Possible civil war? They're all armed to the teeth

One of them is Bruce Hoffman, a senior fellow for counterterrorism and national security at the Council on Foreign Relations and a professor at Georgetown University, and the other is Jacob Ware, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and also a professor at Georgetown and DeSales University.

They state that three months into 2024, predictions of political violence are now coming from politically extreme actors as well as from the mainstream, stating that former President Donald Trump is proving to be the loudest prognosticator of violence so far and warning that there will be "chaos" in the country if the indictments against him cause him to lose the 2024 election.

It is emphasized that even seemingly ordinary political actions can result in announcements of violence, and in the assessment of threats for 2024, the Ministry of National Security predicts that, among other threats, the election cycle this year will be "a key trigger for possible violence".

In her book "How Civil Wars Start and How to Stop Them," political scientist Barbara F. Walter argues that the U.S. is "closer to civil war than anyone would like to believe" due to a toxic mix of political extremism, social and cultural divisions, and the growing acceptance of conspiracy theories, the availability of weapons and well-armed militias, and the erosion of faith in the government and the liberal, western democratic state.

Among the key factors she cites is the so-called accelerationism, a phenomenon that Walter describes as "the apocalyptic belief that modern society is irreparable and that its end must be accelerated in order to establish a new order".

It is embraced across the entire far-right spectrum - from white supremacists and nationalists, racists, anti-Semites to xenophobic and anti-government militants, who see it as a call to revolution, she explains, adding that proponents believe the modern Western, liberal state is so corrupt and incompetent that it is irreparable and must be destroyed. Supporters of accelerationism claim that society needs violent rebellion in order to push democracy over the edge and into oblivion. Only by hastening its destruction can a white-dominated society emerge, according to Walter.

Encouraging division and polarization through violent attacks on racial minorities, Jews, liberals, foreign "intruders" and powerful elites, thus creating a cataclysmic collapse of the existing order and provoking a new civil war, is the main characteristic of accelerationism. That violent ideology, it is said, is not new at all, but in the 2010s it gained new strength thanks to social networks and was strengthened by extremist rhetoric and polarized politics that continued to divide America, CNN's Index reported.

America is now, as she points out, "in a state of unstable equilibrium," increasing the risk that violent action could plunge the US into the chaos and disorder that the Accelerators so desperately desire.

The assessment of Canadian journalist Stephen Marche, who in his book "The Next Civil War: Reports from America's Future", published two years ago, claims that a new American civil war is inevitable is particularly worrying.

"The United States is coming to an end. The question is how it will happen," he writes. In his opinion, "The United States is sinking into the kind of sectarian conflict that we usually see in poor countries with a history of violence, not in the world's most durable democracy and largest economy."

A 2021 survey by the University of Maryland Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement and The Washington Post, found that nearly a quarter of Democrats and 40% of Republicans believe the use of violence against the government is "somewhat justified."

Although the likelihood of a true civil war is relatively low—in large part because America's political divisions no longer fall into clear geographic categories like North vs. South—there is a danger of a variety of forms of violence. It should be remembered that the United States is arguably the first in the world in the number of firearms in the hands of private individuals.

Although the United States makes up only 4% of the world's population, it owns roughly 40% of the world's firearms. There are an estimated 393 million privately owned firearms in the United States - more than one gun per capita. There are more guns in civilian possession in the US than in the other 25 largest countries in the world combined.

Moreover, among the most ardent defenders of gun rights are those who say they want another civil war. In his 2023 book on the erosion of democratic norms in America, then-President of the Council on Foreign Relations Richard Haas raised the possibility that the US could face a version of the protracted crisis experienced by Northern Ireland.

"If there is a model for what we should fear," warns Hass, "it comes from Northern Ireland and the three decades of fighting that began in the late 1960s, involving multiple paramilitary groups, police and soldiers, and resulted in some 3,600 dead and a sharp decline in the economy".

America's leading white racists, long among the most prominent advocates of civil war and rebellion, cited the example of Northern Ireland and its leading terrorist organization, the Irish Republican Army (IRA), as worthy of emulation.

Despite the results of the 2020 presidential election, the arrest of more than 1,000 rioters involved in the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, the guilty pleas or convictions of at least half of those cases, the threat of far-right terrorism in America remains.

Given the long journey culminating in the events of January 6, the continued spread and ubiquity of conspiracy theories, and the growing racism, anti-Semitism, and xenophobia that have entered mainstream political and social discourse in the United States, along with readily available weapons, the potential for new politically motivated violence, including mass shootings, attacks on critical infrastructure, bombings and other attacks, cannot be dismissed or ignored.