CIVIL WAR

One week ago, we experienced the unprecedented FBI execution of a search warrant on former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence. Top-Secret documents, with the most sensitive of national security information (possibly including documents relating to nuclear arms), were reportedly retrieved. Following the search, MAGA Republicans called for the elimination of the FBI, while reactionary social media lit up with calls to assassinate Attorney General Merrick Garland, along with the federal judge who approved the search warrant and FBI agents who executed the search. This represents such an odd turn of events, but it is consistent with where we are as a country. When the FBI, through its COINTELPRO program, actively worked to suppress organizations ranging from equal rights for women to Black liberation groups, we heard no such protests from Republicans, Dixiecrats and other White majority nationalists. In fact, the response was silent as to atrocities and passionate as to the cause, even as the FBI used “neutralization” techniques ranging from planting criminal evidence (which some Republicans suggested the FBI did in searching Trump’s home and seizing documents) to murdering or facilitating the murder of leaders of liberation movements, such as Fred Hampton. But now that the FBI is being used to neutralize White Nationalist power, MAGA Republicans are calling to defund the FBI and many citizens aligned with Trump and his “MAGA” movement, are calling for Civil War.

There has been much talk of late about Civil War, with some projecting the possibility and others positing that we are already in the early stages of one. In Preventing the Next American Civil War, I make the case that civil war is not inevitable, but probable unless we take affirmative actions against those things driving us incommensurably apart.  This form of civil war would not be like the first one. Instead, I projected that there would be localized violence (our version of ethnic cleansing) that would cause substantial migrations similar to the European migrations that occurred during the Bosnian War.

Barbara F. Walters, in her book, How Civil Wars Start, uses her own research about the phases leading up to a Civil War to conclude that we are on a potential path to Civil War. Even so, she suggests that one may still be prevented. According to her extensive research, the first phase on that path is one where politics gets defined in terms of identity and grievance. No argument can be made that this phase is not pervasive within our current political climate. Random violence is cited as the next phase, often in the form of stochastic (“lone wolf”) violence. We have been experiencing this phase for years with mass shootings at schools, shopping malls, churches, concert events, and other places where people congregate. The final stage is open insurgency, which requires that people take sides. We seem constantly to be on the precipice of this final phase. And even if we conclude that the failure of the January 6^th insurrection represents a successful thwarting of an open insurgency, recent calls for assassinations and civil war following the Mar-a-Lago FBI search suggest that this final phase lingers with current potential, still inchoate but nonetheless a legitimate threat.

Stephen Marche, in his book, The Next Civil War, concludes that we are already in the throes of a new Civil War. Marche describes a kind of perfect storm coming together in force to accelerate violence and civil war.  Unlike Walters, he sees inequality as being one predictor of an existential crisis.  He combines this with climate change, dislocations caused by climate change, drought, crop failures and a breakdown of food chains, retail frameworks and institutions.  Eventually, he concludes that people will react, and with violence. His prescription? Secession. He projects that the Southern and mid-western states (excluding Texas, which would be its own state) could secede. I believe his suggestion that secession would avoid violence is naive.  We could have secession, but not before there would be explosions of localized violence. The New Republic of the United States” is how the author describes the new order that would result.

All of this is sobering, and I have come to see that my own projection of what a new Civil War would look like was overly simplistic.

I still believe that localized, random violence will continue as our version of American “ethnic/religious cleansing.” I now believe, given recent enactments by state legislatures, changes in state election laws, local successes in overtaking the machinations of local elections and the Supreme Court’s recent Dobbs decision, that we are already in the early phases of a Civil War. However, I believe that the new Civil War, if we are unable to prevent it from continuing, will be complex and multi-faceted. It will consist of numerous components. Those components include: random violence; organized violence; judicial and legislative resurrection of states’ rights over federal constitutional rights; gerrymandering and election rigging; corporate migration; climate change and continued economic concentration and “modernization.”

Before briefly touching on these elements, I would like to take a moment to reflect on a book that some, including the FBI, refer to as the bible of White Nationalism. The name of this White Nationalist manifesto is the Turner Diaries. The book was written in 1978 and has provided the inspiration for recent stochastic violence, including (I believe) that perpetrated by the Oklahoma City bomber. As a retrospective, the book recounts how the United States became engulfed in a race war by means of organized violence (genocide) against Blacks, Jews, racially ambivalent Whites, Whites in inter-racial marriages, and all other non-Whites. The purported need for the race war was premised on the survival of Whites, who were being replaced through violence by Blacks, Jews and others. Interestingly, the members of “The Order” get control of nuclear weapons. They use those weapons to target both New York City and Tel Aviv. There is reference in the book to cannibalism, but as opposed to the cannibalistic, pedophilic, child sex trafficking “deep state” Democrats portrayed by QAnon, in the Turner Diaries it is Blacks who are portrayed as the cannibals, feasting on captured Whites. It makes one wonder if QAnon is an updated version of the Turner Diaries.

But, back to the components of what I believe is the potential profile for a new American Civil War:

Random Violence: I agree with Marche’s analysis that much of the random, “lone wolf” violence is spurred on by inequality. I would add that this is caused and/or exacerbated by isolation, alienation, economic and political marginalization. All of this creates the perceived need for ready targets of grievance politics that amplifies the felt victimization of the vulnerable while providing specific targets for aggressive and deadly retribution.

Organized Violence: On this blog I have asked the question of whether the January 6^th insurrection was the American equivalent of the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch or the 1933 Reichstag fire. If the former, then January 6^th is but a prelude to a better planned and successful coup. If the latter, then perhaps our institutions, which were able to hold, will continue to do so.

Judicial Rulings: The over-turning of Roe V. Wade by our Supreme Court did not come as a huge surprise. One could say that it should have been expected. However, the repercussions, not only for women’s health, privacy, and bodily integrity rights, but for how this ruling plays into the elements of a new Civil War, are striking. And now that the Dobbs case bluntly and dispositively overturned precedent based upon the stated rationale that the ruling in Roe was simply “wrong,” the barn gate is thrown wide open for an outright attack on all of the judicial progress this country has made over the past 70 years. And all the Supreme Court has to do is recast federal jurisprudence away from federally protected rights of individuals and groups to States rights while furthering the application of corporate “personhood” rights under the Constitution. [For a further elaboration on some ways the court has been able to rule in the past for States’ rights, see the blog post entitled 2045.] Combined with other elements of the new Civil War, the Supreme Court rulings will further facilitate the migration of people from Red to Blue states, and vis-versa, but mostly from Red to Blue.

Legislation: State legislatures are leading the conservative charge to push for more rights unimpeded by federal law or mid-to late 20th Century interpretation of the Constitution. These changes will allow states to unilaterally undermine any pretense of democracy to the detriment of emergent minorities, soon to be majorities.

Gerrymandering/Election Rigging/Voter Suppression: Speaks for itself.

Corporate Migration: As I suggested in Preventing the Next American Civil War, if there is a new Civil War or if it continues along its current path, the result will likely be mass migrations – mostly from Red States to Blue States, but also from Red areas to Blue areas within states. Corporations will also migrate. A few will do so as a matter of social policy that they claim can be inferred from their corporate philosophy. But most will migrate to Blue States because that is where the money will be. I believe that if this new Civil War is successful without necessitating secession, the result will be impoverished Red States (for the most part) and more prosperous Blue States.

Natural and Economic Changes and Dislocations: Our economy continues to develop with a bias against the working class and in favor of capital. Globalization continues and, combined with advances in Artificial Intelligence, will continue to marginalize workers at all levels below the top 10% or so. Katrina is a good example of how climate change will contribute to migration and change demographics. New Orleans has certainly recovered from that catastrophic event, but with a Black population that is not only diminished in numbers (somewhere in excess of 75,000 Black residents never returned to their homes in New Orleans) and percentage of the population overall, but that is also poorer and substantially diminished within the ranks of the middle class. And this only covers New Orleans. Katrina had a substantial impact on Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, displacing up to 2 million people overall. Climate change, drought, continuing attempts to privatize water sources, and more will also contribute to interstate migration during a period otherwise defined by social and political upheaval.

In closing, we are at the threshold of two possibilities. One possibility represents the true, inclusive and comprehensive realization of our nation’s stated founding principles in the form of a multi-racial, multiethnic, multi-cultural democracy. The other possibility is increasing divisiveness, recurring random and planned violence, fascism and/or Civil War. The path we take depends on us.