The likelihood of civil war in the USA, deliberately promoted by Trump as a way to impose his violent regime on that country in what he might imagine to be perpetuity without the interference of democratic choice, is something Robert Reich has been discussing on his Substack.
He has said this:
Some people whose opinions I trust say Trump may try to instigate a civil war between his followers and those who oppose him as a means of deflecting attention from a worsening economy, his declining polls, and the Jeffrey Epstein scandal — and as a way to justify his efforts to shut down the midterm elections.
What do you think?
He then posted a poll, the current results of which are:
And yes, I know it is not statistically valid, but forget such niceties right now: we are in crisis, and real people are frightened enough to think Trump might be promoting civil war. His language is certainly violent enough, and candidly, I would expect the political "disappearances" to begin in the USA very soon. This is where the deliberately manufactured stress in that country appears to be taking that country.
And if that happens, how long is it before the "civil disorder" that Farage obviously craves and even promotes occurs here in the UK? Give it weeks, at most. And yes, the "disappearances" will happen here as well. I do not doubt that.
I never thought I would write anything like this. I now see it as a distinct possibility.
And, it would seem that nothing is being done to counter this threat in the UK.
For the next couple of days, Trump will be lauded, trade deals will be signed, and at most, Starmer will talk about defending the flag, whilst not addressing at all the fundamental issues and threats that flow from within our society.
When are our leaders going to name the threat we face and actually do something about it?
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
There are links to this blog's glossary in the above post that explain technical terms used in it. Follow them for more explanations.
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
Buy me a coffee!
Might a no less pressing and valid question be:
“Will and/or when will our main stream media, not least the B, B. C., name the threat of practiced Fascism in our country and, in at least some cases, oppose it?”
I am perhaps more optimistic about the UK. We are a bloody-minded lot in a small country, reminiscent of friends who argue and fight, but if an outsider interferes, unite and fight them. While there is potential for a draconian order to arise, there is at least an equal potential for a counter force or more. The ONLY real weight towards strife in the UK is the media, social or MSM, massively funded by external actors. The USA is a violent and divided country; I expected the western states to secede and take their economic clout with them, and that be a stimulus for war; however it looks that it might not need that.
I never forget the English civil wars.
They were bloody and very real and theocratic in part.
Then (1640s) and now the main dispute was/is over who sets the rules. There was a modest theocratic element in the 1640s (reflected in the Scots/Prebyters vs the English – & parking to one side the horrors in Ireland). & the dispute: who sets the rules? citizens or other orgs remains. Events today seem to indicate that forces are trying to move the state back to something like that described by Charles I on the scaffold – various orgs making decisions – but with zero input from citizens. Massive centralisation, kicked off by Thatcher – has made this much much easier & in that respect it resembles the England of the 1640s – with centralised power.
If I may: we need to ask the question: “what are we looking at?”.
As for civil war in the USA, there seems to be a few other forces @ play: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uf7zr5Thz64
I am not a great fan of Mr Hedges – but this is well worth a watch – there seem to be a significant number of nuances.
It feels more likely in the US than here, but civil unrest is a different thing and I can see much more of that coming whilst we have a government out of step with it’s people and rising inequality and suffering.
If successive Government had a firm grip on immigration then we could continue to have centre left/right consensus politics. The fact we haven’t has led to rise in Reform and a mistrust of the traditional political parties. Going forward it looks like this will continue with maybe the far left galvanising around the Greens, Corbyns new party (though I think this will be a damp squib) or a momentum led Labour Party. I actually see the far left being less accepting of a Reform led Government than the other way round and as anti capitalist marches have shown over the years this could manifest itself in violent disorder. The term “civil war” throughs up visions of the Spanish or American Civil War, that will not happen here. But violence against the State and physical attacks on politicians, maybe fatal attacks are definitely possible by fanatical extremists, as I say they are more likely from the left than from the flag wavers who were out in force at the weekend. You would hope the security services see these threats well in advance and deal with them without the public ever knowing.
There is no far left of any consequence in the UK. Stop talking as if there is. There are just moderate people who want fairness and justice.
I am always amused by those who go on about the ‘far left’. As a Bennite, and one who has been accused of being far left by people with no knowledge of political history, one would need private detectives to find the far left in the UK. Even the ideologues of Militant, SWP etc, all 6 blokes and a dog, are still solidly ‘British’ and decent people. ‘Far left’ is a fever construct of the political right.
Agreed
Physical violence and political murder have not recently been the behaviour of the left but of the right
US research proves the fact
Jenny, your use of DARVO clearly shows you to be a member of the hard right at the very least, and almost certainly of the far right. Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender.
Blame immigration for the rise of Reform, rather than Reform, a party led by an unreconstructed early 70’s racist, blaming the problems caused by austerity on hapless refugees and immigrants coming to the UK because they can find jobs here. Deny.
Make the ludicrous claim that the ‘far left’ are the really violent political actors, rather than the coked up pissheads who turned up to the far right march of your lovely ‘flag wavers’. Maybe explain why the police had to separate the counter protestors from attack by the flag wavers, and the severe injuries suffered by over twenty policemen in the process. Attack.
Make the ludicrous claim that the ‘far left’ would be far less prepared to accept a Reform government than the reverse. Look at the vicious hatred directed against this centrist labour government by the far right. Musk telling the marchers parliament should be dissolved because they’re attacking the right, and they must prepare for war?
Imagine their response if we ever got a real left wing government centred on the greens for instance. So RVO.
“… rather than the coked up pissheads who turned up to the far right march of your lovely ‘flag wavers’..”
Extremely harsh! Were you there?
Were you?
No, I wasn’t there.
So you don’t know either.
Surely the message about immigration should be that we actually need new blood especially from Africa with its demographically very young population to sustain our increasingly elderly population.
Agreed
You would think that our much vaunted “intelligence services” which seem to be able to find inadmissible dirt on anti genocide organisations and brand them terrorists, would be able to act on public domain knowledge about russian influence of our far right agitators. They seem to have a peculiar blind spot
Many of our intelligence, Foreign Office and military do know. The politicians don’t listen and the mass media support them.
Robert Reich was, I think, the Labor Secretary under the Clinton Presidency?
So, essentially someone whose neo liberal policies with Bill Clinton fast tracked the process of imperial decline we see in America now.
The Democrats started this process under Carter which was then fast tracked under Reagan then Bush.
Clinton, along with Blair in the UK completed the destructive neo liberal take over of our governments.
Reich is a bankrupt, corrupt and provably wrong ideologue.
Quoting his pro Democratic Party views as valid says a lot about your views too.
Part of an old, out of date paradigm.
I know all the issues. Do you really think I don’t think about this stuff?
I also read the man who is writing now the Reich of the moment. Only a neioliberal thinks people don’t change. That says a lot about you.
And if you are stupid enough to extrapolate that I am a neoliberal by quoting him, that also says a lot more about you, but nothing about me.
@Alan Sutton: The name of Reich’s autobiography is “Coming up Short” which, in his own words, as well as being a reference to his stature is an admission of failure, a “mea culpa” as he puts it. He acknowledges his mistakes and has significantly changed his views.
Precisely
Sorry Alan.
That is complete codswallop.
Reich felt that he could work with Clinton and went for it when Clinton asked him to do the job as secretary of labour (he was a Rhodes scholar I think at Oxford and met the young Clinton there).
Reich left because in my view, he found that Clinton was not to be what he made out to be OK? Clinton was really under the starry eyed influence of Neo-lib placemen like ex Goldman Sachs CEO Robert Rubin and a certain other gentleman know as Larry Summers. Looking at Clinton’s ‘cabinet’ there are an awful lot of Neo-libs in there.
It is Clinton who messed it all up – not Robert Reich. Reich would and has, blamed himself for his failure to make headway but I do not think he stood a chance because the Clinton cabinet was all about making out that there was no money for the presidents ideas and programmes and how releasing and deregulating the markets would generate revenues instead. And that led us all the way into 2008.
The latest version of this Neo-lib tactic is Britain’s Starmer premiership. It’s the same ruse.
Robert Reich resigned. He was not sacked. He was outnumbered. Clinton was just another rich boy, badly educated do-gooder circulating in circles because of money and not ability who was out of his depth and manipulated by people much cleverer and driven than him. Clinton had not the wits to be president of the united states.
Much to agree with
I have a bet with my partner that the US will be in a Civil War by the middle of 2027 at the latest, and probably by the end of 2026.
The shooting may start accidentally. All you need is a democrat governor calling in their state national guard when the republican national guard is imposed upon them. Or, when state national guard are tasked with stopping voter intimidation by ICE. Or….
I think it was an email from Statista at the end of last year which showed a sudden spike in the purchase of firearms. This time round is registered democrats who were buying.
I had a bet going with a former colleague during the last Trump administration that America would see civil war by the end of this decade. I have called in my bet. My argument is that America is already at war. The country is divided along ideological lines, with little to no room for compromise. There are regular school shootings, regular deaths, and now there are paramilitary police on the streets arresting people without due process. What if this is what a modern, developed economy looks like during a civil war? My friend isn’t buying it. He won’t pay up until he sees an airstrike.
Yes, if I was in the US I think I’d be looking to get, at the very least, a powerful handgun and the training gto use it. Not because I like the damn things, but as a tool to defdend myself against tyranny and extremism.
And if I was anyway involved in political activism I’d certainly arm myself to defend mhyself.
“It couldn’t happen here.”
It has, in the past, happened here and it was horrible.
It has, in the past, happened elsewhere and it was horrible.
It is beginning, again, in the USA and it is horrible.
Religion was then, and will be now, weaponised in the struggle.
It can happen here, and now, and the ground is being prepared, now, to make it happen again, forces of division, hatred, and fear, working deliberately, on ordinary decent people, to make them fearful, to foster division and hate.
The earlier we speak out, the better. It isn’t inevitable, if it doesn’t happen, it will be because enough of us say “NO!”.
The reason civil war can, and maybe will happen, is because individuals and groups are deliberately planning for it to happen, and the rest of us, are either complacent or complicit.
Some know exactly what they are doing, some are unwittingly being duped. One way we can counter it, is whenever we see see or hear “divisive” prejudice, to try and bridge the gap, to draw people together right where we are.
We also have to be prepared to counter hate or prejudice or plain wrongheadedness in our own community or political group/class – so for me, as a follower of Jesus, living in a deprived neighbourhood, that means challenging my fellow Christians, and my neighbours, right on my own doorstep, in a way that heals divisions rather than exacerbating them. That has already proved painful and costly.
As for Fa***e, he must be exposed, as a corrupt and very dangerous lying hypocrite, and challenged at every opportunity.
Byline Times does good journalism on Fa***e and Reform, but if only they could learn to speak “tabloid”! It is so wordy, it’s beginning to look like a 19th century copy of The Times, and it isn’t much use on the omnibus.
Writing Mirrorese is hard – and I can do it, having written for the paper (but not of late after cuts meant all my contacts lost their jobs).
What we dont have is the massive number of guns in private hands and the toxic race politics of the US.
We do however have the prospect of Scottish and Welsh Independence and a United Ireland.
Also as the US version of populism takes root here I hope the Europeans will watch and learn as they seem to be doing.
I can certainly see riots, strikes?, ‘discontent’ possibly some slightly unreliable police responses – Palestine Action Demo you say sir, sorry we have cars parked on the pavement that we need to sort
With teh UK ending in not so much a bang as a whimper.
Fascism comes hand-in-hand with war-like rhetoric. As a fascist leader, you must be in an ongoing war for the “benefit of the nation”… you know, to “make it great again” and “give back control”.
However, bullies have a golden rule: only fight the weak who don’t fight back or those who don’t care to fight back. If you need an example, look at Orban’s regime in Hungary and his “war against the EU and Soros”
Now. T. is not really wise… so anything can happen. Strangely enough, he might help to collapse the whole system. While this might result tremendous and otherwise unnecessary suffering for ordinary people, it may also accelerate the emergence of a new system that replaces the current economical and political order.
We need to have a population in UK, that maintains an awareness of what is happening both here and elsewhere [irrespective of country] and has the willingness to choose their future. I suspect that there is, at the moment, an ostrich-like attitude. How can that be changed? Events may, sometime soon, force a quick choice – these are often later regretted. When I think about our media, I feel a sense of despair as their coverage leaves far too much unsaid.
Trump might instigate what he calls a Civil War, but (as usual) his rhetoric is deliberately misleading. He’s pandering to the right’s sense of victimization and “being under attack.” As pointed out in the comments (and by both the Department of Homeland Security and the National Institute of Justice’s report on domestic terrorism), there is no evidence of a large, organized left-movement to destroy or divide America. This is made-up nonsense.
The closest I ever came to seeing the much vaunted “Antifa” was attending a counter-protest against white nationalists occupying a park named after a civil rights leader. There was a large group of young men and women, all dressed in black from head to toe. Can you guess what most of them were doing? They were defending the regular protesters from police; they were a wall between the armored and armed men and the grandmas, aunts, sisters, and middle-agers. It was a scary situation. But the scary people were not the younglings who had legal observers and on-field medics. The scary people were the ones with drones flying overhead, and the armored vehicles around the corner.
There were instances of violence that day, but these were isolated, and not condoned by the counter-protest leaders. (And to me, it seemed like the white nationalists came to start a fight. They wanted their five minutes of fame on TikTok, Twitter, or YouTube.) Yet the media’s coverage was all about the violence, with no mention of the context: a large peaceful march by concerned citizens.
So I say again: there will not be a civil war. There will be peaceful, law-abiding citizens being rounded up on the pretext of a civil war. If you see footage which suggests otherwise, I would strongly recommend you question the source.
One can imagine a civil war in the US because it has an armed civilian population.
It’s harder to see how that would work in the UK.
In the US, gun ownership is high in rural, red counties. It’s significantly lower in the suburbs, and even lower in urban areas (blue, democratic cities). The figures are nowhere close to parity.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/07/24/key-facts-about-americans-and-guns/
Also, I think many from the UK have a distorted idea of how powerful gun ownership makes the ordinary American. Compared to the militarized police force (some trained in Israel) and the actual military, it’s nowhere near a fair fight. As far as I can tell, most ordinary citizens still don’t know how to handle or maintain their firearms… They’re more likely to cause a firearm-related tragedy (suicide or accident) than successfully defend themselves from an assailant.
I don’t see any civil wars happening in USA or UK international near future. It’s a question of numbers and levels of dissatisfaction, I believe.
The majority of citizens are doing ok, and are reasonably content with their lives. They don’t get too involved in politics. They are hardly likely to put their security and families in jeopardy by fighting against their own countrymen, as much as they might disagree with them.
The minority who are struggling have hope of seeing their lives get better, even if they don’t know yet how or when this might happen.
Talking to people away from the political circus abd 24 hour news cycle, nobody mentions civil wars or starts a conversation by referring to Trump or Farage. It’s the weather, sport, the telly, the garden, local issues. They are not ready to arm themselves and go to war, except perhaps with Putin. He better not come looking for trouble!