The digital ghetto

Since the election, I’ve heard plenty of stories of Trump opponents disassociating themselves from Trump supporters. My wife, along with many of my friends, been unfriending their Trump-backing acquaintances on social media. People have been abandoning Twitter. (I refuse to call it X.) They’ve been moving to Threads and now Bluesky. Thanksgiving gatherings are being canceled. Some are going as far as divorcing their Trump-voting husbands (before the Republicans can ban no-fault divorce).

I don’t blame people for abandoning a toxic social media platform and disengaging from the MAGA supporters in their lives. People have the right to protect their peace. And this isn’t a disagreement about politics, but a split over morality. How can someone call me a friend when they voted for someone who wants to see me killed?

But I can’t help but feel we walked into a trap.

The first step of a genocide is to isolate the targeted group from the rest of society. That’s what happened in Germany in the 1930s. First, Jews were denied jobs where they interacted with the rest of German society. Then, they were banned from public transportation. Then, they were shoved into ghettos. And when they were completely out of sight from the rest of Germany, the Nazis could do whatever they wanted to them without public knowledge and protest.