On a meta-level, our crisis of communicative action can be explained by the fact that the other is disappearing. The disappearance of the other means the end of discourse. It robs opinions of their communicative rationality. The expulsion of the other strengthens the auto-propagandistic compulsion to indoctrinate oneself with one’s own ideas. This self-indoctrination produces self-referential info bubbles, which impede communicative action. With the development of the auto-propagandistic compulsion, discursive spaces are increasingly replaced by echo chambers in which the only voice one hears is one’s own.

Discourse presupposes that I can distinguish between my opinion and my identity. People who do not have this discursive ability hold fast to their opinions because they feel that their identities are threatened. Any attempt to persuade them to adopt a different opinion is therefore doomed to fail. They do not follow the other; they do not listen. Discourse, however, is a practice of listening. The crisis of democracy is first and foremost a crisis of listening.

—Byung-Chul Han, Infocracy: Digitalization and the Crisis of Democracy (2021)