ARGUMENT: CIVIL WARSWarnings of “Civil War” Risk Harming Efforts Against Political Violence

A year on from the Jan. 6 riots, experts warn of catastrophic political violence, while political commentators invoke the specter of the 1860s.

Anjali Dayal, Alexandra Stark, and Megan A.Stewart write in War on the Rocks that the emerging cottage industry of speculation and alarm specifically about a civil war in the United States worries them.

The shape and content of this debate … risks mis-framing an urgent problem for non-specialist audiences. Rather than asking whether the United States will have a new civil war, commentators ought to be asking: What kinds of risks for political violence does the United States face? What forms might that political violence take? Who might perpetrate this violence, and which communities will be most affected by it? Retraining our focus on political violence allows us to consider the real risks ahead for the country, to work alongside the many groups already actively trying to push back illiberal violence, and to protect its most likely victims.

The authors say that scholars of civil war typically understand the concept as one specific manifestation of violence among many. “Focusing on the rates, forms, and targets of political violence provides important nuance. Indeed, just shifting the terms of our conversation toward political violence — which includes, but is not limited to, civil war — allows us to consider our present political crisis as more clearly continuous with other strands of American history.”

They add that according to research from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, “the number of domestic terrorist attacks and plots increased to its highest level since at least 1994” and “White supremacists, extremist militia members, and other violent far-right extremists were responsible for 66 percent of domestic terrorist attacks and plots in 2020.” This is supported by both researchers and U.S. government officials.

Together, these data suggest that political violence is creeping upward and also tell us who the most likely victims of future violence are likely to be.

These forms of violence could become even more pervasive and could stay that way for decades without ever rising to anything either scholars or lay people would call civil war. They are worth naming and attempting to address in their own right, not as waystations to an all-out conflagration 

….

But, if the political violence of today has echoes through American history, then so, too, do transitions out of crisis moments. Treating these forms of political violence as dynamic leaves open the possibility that the actions Americans take now could reverse the course on which the United States finds itself

They conclude:

analysts, journalists, and scholars should be clear-eyed about the forces that threaten the country. When they do so, however, they should avoid doing so by asking whether the United States is on the brink of a civil war and should instead ask who is in danger of what from whom.