United States faces looming threat of civil war

With the November midterm elections in the United States just a week away, there are growing fears the country could slip into a civil war. These are views being expressed by officials and people inside the US, which is witnessing division and polarization not seen since the 1960s.

There is certainly no lack of ammunition on the streets of the United States for a civil war to break out. The United States, which has constantly interfered in the internal affairs of other sovereign countries, with the aim of splitting those nations, causing sedition, riots or creating other forms of confrontation, now faces the bitter reality of its own possible civil war.

Experts say the ideology and hatred that has been spread by members of Congress and also spearheaded by ex-President Donald Trump has always been in the minds and souls of many Americans. All that Trump did, during rhetorical speeches, was to promote extremist ideology, particularly among his hardcore supporters.

The ‘Dis-United States of America’ as some US media outlets and scholars refer to, is plunging America into unknown territory. The insurrection on Capitol Hill on January 06, 2021 when Trump supporters were told by the ex-president to fight like hell to overturn his defeat by Joe Biden attempted to stop the certification of electoral results led to nine deaths, including suicides among police officers.

Since then, fears of civil war have grown. The hardcore Trump supporters are furious that their president not only lost the presidential election but also saw the FBI raid his home in Florida in search of secret documents.

Death threats have been made against FBI agents, while reports of violence among supporters of the Republican and Democratic parties have been emerging. This is while the term ‘civil war’ has gone viral on social media platforms amid the intense social and political disagreements in the country. The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security are said to be taking the threats very seriously.

The internal discussions in the US over a new civil war are on the rise and mostly revolve over concerns and anxieties among Americans about the number of crises the country is facing. Topping the agenda is the deep division between Republicans and Democrats as well as among supporters of the two camps, especially with an election looming.

Apart from the widening political polarization, there is social division and economic hardships that could make some Americans even more radical.

Developments in the US and Europe, over the past decade or two, strongly indicate that during times of economic hardship, which Americans are facing as a result of the Ukraine war, make people with radical extremist ideologies take their anger out at those who oppose their political views or minority groups.

Americans are currently facing many challenges, including mass shootings, inflation, racial and gender inequality, rising crime rates, drug abuse, climate change and immigration among other issues.   

In late August this year, a survey revealed that more than two-fifths of Americans believe civil war is at least somewhat likely in the next 10 years. The figure increased to more than half among those who self-identified themselves as strong Republicans. In the poll by YouGov and the Economist, 65% of all respondents said political violence had increased since the start of 2021.

Barbara F. Walter, a professor at the University of California and author of the book “How Civil Wars Start: And How to Stop Them”, has conducted research for the CIA on how countries slide into civil war and says that the United States meets many of the criteria her group identified. She has also warned that the US is coming dangerously close to those conditions that give rise to a civil war.

According to a recent Time article, "41% of Biden voters and 52% of Trump voters polled favor red or blue states seceding from the Union to form their own separate country, with 30% of Republicans and 11% of Democrats ready to resort to violence to save the country."

To put that into perspective, there are some 20 million Americans in the Country who are prepared to take up arms and exchange bullets on the streets of America in order to divide the country into two.

In October, the New York Times quoted a data entry specialist as expressing concern that something will happen around the November elections that will be akin to January 06, 2022 but much more violent, where armed protest groups from both sides of the political spectrum come to blows.

There is no shortage of guns in the US for that scenario to take place. The country has more than 400 million firearms in the hands of its citizens. There are more guns on the streets of the United States than there are people.

In an interview last month, historian Jon Meacham, who has aided US President Joe Biden in a speechwriter capacity, said the US is at a greater risk of civil conflict than during the Great Depression.

There are also strong disagreements on political issues such as gun control among the supporters of the two parties that dominate the US political system. Experts say there is a lack of initiatives to bring these differences closer together to calm down supporters of the two parties, which could potentially plunge the country into violence.

"At the moment there seems to be no program for resolving the differences. Both parties seem to be largely controlled by their more radical elements, making bridge-building very difficult, if not impossible," William Jones, the Washington bureau chief for the Executive Intelligence Review, told the Global Times.

While many believe the Republicans are the party of white supremacy, some maintain that Democrats are actually the party of white supremacy, as they were in the 19th and part of the 20th century, and that Democrats hate and want to destroy their own country. Tudor Dixon, the Republican nominee who ran for governor of Michigan in the summer of 2020 made these remarks to US news outlet CNN:

“The country today is divided, and this was the plan. It’s been in the works for years. The idea that you can topple the greatest country in the world, but to topple a country like the United States of America, you must be planning this for decades,” said Dixon. “Why wouldn’t that come from the party that lost the Civil War? The party that wanted to own people because they viewed them as less than human? Do you think that the Democrats are losing to the north?”

Americans are in possession of 393.3 million weapons, according to a 2018 report by the Small Arms Survey, a Geneva-based organization. This is more than the country’s population now of about 330 million. The number of guns has most certainly grown after Americans went on a record gun buying spree beginning in 2020 amid the Covid pandemic. The National Instant Criminal Background Check System, which the FBI collects and is widely used as a proxy for firearms purchases, jumped 40% in 2020 from the previous year to 39.7 million. That number was slightly down to 38.9 million checks in 2021.