening

A big mistake I see is activists who get in emotional fights with highly polarized, insulting opponents and “fight fire with fire.” They get drawn into behaving in the same divisive, insulting ways as the people they’re talking to. The problem with this is that the meta-level topic of the debate then becomes the insults; the aggressions; the actual issues are pushed to the background. When we’re interacting with someone we think is highly divisive and insulting, we should seek to aim our speech not at the opponent we’re directly talking to but at the people listening, some of whom will be undecided and may listen to our points. This is how we can inject more nuance into the public sphere — and also bring down the temperature.

For example, if I were in a debate with Trump and he was insulting me, I’d seek to criticize the behavior while avoiding insulting him. For example, I might put on a carefree, unbothered smile and say something like, “Come on, Donald, let’s focus on the issues and not get drawn into these personal insults; the American people really don’t like this stuff; let’s talk about the issues.” I might say something like, “Donald, I think your approaches to a lot of things have been very wrong, but I think you genuinely want what is best for America” Part of my confidence that would be a good strategy is that I know relatively few Americans actually like Trump’s aggression and insults. My rhetoric would be aimed at the majority of people listening, not at Trump. Also, I know Trump likes it when people treat him respectfully; if done right, and not weakly, I think that approach would disarm him and give me more power in the dialogue, not less. I think activists and leaders are often too afraid of looking weak; they become too afraid of what their most angry allies will think of them.

Some people will think I’m being naive or weak here — but I think people who return insults with insults are being naive and weak, and are letting their anger lead them to act in self-defeating ways.

“But the time for such approaches is past!”

There will be some Trump-opposed who say, “The time for such things is past! We need to fight back harder than ever! We can’t hold our tongues; we need more people to show their rage!” (And if Harris had won in 2024, we’d see many Republicans saying similar things.)

But note that this is nothing different than what has happened since 2016 (and even before that). Many people, across society, raged about Trump and held nothing back, and did their best to morally judge and correct the backward and wrong perspectives they saw around them. And what happened? I and many other people think all that contempt and moral judgment helped create more support for Trump. As Musa Al-Gharbi said, “If this is resistance,’ I’d hate to see what active support of the Orange Man looks like!”

We should recognize that some things haven’t changed, in these areas. Anti-Trump people should seek to embrace new ways of resisting Trump.

And I’d say the same to anyone doing activism, of whatever sort: I’d also say to Republicans that aggressive, morally righteous, contemptuous approaches have helped build support for the far left ideas that anger you. Both sides have played a role in making their opponents more extreme and committed.

What did you think of this?

Did you like the ideas in this piece? What would you disagree with? What would you add? I’d really like to hear your thoughts. I will probably be updating this piece over time as I refine some of my thoughts.