# Causes of Polarization Beyond Propaganda: On the Crushing and Creating of Societal Epistemic Resilience # 1 Introduction The epistemic crisis of rising polarization and the consequent breakdown in shared truths and paralysis of public problem-solving​ in many societies across the world, especially the USA and Europe, has become an undeniable challenge to the stability and continuity of contemporary democracies (cf. Benson 2024, cf. Benkler et al. 2018, p. 11). The erosion of trust in institutions (cf. Deane 2024), the demise of civility, the dissolving of a common epistemic foundations, the electoral successes of radicals and the blows to long established alliances (cf. Bergmann 2025) are undeniable. Though it is not easy to quantify and measure polarization across countries, several attempts by researchers to do so, support the hypothesis that polarization has been rising in many democracies for decades now (cf. Bao & Gill 2024, pp. 822, 834; cf. Wagner 2024, p. 381). This polarization is not only visible in polls and election results, but also and most salient in the media, especially social media and the broader internet, expressed in an increase of extremist and hateful rhetorics and memes (cf. McNeil 2024; Burnham et al. 2022, p.2; cf. Immenkamp 2024). Especially since the 2016 and 2024 electoral victories of Trumpism in the USA, propaganda and disinformation spread by malicious actors are seen by many researchers as the main culprits behind polarization (cf. Roberts et al. 2018, p. 11, cf. Nguyen 2021, pp. 21 – 22; cf. Kahn 2025). Consequently, the remedies against polarization often proposed and debated, are regulation of media to reduce propaganda (cf. Fahy et al. 2022) and other regulatory or voluntary interventions focused on the media ecosystem (cf. Benkler et al. 2018, pp. 360 - 376). While there is little doubt that propaganda spread by malicious actors does indeed play a huge role in fuelling polarization, overfocusing on this cause risks overlooking other equally important structural causes of the vulnerabilities within democratic societies that propagandists are exploiting. The failures of the media ecosystem may explain how polarizing content is disseminated—but they do not explain why such content is so effective and why it finds such fertile ground. There seems to be an underexamined explanatory gap: the question why democratic societies are increasingly unable to resist propaganda and why the increasing supply of propaganda is met with an also increasing demand. This essay aims to address this gap by shifting the focus from the media space—where the “seeds” of polarization are sown—to the societal “soil” in which they take root. It argues that to understand and mitigate polarization, we must also investigate the internal conditions that have weakened societies’ defences against manipulation and that these structural conditions do not arise from media manipulation alone, nor can they be fixed by media reform alone. To do so, the essay introduces the concept of _societal epistemic resilience_ — the capacity of a society to preserve truth alignment and shared epistemic standards in the face of epistemic threats. The structure of the essay is therefore as follows: Chapter 2 defines political polarization. Chapter 3 outlines the reasons to investigate non-media causes of polarization. Chapter 4 introduces and defines the concept of societal epistemic resilience. Chapter 5 explores some of the major societal factors contributing to the erosion of epistemic resilience. Chapter 6 presents a brief overview of potential interventions aimed at rebuilding epistemic resilience and mitigating polarization. Chapter 7 concludes the essay by reflecting on the path to democratic renewal outlined in this paper. # 2 Defining Political Polarization ## 2.1. General Definition Political Polarization is a complex phenomenon. In general, _Political polarization_ generally refers to the process in which within a society growing subgroups form, whose opinions, affections and ideologies diverge towards opposing extremes, leaving a diminishing common ground and increasing intra-societal inter-subgroup conflicts often manifesting in increasingly antagonistic behaviour and rhetorics (cf. Iyengar et al. 2012, p.3; cf. Benson 2023, p. 1720).  An analogy to rising polarization is temperature affecting molecules: the higher the heat the more agitated are individual atoms making up molecules, and as the heat rises, the bindings of molecules are torn apart. Eventually the molecules burst into isolated atoms and evaporate. Similarly, with rising polarization, society fractures into rival factions, bindings between groups and individuals become impossible due to the political antagonism – as seen e.g in the increased polarization along gender lines being one of the main drivers of the decrease of coupling and birthrates worldwide (cf. Burn-Murdoch 2024 & 2025). The final consequences are an acceleration towards a Hobbesian war of all against all, erupting into a violent clash between the opposing factions, takeover by one, or civil war as has happened e.g. in Spain’s Civil War 1936 – 1939 (cf. Colomer 2004, pp. 253 – 255) or even in attempts to annihilate outgroups through genocide, which in the 20th century alone claimed ~  210 Million human lives (cf. Chambers & Savelsberg 2020). ## 2.2 Origins in human heterogeneity and psychology Some low base levels of polarization are probably unavoidable in any society, especially a democratic one build on pluralism: As sociopsychological research has shown, humans instinctively divide the social world into in- and outgroups, defined by shared interests and identities, and strongly identify with their ingroup. Humans tend to unambiguously favour members of the group they identify with in decision making – even being biased strongly to favour maximizing their groups advantage over the maximizing of a common good or utilitarian maximum (cf. Tajfel 1971, pp. 172 – 173). As any human society is heterogenous and contains contextually contingent subgroups, some conflict and fracturing into factions is an unavoidable regularity. The capacity to intense intergroup conflict appears to not only be a human universal but is also found in other animals. E.g. chimpanzees engage not only in violent intra-tribe conflict between subgroups, but also in genocidal violence against rival tribes (cf. Sandel & Watts 2020, pp. 26-27; cf. Lund 1995, pp. 229 - 231), hinting at an underlying evolutionary adaptive strategy. ## 2.3 Democracy and affective polarization When discussing the recently increasing polarization in democracies, we mean more than the base conflicts plaguing every society, but also less than the genocidal extremes. In a democracy, conflicts between societal subgroups are usually peacefully resolved through public deliberation and compromise, which reduce subgroup identification and increase social cohesion and identification with the democratic system (cf. He 2013, p. 64) by creating superordinate citizen identities and dissolving subgroup loyalties (cf. Muhlberger 2006, pp. 26 - 29). Democracies, where these deliberative processes start to fail and polarization rises, display rising identification and loyalty with their subgroups, and increases of affective polarization, meaning more negative sentiments about members of other subgroups (cf. Benson 2023, p. 1720). # 3 Why we need to look beyond propaganda Propaganda is an obvious cause for the rising tides of polarization. There is little doubt, that propaganda is indeed used extensively by malicious actors e.g. authoritarian states like the Russian Federation as part of broader information and hybrid warfare strategies in a perceived greater civilizational struggle (cf. Treyger et al. 2022, pp. 12–26). Especially Russian information warfare against the West has been for decades now following a strategy of increasing the polarization within and between western states, by using manipulation of traditional and social media “to exacerbate social, political, economic, and cultural divisions and sources of internal instability within Western societies and institutions” (cf. ibid. pp. 67-72). The radicalization of parts of the media eco system by take-over through propagandist actors like Steve Bannon and Elon Musk on the right (cf. Cruft & Ashton 2022), or Neville Roy Singham on the left (cf. Hvistendahl et al. 2023), also led to systematic spreading of disinformation to create distrust and polarization within society. Yet, to look beyond the obvious is not only the philosopher’s favourite pastime since the days of Socrates, but also a necessity to understand the issue in its totality. ## 3. 1 Propaganda is less effective than often assumed While especially Russian disinformation has become a way to explain polarization away sometimes, these informational attacks are less organised, less effective and not as well-resourced as popular accounts suggest (cf. Treyger et al. 2022, p.8-10) and some studies suggest a rather weak causal link between media exposure and radicalisation, suggesting that propaganda primarily amplifies existing rifts (cf. Nordbrandt 2023; cf. Hollewell 2022). While there is little doubt that propaganda plays a huge role in polarization, following recent research it seems likely, that is only one variable in a larger erosion of societal epistemic resilience, also described by some researchers as _truth decay_ (Kavanagh et al. 2018, pp. 1 -2). The overrepresentation of propaganda as a cause is probably partially, because unlike other rather intangible causes, we can see propaganda on our screen every day, so it makes it one obvious cause to focus on. ## 3.2 The media is still not reality Media play a significant role in informing and shaping everyday life of everyone, as we live in unprecedently large and interconnected societies, where most of our knowledge about the world is mediated through media: through shadows on the wall in Plato’s cave so to speak – a trend which started with the rise of mass media over the last couple hundred years, as already one father of modern propaganda-studies, Walter Lippmann pointed out in the 1920s (cf. Lippmann 1922, pp. 6 – 12). But they are not everything. Although a baudrillardian Hyperreality constructed from purely subject emotions and images spreading through our media (cf. Lazzini et al. 2021, pp. 199 – 202) may from time to time swallow the consciousness of many, the virtual world still isn’t the real world. The media eco system is still a highly self-referential spectacle detached from most people’s life by a blurry line. Its discourses are driven mainly by people who make it their daily business to discuss, argue and spread ideas using media – e.g. philosophers, journalists, researchers, entertainers, marketeers, creators etc. – and therefore, are by the nature of their own interests and training, biased to ascribe a lot of power to media and therefore propaganda. Empirical experience of the real world still sets limits on the effects of persuasion by media. For example: No matter how many propaganda I may see while scrolling through X or Instagram, telling me that Germany is a hellhole on the brink of civil war, overran by millions of bloodthirsty Islamists, where you will get stabbed or raped at every second corner – I won’t believe them. If I don’t want to accept a huge cognitive dissonance, I cannot believe them for a simple reason: When I look out of my window in real Germany while I am writing this paper, I don’t see a dangerous hellhole. I see a bunch of kids playing unattended, because their parents apparently made the assessment, that we are in safe place. An assessment, I wholeheartedly agree with and which my own senses confirm every day, while I walk unbothered through the streets. Like many people, I still trust myself and my neighbours more to judge local events correctly, than the tales of an anonymous online account.  I have good, valid reasons to do so, as the empirical contexts gives me local knowledge, more data and is more coherent, so I can make a good assessment of the truthfulness of my own and my neighbours experience. In a globalized world, relying on perception and local knowledge can itself be deceiving and of little use, and a gateway for manipulation – an issue we will examine in more detail in chapter 5.1. – but in local matters, propaganda should be easy to recognize and debunk. But apparently, it isn’t, as rises of xenophobic sentiments in Germany suggest (cf. Statista 2025). When in matters of local knowledge people start to trust anonymous bots or foreign essayist more than they do trust their own eyes and their neighbours, something more is broken than just the media ecosystem. # 4 Societal Epistemic Resilience ## 4.1 Defining Societal Epistemic Resilience What allows a society to resist foreign propaganda and be epistemically confident? It’s a societal resilience to the destruction of its epistemic foundations and its ability to maintain effective epistemic processes that allow it to (re)align itself and its decision-making with the true state of the world. This ability I call _societal epistemic resilience_, and it has at least two major aspects: ### 4.1.1 Maintained shared epistemic foundation Following social identity theory, polarization is enabled and coincides with the erosion of superordinate identities e.g. as citizens, and the increase of subgroup loyalties (cf. Muhlberger 2006, p.26; cf. Benson 2023, p. 1720). These superordinate identities rely on the proliferation and maintenance of _shared epistemic foundations_, consisting of trust, shared truths and shared methods of truth-seeking (cf. ibid; cf. Tong 2021, p. 419). ### 4.1.2 Maintained norms of epistemic alignment with the truth A society can maintain shared epistemic foundations by agreeing on the same shared truth e.g. an ideological or religious framework – but as long as this shared truth doesn’t aligns and realigns itself to the true state of world, a society becomes epistemically misaligned and fragile. When epistemic alignment with truth fails, political decision-making increasingly assumes premisses detached from reality and cognitive dissonance increase, leading to irrationality and institutional instability and ultimately the dissolution of shared epistemic foundations (cf. Tong 2021, p. 421). To prevent this, a society needs epistemic processes, institutions and norms, which incentives cooperative truth-seeking on a societal level. As an example, the Soviet Union had little visible polarization as it enforced a shared truth (or rather delusion) by totalitarian force – but this prevented effective alignment with the truth and subsequently, the SU fractured and imploded to the surprise of many (cf. Encyclopaedia Britannica 2025). ## 4.2 Societal Epistemic Resilience of Liberal Democracies ### 4.2.1 Democratic Epistemic Alignment Especially the 20th and early 21st century saw high resilience among liberal democracies – so much, that after the implosion of the last european fascist dictatorships in Portugal and Spain in the 1970s (cf. Tappi & Tébar 2024) and the disintegration of most communist dictatorships with the Soviet Union in 1991 (cf. Encyclopaedia Britannica 2025), some hoped that liberal democracy is the Hegelian end of history in terms of political innovation (cf. Fukuyama 1992, pp. 39-45). Liberal democracies are extremely adaptive due to their epistemic pluralism, which allows them to calibrate their epistemic processes towards an alignment with the truth: While authoritarians suppress the knowledge and desires of the population, till frustration boils and the state implodes, democracies are more epistemically efficient (cf. Tong 2021, p. 417). As the knowledge how the world is and what people need, is dispersed among the population and nowhere complete, authoritarians neglect threats and issues. E.g. the dictator, who slowly drifts into self-destructive hubris as he drowns in his own propaganda and surrounds himself with yes-man. History knows enough examples, as does the present e.g. the 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia, where the Kremlin underestimated western resistance due to asymmetrical information (cf. İdrisoğlu & Spaniel 2024) and its own propaganda (cf. Marples 2022, pp. 208 -210). Liberal democracies usually prevent themselves to drift into such destructive self-delusion, as they have freer flow of information and aspire to be republics of reasons, embracing the notion, that debate and criticism foster better decision making (cf. Talisse 2019, p.357). They are therefore at least in theory epistemologically superior to other governments, as they create more favourable conditions for the pooling of epistemic resources and the division of epistemic labour (cf. Tong 2022, p. 417) – in the economy by market mechanisms (cf. Hayek 1945), and in political institutions by an effective epistemic proceduralism (cf. Estlund 2008, pp. 15 – 21). Consequently, the story of liberal democracies was mostly a success – till around 2007 / 2008, since then globally the numbers of democracies declined and polarization within them is rising (cf. Freedom House 2025). While this tipping point coincided with the global expansion of facebook (cf. Press 2022) and the introduction of the iPhone (cf. Farber 2014), making digital media and propaganda omnipresent in everyday life, the great financial crisis at the same time also may had its contributions to the trend reversal (cf. Sufi 2016) among other factors, we will look at more closely in Chapter 5. ### 4.2.2 Erosion of Shared Epistemic Foundations in Democracies The erosion of societal epistemic resilience we see in democracies today, seems to primarily stem from a problem democracy has been struggling with since the first sophists and demagogues entered the political stages of Ancient Athens and the Senate of the Roman Republic:  the maintenance of a shared epistemic foundation, shared truth and connected norms of deliberation (cf. Goodman 2014). Indeed, there is a strong argument to be made, that our often-so-called post-truth present, characterized as much by postmodern relativism as by naïve realism, has such a divergence in epistemological frameworks across the political spectrum, that there is little shared epistemic foundation left (cf. Friedman 2023, pp. 1 – 3). Without such shared truths, even rational agents are poised to become polarised (cf. Singer et al. 2018, pp. 2245 - 2255). Furthermore, it is democracies pluralism and tolerance, which allows its adaptiveness and truth-alignment, but also undermines epistemic authority and facilitates an erosion of shared truths, epistemic foundations and norms (cf. Izzo 2011, p. 565; cf. Heysse 2020, p. 55) and destruction by intolerant radicals (cf. Taleb 2019, pp. 69 – 88). # 5 Some Non-Media Causes of Societal Epistemic Resilience Erosion and Rising Polarization ## 5.1 Diminished Value of Local Knowledge As outlined before, democratic resilience relies partially on the pooling of local knowledge (cf. Tong 2022, p. 421). This is effective in dealing with internal matter – but globalization turned many internal matters to global issues. The increased interconnectedness of the world following the SU collapse and the digital revolution, changed politics as it made policy decisions more dependent on specialized knowledge of global processes (cf. ibid. p. 418). While an individual may assess the effects of a certain regional regulation to his own immediate everyday life well, global processes are often outside of immediate perception. Applying local knowledge to many polarizing issues is often rather useless or even harmful - e.g. there is very little evidence citizens can perceive in their day-to-day life the scientifically well-established link between the consumption of meat and climate change (cf. Stoll-Kleemann & Schmidt 2017). To understand such issues and make well-informed decisions, citizens need specialized knowledge about the global world. To obtain this, they rely mainly on media – but also on two factors, which significantly shape their ability to evaluate media: Travel and Education, which aren’t equally available to all. This causes epistemological rifts and polarization, as e.g. seen in the USA, where right wingers tend to overestimate the importance of local knowledge, while left wingers that of specialized knowledge, in their respective epistemological frameworks (cf. Friedman 2023, pp. 1 – 5). ## 5.1.1 Travel and Polarization Experience in traveling or living abroad, may generally increase the awareness of the complex interdependence of humanity and subsequently lead to more nuanced and accurate assessments of policy – ergo a more fine-tuned epistemic access to global knowledge, increasing epistemic resilience. Those who haven’t traveled, may have less firsthand understanding of how deeply their country is embedded in the global economy. Without experience abroad, concepts like interdependence, the effects of tariffs, the importance of international institutions, ease of border crossings, or supply chain disruption can seem abstract or irrelevant. In recent global studies, people who have traveled to at least five other countries – categorized as “_globe-trotters_” – correctly answered twice as many questions on international affairs as non-travelers (cf. Wilke & Fetterolf 2023). There is a huge gap between democratic societies in regards of how well traveled their citizens are: Only 26% of US Americans, 24% of Hungarians, 37% of Greeks and 47% of Italians have visited 5 countries or more in their life, while 83% of all Dutch, 70% of all Germans and 88% of all Swedes have done so (cf. ibid.) – and this gap seems to correlate to a gap in polarization. Countries with low levels of international travel have seen the highest increases of polarization in cross-country studies, while well-traveled populations seem to coincide with declining or at least slower polarization (cf. Boxell et al. 2020, p.9; cf. Gidron et al. 2019). Here the impacts of covid-19-lockdowns, preventing young people to take gap years or internships abroad, may explain as one factor among many, why the post-pandemic years saw an increase of polarization in young voters (cf. Lang 2024) and not only among them. The diminished ability to travel for a few years may have contributed to narrower world views, as first-hand experience got replaced with digital media, contributing to lower epistemic resilience and more exposure to propaganda. ## 5.1.2 Education and Polarization The relationship between education and epistemic resilience and political polarization, isn’t as straightforward. Education itself has become a battlefield of political clashes, especially in the USA, where while this paper just reached final revision, US president Trump ordered the dismantling of the US Department of Education (cf. Mason & Oliphant 2025). In general, people without higher education are more likely to score high in political discontent and vote for radical populist parties from the far left and the far right, as studies from the USA and Europa have shown (cf. Cordero et al. 2022, pp. 520 – 522). Interestingly: a cross-country analysis in 18 OECD nations found that more educated individuals tend to express stronger affective polarization. This trend is especially strong in the United States, where higher education levels are linked to more ideologically consistent and higher affective polarization (cf. Lee & Tipoe 2024, pp. 379 – 381). This may seem initially paradoxical, but makes more sense, when taking the declining quality of higher education into account and the inflation of degrees and subsequent elite-overproduction. While it is hard to measure the quality of education, several indicators like the spending per student (cf. Marginson 2024) and the decline of literacy skills, indicate a general decline in education quality (cf. Desjardins 2017, pp. 761 - 763). Even more: while average intelligence as measured with IQ-Tests has increased till around the turn of the millennium, a phenomenon known as the Flynn effect – both the USA and Europa have since experienced Reverse Flynn: a decline in average IQ across the population and all levels of education (cf. Dworak et al. 2024, pp. 1 – 2, 10). So, while formal education may deliver less epistemic enhancement than it did in the past, it may still give people more confidence. As quality of education crumbles and intelligence declines, one shouldn’t wonder about crumbling epistemic resilience. ## 5.2 Zero-Sum-Games replacing Non-Zero-Sum-Cooperation Empirically the levels of polarization and radicalism are most highly impacted by economic incentives. If economies stagnate or shrink, they turn from what game theory describes as Non-Zero-Sum-Games into Zero-Sum-Games. Consequently, cooperation becomes economically disincentivized (cf. Friedmann 2006, pp. 85, 86, 92). When the economic pie isn’t growing, the only way to increase one’s own share of the pie, is by someone else’s loss – so systematically, the dominant strategy shifts from mutually beneficial cooperation to conflict over redistribution. Subsequently this creates incentives for democratic deliberations to stop being cooperative endeavors of epistemic pooling, and instead for the weaponization of discourse, sophistry, partisanship and the strategic secession of subgroups (cf. ibid.) This relationship between economic decline and rising radicalism and outgroup-hostility (e.g. racism) is historically and empirically well documented (cf. Friedmann 2006, pp. 127 –130, 148-153). Especially the radicalization of disenfranchised subgroups experiencing declining wages and local recessions, has been one of the main causes of polarization in democracies during the last two decades since the great financial crisis. E.g. the strong decline in real wages of the non-college educated working class in the USA, is seen by many economists as the main driver behind its embrace of Trumpism (cf. Komlos 2018, p.4; cf. Sufi 2016). Tragically, this may lead to vicious cycles, as society’s distressed by economic crisis often fail due to the polarization to organize the necessary cooperation to overcome said crisis (cf. Funke et al. 2015; Friedman 2006, p. 345). ## 5.3 Multiculturalism and demographic shifts The more subgroups and identities exist within society, the harder it becomes to find common epistemic grounds and create superordinate identities – especially when individuals already identify more strongly with ethnic or religious groups. Consequently, multiple empirical studies suggest, that increases in diversity – as e.g. produced by mass migration and multiculturalist policy - reduce social cohesion and trust and subsequently increase political and affective polarization (cf. Putman 2015, pp. 137 – 147; cf. Ziller 2015, p. 1211; Gebrihet 2024, p. 193) and also  seem to decrease ingroup-trust and social engagement, e.g. manifested in reduced union membership among the working-class (cf. Benos & Kammas 2023, pp. 1-3). ##  5.4 Electoral Systems Not all democracies allow voters to influence policy to the same extent. Especially majoritarian electoral systems – as for example in the USA - have **disproportionate representation**, where slim majorities may gain more seats and offices, and smaller parties receive fewer than their share of the vote. Democratic countries with majoritarian systems have significantly higher affective polarization, than democracies with representational systems (cf. Gidron et al. 2019, pp. 28 - 30). This is probably because majoritarianism creates an overrepresentation of dominant groups and a neglect of minorities, setting incentives for political leaders to increase in-group biases and overidentification with their political party among the voters, discouraging compromise, and fostering identity-based and ideological conflicts. Consequently, institutional trust and epistemic resilience erode in times of diverging political preferences among subgroups and especially among non-ruling outgroups. A historic example is the majoritarian electoral system of the 1931 established Spanish Second Republic, where a cycle of electoral overrepresentation and frustration of the political fringes ultimately led to increasingly self-reinforcing political polarization until civil war erupted in 1936 (cf. Colomer 2004, pp. 253 – 255). # 6 How should political polarization be dealt with? To fight polarization, it is insufficient to merely counteract propaganda. It is necessary to strengthen _societal epistemic resilience_ and alleviate discontent among disenfranchised groups. Based on the non-media causes identified in the previous chapter, the following measure appear as obvious first steps for the reduction of polarization and fostering resilience: ## 6.1 More travel and better education Policies encouraging international travel and educational programs, like for example the highly successful European Union’s Erasmus Program (cf. Lendvai & Huszár 2021), should be prioritized by democratic governments as strategic investments in societal epistemic resilience. ## 6.2 Economic Non-Zero-Sumness Stable economic growth combined with a fair distribution of its spoils – a world, were everyone is constantly better off – create the non-zero-sum environment incentivizing cooperation. Economic policies must therefore prioritize growth combined with equitable wealth distribution to maintain cooperation and low polarization within a society. (How this need for growth is reconcilable with sustainability and fighting climate change, is beyond the scope of this paper, but I wrote extensively about this topic elsewhere, cf. Skrobisz 2022 [[Klimakrise, Degrowth und die Grenzen des Wachstums; Warum wir mehr und nicht weniger Wachstum brauchen]] Skrobisz 202 ## 6.3 Investment in integration and social participation Well-funded and selective migration and integration policies should be implemented to manage demographic shifts positively, and to increase the real long-term benefits of migration. Encouraging minority participation in political decision-making and meaningful interaction across subgroups, can strengthen superordinate identities by bridging intergroup divides; Investment in local initiatives, language courses, and mixed residential projects could further enhance trust and epistemic resilience (cf. Putman 2015, pp. 163 -165). ## 6.4 More power to the people A way to take away the power from radicals and authoritarian demagogues, is to redistribute power away from government officials and parties, and to the people. Reforms towards more direct and inclusive democracy and more proportional electoral systems could significantly reduce polarization caused by perceptions of disempowerment in majoritarian processes. # 7 Conclusion This essay has – as I hope: convincingly - argued that rising polarization threatening contemporary democracies is not solely attributable to media-driven propaganda. While the enemies of democracy undeniably exploit and exacerbates polarization, the analysis outlined in this paper emphasizes that their propaganda thrives precisely because deteriorating _societal epistemic resilience_ allows it to do so. We can blame foes for supplying toxic propaganda – but we can only blame ourselves for creating the demand for it among our fellow citizen by neglecting democratic civic duties and letting institutions, education, epistemic norms and economic conditions deteriorate. Ultimately, the fight for democratic continuity therefore cannot merely be an informational and kinetic battle against its enemies - it has to be a fundamental effort to repair and strengthen the internal epistemic and civic foundations upon which democracy rests. Only by addressing structural vulnerabilities can democracies hope to restore trust, cooperation, and resilience, safeguarding their capacity to thrive. Consequently, strengthening societal epistemic resilience must become a priority for democratic renewal and policy. # Bibliography Barrett, David (2022): Political Polarization and Social Media. In _Philosophical Topics_ 50 (2), pp. 85–104. DOI: 10.5840/philtopics202250218. 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