Rachel Bitecofer: We Didn't Start The Fire

[Nevilledog]

https://thecycle.substack.com/p/we-didnt-start-the-fire

Let’s set the table with what the research actually says, not what the right-wing infotainment machine screams. Political science has been measuring polarization for decades and the verdict is not that it came from Democrats.

Scholars have been warning for more than a decade that our polarization is asymmetric. Mann & Ornstein called it out plainly; Grossmann & Hopkins explained the structural why—ideological Republicans versus group-interest Democrats create different incentives, media diets, and tactics. That’s your “who started the fire” origin story in the literature, not on cable.

If you’ve been alive for the last twenty years, you’ve lived the asymmetric script in real time. Republicans normalized calling Democrats “socialists” and “communists” as baseline branding while supercharging moral panic politics—lately by conflating gender-affirming care with “mutilating children.”

After Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law, use of the “groomer” slur exploded on social platforms, and major right-wing outlets now casually label mainstream Democratic positions as “genital mutilation.” This isn’t fringe; it’s the party’s communication bloodstream.

That was the currency that made Charlie Kirk a very wealthy man and though I mourn his death and the pain his poor family is going through, we also can’t white wash the fact that Charlie Kirk held racist, sexist, and bigoted views and used his significant power and influence to radical college students.

Kirk was a free speech advocate, but that speech was hate speech.

*snip*

[Deuxcents]

1. I had to back off my friendships when the Tea Party was too much to take and it just got worse after that

With my family, it’s like walking on eggshells hoping to not trigger the conversation. I pretty much choose my friends so that is not a problem but new acquaintances are few since I’m older now. Life was so much easier 20 years ago..

[elleng]

2. Awful, and very good she has discussed it in these terms.

[Solly Mack]

3. K&R

[SunSeeker]

4. K & R

[Bev54]

5. And the state dept is taking steps against foreigners for any anti statements by them about Kirk

Free speech only goes one way for these aholes.

[paleotn]

7. Foreign visitors are vulnerable and these people are cowards.

It's not like a host of US citizens haven't been pretty damn blunt about their hatred of Kirk.

[paleotn]

6. They're a violent political movement and Charlie caught the karma. Simple as that.

[SocialDemocrat61]

8. When Mann & Ornstein went on the Daily Show

Jon Stewart made fun of them and their research. Their book went against his both sides are bad beliefs.

[ancianita]

9. Thanks! What's not to love about Bitecofer?! Her whole analysis is well worth the read.

"... You want proximate cause for today’s rhetorical temperature? It’s the ecosystem that taught millions that Democrats are an existential enemy, not a loyal opposition. That is why thousands of Republicans stormed into our nation’s Capitol building to hang Nancy Pelosi and Mike Pence.

That same ecosystem radicalized audiences on COVID, vaccines, elections—everything. I saw it up close in 2022 when I debated Charlie Kirk on his show. I watched a crowd fully convinced the vaccine killed people because their movement told them so—relentlessly, lucratively. And now, in the wake of Kirk’s killing, the same machine is already trying to flip the script and claim our rhetoric is the real problem.

Let me be crystal. Calling out authoritarianism and proto-fascism is not “escalation”; it’s diagnosis. The academic case has been on the shelf for years: Republicans moved further and faster right; the party’s incentive structure rewards constitutional hardball; the media arm radicalizes the base with moral-panic narratives. Pretending it’s symmetric is a luxury belief we can’t afford.

And because I can already hear the bad-faith reply—“So your side never does anything wrong?”

Of course they do. We do plenty wrong but when we do we admit it and make changes, we don’t ask people to not believe their lying eyes.

Democrats pass bills. Republicans pass torches.

A gay Democratic governor is honoring Charlie Kirk and his 1st Amendment right to be a bigot for profit by lowering Oregon’s flags at half mast.

When Democratic state senator Melissa Hortman was assassinated by a Trump supporter, she didn’t receive half staff flags and a Presidential Medal of Freedom, she received a sick joke from a sitting U.S. senator.

One side’s excesses mostly show up as intraparty squabbles over how far or fast to move; the other side’s excesses show up as fake electors, purges of civil servants and the FBI, and routine defiance of lawful process. Courts, inspectors general, and congressional investigators have receipts. We didn’t choose this terrain. We adapted to it.

So yes, we’re going to keep calling it what it is. We’re going to keep reminding voters who lit the match and who’s been fanning it. Because if you don’t name the threat, you can’t build the counter-narrative that neutralizes it.

If Republicans want the rhetoric to ratchet down, there’s an easy test: stop lying about Democrats being socialists in a country that doesn’t even have national health care, stop telling people “liberals” support “mutilating children,” stop trying to nullify elections you lose, stop using public office to make billions, , and stop breaking the law because you think courts are for other people.

When they do, we’ll meet them in the reality-based middle.

We didn’t start the fire, but we have to be the ones that put it out."


I hope MSNBC and Lawrence O'Donnell (who first named her as his go-to predictor of elections) post a lot of YouTube videos of her doing variations of commentary on this.

[ReRe]

10. K&R

Yep. There's a big difference between free speech and hate speech.

[hueymahl]

11. A bunch of words to blame the victim

Murder is never acceptable, and if you think someone should be killed or brought it on himself because of his politics, you should really think about whether you are a good person.

[dpibel]

13. Too busy to read it, eh?

Quote me the part that says, or even intimates, that murder is acceptable.

Or that Kirk should have been killled.

Or even that he brought in on himself.

I don't think you can.

[SunSeeker]

14. It's not just "a bunch of words." It's the truth. The right wing created the violent world we are all victims of.

This shit doesn't happen in other countries like it does here. Charlie Kirk and his ilk created our gun culture, "2nd Amendment remedies" and hateful division. They are to blame for it and also the victims of it.

[ancianita]

15. You really didn't read her words, or you'd not say this.This essay was not at all about what you say.

At all.

[SunSeeker]

12. K & R

[yellow dahlia]

16. Thank you for sharing

[Glaisne]

17. Yep, I've lived the asymmetric script in real time

since the days of the Moral Majority. I've lived the debasement, and decline of this country at the hands of the right and knew we were heading to where we are today since those days. I believed those people were going to take over and people scoffed, after all what did I know as a teenager. I'm sorry I ended up being right.