When Politics Ends Friendship

◳ On the subordination of human ties to ideology, the quiet seeds of totalitarianism, and why friendship across difference is a civic virtue

Friendships today are breaking in ways that feel abrupt, disproportionate, and deeply wounding. Not over betrayal, cruelty, or neglect, but over politics. A comment about Gaza, a vote for Trump, a stray remark on Elon Musk: each has become enough to end years of trust. The specific issue is often less important than the act of rejection itself—the refusal to maintain a bond with someone who thinks differently.

The numbers confirm what many already feel: partisan identity has become so central that difference is experienced as betrayal.

A recent YouGov survey found that more than a quarter of Americans reported losing a friendship over politics, with Democrats nearly twice as likely as Republicans to do so. The numbers confirm what many already feel: partisan identity has become so central that difference is experienced as betrayal.

“What totalitarian ideologies therefore aim at is not the transformation of the outside world or the revolutionizing of society, but the transformation of human nature itself… [so that] even friendship and family ties are subordinated to ideology.” — Hannah Arendt

At first glance, invoking Hannah Arendt may seem excessive. Arendt understood that totalitarianism begins not with violence, but with habits of mind that reduce persons to carriers of doctrine. When even friendship is made conditional on ideological conformity, plurality—the essence of political life—is denied. The gulag is far away; but the seed, the mindset, is already planted.

The psychological mechanisms are well known. Jonathan Haidt’s Moral Foundations Theory shows that liberals tend to weigh Care and Fairness most heavily, while conservatives give equal emphasis to Loyalty, Authority, and Sanctity. These different “moral taste buds” mean that one person’s policy preference is another’s moral outrage. A disagreement about taxation, abortion, or foreign policy is not just a clash of views—it feels like a revelation of flawed character.

George Lakoff adds another layer. Political identities, he argued, are framed through metaphors of family. Conservatives often see the world through a “strict father” model, emphasizing discipline and self-reliance. Liberals favor a “nurturant parent” model, valuing empathy and shared responsibility. When politics is framed in such primordial metaphors, to disagree is not merely to differ—it is to belong to the wrong family.

Social media, far from correcting this, accelerates it. Algorithms reward outrage, punish nuance, and make ostracism instantaneous. A friendship that once required years to erode can now be severed with a click.

“Because it was he, because it was I.” — Montaigne

The loss is not abstract. For those who have been cut off, it is experienced as political grief: the shattering of a shared narrative, the sudden discovery that the bond was conditional all along. Aristotle called a true friend a “second self.” Montaigne, in describing his love for La Boétie, said simply: “Because it was he, because it was I.” To lose this over politics is to feel that dignity itself has been denied.

Here the warnings of other thinkers come into view. Tocqueville foresaw a “tyranny of the majority” in democratic societies, enforced not by law but by social ostracism. Camus, in The Rebel, warned that rebellion without solidarity becomes tyranny. Kant, in the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, gave the principle its most enduring form: “Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means.” To sever a friendship because someone holds the “wrong” opinion is precisely to treat them merely as a means—a vessel of ideological loyalty or disloyalty—rather than respecting their dignity as an end in themselves. The convergence of these voices suggests that the willingness to sacrifice friendship to ideology is not a trivial matter. It is a sign of civic fragility.

the willingness to sacrifice friendship to ideology is not a trivial matter. It is a sign of civic fragility.

To resist this drift requires humility. We must learn again that disagreement is not betrayal, that no one has a monopoly on truth, that politics cannot consume the whole person. We must reject the purity tests that leave us alone with our clones. Above all, we must reclaim friendship as a form of civic resistance.

To stay friends across difference is not cowardice. It is the hardest defense of freedom. Arendt saw that totalitarianism aims to make every bond conditional on ideology. To refuse that—to affirm the human before the partisan—is to defend the dignity of the person over the demand for conformity. ◳

To stay friends across difference is not cowardice. It is the hardest defense of freedom.