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

🗓️ 30 August 2022

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Since the F.B.I. raid on former President Donald Trump’s home, Mar-A-Lago, the phrases “civil war” and “lock and load” have trended on right-wing social media. The F.B.I. and the Department of Homeland Security are taking the threats seriously, and issued an internal warning that detailed specific calls for assassinating the judge and the agents involved in authorizing and carrying out the search. Where could this all be headed? 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.” This segment was originally aired January 7, 2022. The segment also features an excerpt from “The Muddle,” a short story by Sana Krasikov. The full story is available on newyorker.com.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.
0:09.9	This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. From the moment Donald Trump was elected,
0:16.3	threats of violence from the extreme right from white nationalists, anti-Semites, all kinds of groups,
0:21.9	ramped up considerably. Law enforcement experts cited Trump's inflammatory rhetoric, even his
0:27.9	celebration of tough guy violence at his rallies as inspirations. Trump, of course, was defeated in
0:34.4	2020, but he is still very much with us. January 6 was an attempt at an
0:40.2	open insurrection, and the threats have hardly faded with his retreat to Florida. And when FBI agents
0:46.3	raided Mar-a-Lago recently to secure highly sensitive documents, the threats came again, fast and furious.
0:53.5	Some on the far right compare the FBI to the Gestapo,
0:56.6	and they're invoking the term civil war. An armed assailant attacked an FBI office in support of Trump,
1:03.4	and he was killed trying to escape. At the same time, much of the leadership of the Republican Party
1:08.3	is afraid to denounce Trump with a fever that he's inspired. More and more Americans now are beginning to acknowledge that democracy itself is in peril.
1:17.5	So today I'd like to revisit a conversation I had earlier this year with Barbara F. Walter.
1:23.3	It seems even more relevant today than it was then, which is really saying something. Walter is a
1:29.1	political scientist whose recent book is called How Civil Wars Start and How to Stop Them. She studied
1:35.3	political violence for the CIA, and she says that the possibility of real civil unrest,
1:41.3	even civil war, is on some level very real.
1:45.5	Now, there have been a lot of books about how democracies die, the twilight of democracy,
1:53.3	and I think that readers who want to get it, get it, and the audience that wants to get it,
2:01.9	gets it. Now you're telling us something even worse that there's a possibility of a civil war in this country.
2:09.2	What does that mean? It means that the U.S. has the risk factors that we know tend to lead to civil war. Let me explain
2:20.0	that. So I've been studying civil wars for the last 30 years outside the United States in places
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from WNYC Studios and The New Yorker, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.