A New Civil War in America?

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Politics, Arts, News, Wnyc, Books, David, Storytelling, Society & Culture, Yorker, New, Remnick

4.2 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 7 January 2022

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When rioters, encouraged by the President, stormed the Capitol, one year ago, to overturn the results of the election, the idea that such a thing could play out in America was stunning. But the attack may have been just the beginning of an ongoing insurrection, not a failed attempt at a coup. David Remnick talks with Barbara F. Walter, the author of the new book “How Civil Wars Start: And How to Stop Them.” Walter is a political scientist and a professor at the University of California, San Diego, and a co-director of the online magazine Political Violence at a Glance. She has studied countries that slide into civil war for the C.I.A., and she says that the United States meets many of the criteria her group identified. In particular, anti-democratic trends such as increased voting restrictions point to a nation on the brink. “Full democracies rarely have civil wars. Full autocracies rarely have civil wars,” she says. “It’s the ones that are in between that are particularly at risk.”

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.
0:09.3	Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. When rioters stormed the Capitol a year ago,
0:15.5	many of them armed and all of them intent on overturning the results of a democratic election.
0:21.9	The idea that this could happen in America was stunning.
0:24.8	Some of the officials in charge ignored multiple warnings of violence, which left law
0:29.4	enforcement undermanned and barely able to ward off the charge.
0:34.5	By evening on January 6th, the riot had fizzled. Hundreds of people have now been charged with
0:40.6	mostly minor crimes, but that shocking attack may have been the beginning of a state of
0:45.8	insurrection, not merely a discrete event. The political scientist Barbara F. Walter says that the
0:52.3	possibility of continued civil unrest, even civil war, is very real,
0:57.7	and we cannot afford to downplay what's happening. Walter is a professor at the University of
1:02.7	California, San Diego, and she's a co-director of the online magazine, Political Violence at a
1:08.6	glance. Her new book is called How Civil Wars Start and How to Stop
1:13.4	Them. Now, there have been a lot of books about how democracies die, the twilight of democracy,
1:22.4	and I think that readers who want to get it, get it, and the audience that wants to get it, gets it.
1:30.5	Now you're telling us something even worse that there's a possibility of a civil roar in this country.
1:38.0	We're a year away from January 6th.
1:40.6	What does that mean?
1:44.1	It means that the U.S. has the risk factors that we know tend to lead to civil war.
1:50.6	Let me explain that.
1:51.9	So I've been studying civil wars for the last 30 years outside the United States in places like Iraq and Libya and Afghanistan,
2:00.7	Mozambique, Northern Ireland.
	...

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