Civility and Its Discontents
Based on various polls, around 90% of Americans have observed a decline in “civility.” Similar numbers believe that civility is necessary for the functioning of American society. Thus the decline in civility can only be harmful to America.
Interestingly, even though most people feel that civility is eroding, most people also think that they are adequately civil, and that the decline of civility is the fault of others. If civility requires an ability to look at things from other people’s perspective, this attitude is itself indicative of the decline of civility.
“Civility” means more than mere politeness. Civility is a political virtue governing disagreement with others in the same community. Civility allows us to disagree while preserving community. We disagree civilly with people because we wish to remain in the same community. To borrow a phrase from Angelo Plume, civility allows you to make your point without making an enemy. When you do not care to remain civil to someone, that’s because you don’t envision yourself as being in the same community.
“Civility” comes from the Roman Latin “civitas” (city) and “civilitas” (citizenship). “Civitas” is a translation of the Greek “polis,” and “politeia” is the equivalent of “civilitas.” For the ancients, the basis of civility was “homonoia” (Greek) or “concordia” (Latin). Homonoia means “oneness of mind” or unanimity, while concordia means “oneness of heart,” which is basically the same thing. Political life is based on common ideas and sentiments about the most important things.
Today’s idea of civility as, basically, “agreeing to disagree” so we don’t start killing each other, is a modern liberal invention necessitated by the centuries of religious conflict following the Reformation. At the root of modern civility, therefore, is the recognition that diversity is a problem: a weakness, not a strength.
The leading causes cited for the breakdown of civility are the rise of the internet, especially social media, and increased political polarization.
The uncivil attitude of “Who cares what he thinks? You’ll never see this person again,” only makes sense in a big city. You don’t belong to the same community if you can reasonably assume that you will never see a given person again.
The internet fosters incivility because it is the biggest city of all, with all the anonymity that implies. Beyond that, the internet allows one to operate behind masks. So even if you do bump into the same person, neither of you might recognize the other.
You can buy Greg Johnson’s The Trial of Socrates here.
It is now commonplace to meet online lions in real life and discover they are actually pussycats. It makes sense: online, there is no accountability for incivility. In real life, you could get punched in the mouth.
That said, online incivility is a small price to pay for the political benefits of the internet. Social media and anonymity have made it possible to destroy liberal and globalist hegemony and unleash nationalism and populism, which brings us to the second reason for the breakdown of civility: increased political polarization.
Political polarization is happening because people increasingly see through the false alternative of post-World War II center-Left/center-Right power sharing arrangements, largely due to the internet.
The emerging polarization is between liberal democratic elites and the masses, who have discovered that the “liberal” in liberal democracy means minority rule and not giving the people what we want.
What we want, for the most part, is a socially conservative society with an activist state that intervenes in the economy and sides with the working and middle classes against the oligarchs. We want nationalism and populism. What the elites want is globalism—including global capitalism—and social liberalism.
The current system gives the elites what they want, not the people.
When the center-Right fails to promote conservative values (which the people want) but promotes more globalization (which the elites want), popular discontent is used to elect the center-Left, which then fails to promote populist economic policies (which the people want) while promoting social liberalism (which the elites want). Then popular discontent is used to put the center-Right back into power. Rinse, repeat.
This is how we have arrived at the system that Jonathan Bowden described as Left-wing oligarchy.
It worked for decades in a world with only a few television networks and wire services determining what everyone thought. The internet ended that world. Nationalism and populism have been rising forces for more than a decade now.
I remember when liberals began complaining about “incivility” back in 2015 during the glory days of the online Alt-Right. Yes, a lot of the discourse was “uncivil.” But most of the whining was the outrage of a privileged class that had never been talked back to and were disconcerted to find that they weren’t as clever and well-educated as they thought.
When they were challenged, did the Left respond by showing us examples of “civility”? Of course not. Instead, they uleased wave upon wave of censorship and deplatforming. Civility is how we disagree with people in the same community. Since they could not answer or abide our views, the Left—and the establishment Right that creeps behind them like a shadow—simply tried to exclude us from the community.
It reminded me of my days in academia, which makes sense, because academia is the citadel of the far Left. Political correctness and “wokeness” were invented there and remain entrenched to this day.
Recently a friend drew my attention to a new book: Curtis Dozier, The White Pedestal: How White Nationalists Use Ancient Greece and Rome to Justify Hate (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2026). Dozier is one of my academic stalkers, a guilty, mopey “straight white male” who teaches classics at Vassar College. His book has the following note at the beginning:
A Note on White Nationalist Sources
“White Nationalist Intellectuals Seek academic legitimacy by imitating the conventions of scholarly discourse in their publications. To cite these publication in the same manner that I would cite other scholarship would confer such legitimacy, as well as visibility. Therefore I do not cite publications from white nationalist websites in my notes. Interested researchers will be able to locate them from my descriptions.”
When I first read this, I was at a loss for words (well, aside from “faggot”). This shockingly petty gesture encapsulates a whole apparatus of academic oppression and exclusion and foreshadows Bolshevik-style measures should people like this ever gain the power to enact them.
Then the word hit me: this is incivility. Dozier doesn’t want us in the same society. He can’t imprison or exile or kill us. But he’s sure as hell not going to cite us.
Incivility communicates enmity which foreshadows all manners of exclusion, including such Leftist favorites as a bullet in the back of the skull.
There is quite a bit of Leftist literature explicitly attacking civility today. Civility is bad because we can’t tolerate racists, sexists, and homophobes: basically, the heretics the Left wants to destroy, first in effigy, then in reality.
This is why I defend the somewhat shocking idea of treating American higher education like Henry the VIII treated the Catholic Church. Most academics in the humanities and social sciences need to be given early retirements. Entire grievance studies departments should be shuttered. Woke scholarship needs to be put under lock and key in special library collections. Many colleges and universities should probably close entirely, because there are too many credential mills. In short, we would need extremely illiberal measures simply to return to old-fashioned liberalism. And why stop there?
This is why I don’t mourn the death of civility. Incivility is simply the recognition of reality: namely that America is now two nations sharing the same territory and government. This is an inherently unstable situation that may eventually lead to civil war, which will make us pine for the days when the worst thing we had to endure was harsh language. The sensible solution is separation.
In the present context, trying unilaterally to repair civility with our enemies makes no sense. Civility is how we treat friends, not enemies. Pretending otherwise is folly.
But if we really envision creating a new community with the people on our side, it wouldn’t hurt to cultivate some civility there.
https://counter-currents.com/2026/02/civility-and-its-discontents