Let's speak the truth about the threat of "civil war"

Liberals are warning against it. Conservatives are psyched about it.

“I just hope he gets back to help the country because right now, the way it’s coming, there’s gonna probably be a civil war,” an attendee at a Trump rally tells a reporter, echoing a commonly heard sentiment among the former president’s most ardent supporters. You’ve probably heard this from the mouths of Trump cultists many times before, whether on the news or comedy shows. Far-right internet influencers are not only proclaiming that the civil war is all but upon us, some are openly encouraging their audiences to take up arms.

At the moment, the civil war talk is centering on a dispute between the governor of Texas and the federal government; we’ll get to that in a moment. But few bother to clarify that when a conservative says a civil war is on its way, what they mean is not that order will break down and two factions will face off against each other in a battle for control of the government. What they mean is this: If our side doesn’t get what we want, we will start killing people.

That is what “civil war” actually means: heavily armed right-wing Americans committing acts of murder and terrorism across the country. And right now, Republican elites are doing everything they can to bring that nightmare about.

Unfortunately, this topic continues to be presented in the standard both-sides framing to which journalists instinctively default. But at its heart, this isn’t about polarization, or the Blue-Red divide, or identity politics, even if it is related to all those things. “Civil war” is a threat being issued to America from within, at both high and low levels. Nice country you’ve got there, it says. Be a shame if something happened to it. 

Messin’ with Texas

Let’s begin in Texas, where Gov. Greg Abbott ordered the installation of razor wire across some sections of the Rio Grande; the federal government, judging that it presented a danger to its own agents as well as people crossing the river, sought to remove it. Abbott sued and eventually lost in the Supreme Court, which reiterated its previous rulings that the federal government has authority over the border; states are not allowed to make their own border policies. 

Then something truly appalling occurred. Abbott issued a statement that sounded as though it was drawn directly from secession documents published by Confederate states at the start of the Civil War. He announced that “The federal government has broken the compact between the United States and the States,” and therefore the state of Texas can do what it wants, no matter what the executive branch or the Supreme Court might say. His legal argument rests on the idea that the Constitution allows states to “engage in war” if “actually invaded,” and he has decided that high levels of migrants seeking asylum constitute an “invasion.” Legally speaking, this is about as sound as a “sovereign citizen” insisting that he can print his own currency, or a “constitutional sheriff” deciding that he outranks the president of the United States. It’s essentially an updated version of “massive resistance,” in which white supremacist Southern leaders refused to abide by Supreme Court decisions on desegregation.  

Seeing what Abbott was up to, pretty much the entire Republican Party said “Hell yeah!” Twenty five of the 26 Republican governors (the exception was Vermont moderate Phil Scott) signed a letter supporting Abbott and his defiance of the federal government. One might have expected at least a few of them to say, “I may not be happy about illegal immigration, but we can’t have a system where governors tell the Supreme Court to go to hell when they don’t like the court’s decisions.” But no. And they weren’t alone; other Republican officials are lining up behind Abbott and encouraging defiance of the court. Rep. Chip Roy of Texas said “This opinion is unconscionable and Texas should ignore it.” 

Meanwhile, Abbott is being cheered on in conservative media, where hosts muse about the possibility of an uprising against the federal government with a palpable excitement and far-right influencers celebrate the coming civil war. Inexplicably popular right-winger Charlie Kirk said “I’m all on board” with a civil war, advising Abbott to have a press conference with Texas Rangers at his side to announce “I am ignoring the Supreme Court's decision.” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green said the Texas conflict is “truly, possibly the start of a civil war in this country,” while Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade was more cautious, saying “It feels like almost like a soft civil war.” 

The fantasy of righteous violence

However this conflict between Texas and the federal government ends, virtually the entire Republican Party and conservative media apparatus are sending a clear and repeated message to conservatives everywhere: The authority of the federal government is inherently illegitimate, and if you don’t like the decisions made by that government, you are justified in resisting it, including by violence if necessary. That’s what convinces people that a crisis of a kind they’ve never witnessed is upon us, that they need to buy more guns, and that if your candidate doesn’t win the next election, maybe you should storm the Capitol. 

Even if both sides have essentially the same conception of what a civil war would consist of, Republicans have been more likely than Democrats to believe that it is imminent. In one academic survey conducted in 2022, 30 percent of MAGA Republicans (defined as those who voted for Trump in 2020 and strongly denied the results of that election) strongly or very strongly agreed that “In the next few years, there will be civil war in the United States” (they were also far more likely than other Republicans or non-Republicans to agree that violence might be necessary to save the country or “our way of life”). In another poll that year, 55 percent of strong Republicans predicted a civil war in the next 10 years, compared to 40 percent of strong Democrats.

What will set it off? When Republicans say they think it’s coming, what they mean is that liberals may become so insufferable that conservatives will have no choice but to use violence to restore the proper order. They barely pretend that liberals are going to initiate the violence. After all, conservatives are the ones with all the guns. 

This discussion also has to be understood in the context of regular right-wing fantasizing about righteous violence that they will one day inflict on liberals, minority groups, and anyone else they feel is threatening their way of life. It’s how they talk about their guns; more and more, guns are presented as instruments whose ultimate purpose is to allow their owners to wage war against the government. It’s why they were so excited about Kyle Rittenhouse, a dumb kid whose only accomplishment in life was killing two people and wounding a third, an act for which conservatives turned him into a hero (“Rittenhouse went to Kenosha to clean up the filth,” gushed Tucker Carlson at the time). And it’s why they were so excited about Jason Aldean’s hit song “Try That In a Small Town,” which plays out a fantasy of heartland folk reacting to the arrival of urbanites with murderous violence. The song wasn’t a warning to city folk not to come to small towns; it was a dream of how great it would be if they did, so real Americans could give them what they deserve. As the last line of the chorus says, “See how far you make it down the road.” 

Conservatives marinate in these thrilling fantasies, in which, finally pushed to their limit by the liberals they despise, they take matters into their own hands and start killing. This is what “civil war” represents on the ground level — not factions fighting, but conservatives killing liberals in an orgy of murder and mayhem. When they tell this story, they are not warning of a tragedy to come but are dreaming of the magnificent day when it becomes not just acceptable but heroic to take their beloved AR-15s and start mowing down the libs. 

What civil war will not look like

This spring, a timely new film from Alex Garland called “Civil War” will arrive in theaters:

The sides fighting in the trailer are complex and confusing (there are references to the “Western Forces” of California and Texas and a “Florida Alliance”), so it’s unclear just from those 2 minutes where right and left align. However, in one 20-second part of the trailer (starting at 1:10) a camo-clad, assault-rifle-carrying character played by Jesse Plemons delights in the terror he is causing some of the film’s protagonists; when one (with a Spanish accent) says “We’re Americans,” Plemons responds, “What kind of American are you?” 

That’s the only part of the trailer that rings true as a prediction of the future: resentful white men luxuriating in their newfound power to kill those they believe have taken something from them; as Barbara F. Walter notes, “The groups that tend to resort to violence are not the poorest groups, or the most downtrodden. It’s the group that had once been politically dominant but is losing power.” Otherwise, this film doesn’t seem like an accurate depiction of the version of civil war we’re likely to face (not that it has to; that’s not how art works). 

Some might say liberals are being histrionic when they talk about civil war, and if it’s the kind of all-out conflict portrayed in this film, that might be true. If widespread violence comes, it will probably be far less organized, such that it wouldn’t be clear if “civil war” is even the right term to describe it. But the key thing to remember is that liberals are talking about something they want to prevent, and which they aren’t going to be the ones to start. When conservatives talk about civil war, they’re talking about something they would initiate. And an awful lot of them seem to believe it would be glorious.