The Risk of a New American Civil War

The Political Scene | The New Yorker

The New Yorker

President, Barack, News, Politics, Wnyc, Obama, Lizza, Washington, Wickenden

4.3 • 3.9K Ratings

🗓️ 31 August 2022

⏱️ 29 minutes

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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.

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Transcript

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0:39.0	Your favorite designers, expertly authenticated.
0:42.5	Yeah, eBay. Things people love.
0:48.7	This is the Politics and More podcast. I'm David Remnick.
0:56.9	From the moment Donald Trump was elected, threats of violence from the extreme right,
1:01.8	from white nationalists, anti-Semites, all kinds of groups, ramped up considerably.
1:07.2	Law enforcement experts cited Trump's inflammatory rhetoric, even his celebration of tough guy violence at his rallies, as inspirations.
1:16.5	Trump, of course, was defeated in 2020, but he is still very much with us.
1:21.7	January 6 was an attempt at an open insurrection, and the threats have hardly faded with his retreat to Florida. And when
1:29.1	FBI agents raided Mar-a-Lago recently to secure highly sensitive documents, the threats came again,
1:35.5	fast and furious. Some on the far right compare the FBI to the Gestapo, and they're invoking
1:41.1	the term civil war. An armed assailant attacked an FBI office in support of Trump,
1:46.8	and he was killed trying to escape. At the same time, much of the leadership of the Republican Party is
1:52.0	afraid to denounce Trump with a fever that he's inspired. More and more Americans now are beginning to
1:57.8	acknowledge that democracy itself is in peril. So today I'd like to revisit a
2:02.6	conversation I had earlier this year with Barbara F. Walter. It seems even more relevant today than it
	...

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