Is politics actually more polarized?

Here's food for thought. We routinely talk about our "increasingly polarized" political landscape. In the USA, in Canada, and elsewhere, we see the political debate as "highly polarized", even "ultra-polarized".

This suggests that the conservative wing has become more radically right-wing, and the progresssive liberal wing has moved further to the left, with little left in the middle. Donald Trump, for example, regularly calls Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris "Marxist", "communist", or "far-left extremist".

But the truth is, only one side of the political divide has shifted strongly towards extremism, and that is the right. 

Of course, Donald J. Trump is the single mover responsible for this shift, not just in American politics, but here and Canada, and in Europe and elsewhere. Conservative leaders across the world have taken heart and license from Trump continuing move towards fascism, and they see his success as a harbinger of their own ambitions. They copy many of his dubious (but clearly successful) strategies, and they parrot his talking points. Just look at Pierre Poilievre, Nigel Farage, Viktor Orbán, Javier Milei, Georgia Meloni, Benjamin Netanyahu. The list goes on, and all of them have, to a greater or lesser extent, benefitted from Trump's influence.

The left, on the other hand [sic], has, if anything, become more mainstream and centralized, and less radical and hard left. Think Kamala Harris, Mark Carney, Keir Starmer. The left has, if anything, moved to the right, and tends to avoid like the plague any association with hard left politics. This too is Trump's legacy.

At the same time, politics has undeniably become nastier, even more violent, and that too feeds in to the narrative about polarization. The assumption is that, if political debate is meaner and more unseemly, replete with ad hominem attacks, exaggeration and threats, then the two sides, right and left, must be further and further apart. But that, as we have seen, is not necessarily the case. This too is Trump's fault. The man has made the whole world a worse place in almost every way.

But, next time you are tempted to use that hackneyed phrase "increasing polarization", stop and think whether that is actually what you mean.