\n\n\n\nIf civil war hadn\u2019t begun in America in 1861 hundreds of thousands of \npeople wouldn\u2019t have died, and Atlanta would have gone unburned. But the\n Confederacy would have gone on slaving, and tried to spread slavery to a\n new, wider empire. As in Walter\u2019s scenario for the next civil war, the \nrebels were the patriarchal white supremacists, the federal government \nthe (marginally more) progressive side. But these roles could switch. \nThis is an imaginative realm progressive America seems reluctant to \nenter, where Albany or Sacramento audition as the future Richmond, and a\n future Fort Sumter must be triggered by liberals, or not at all. It\u2019s \nnot unreasonable for Walter and many others to see a future civil war in\n America taking the form of a smouldering, uncoordinated insurgency by \npro-Trump conspiracists against a liberal reigning order of \ncorporations, media, government, academia and metro society. But the \nreal danger might be that Trump and Republicans loyal to him cheat and \nlie their way to a victory that is accepted by Congress, federal power \npasses to an autocrat, and, after a period of mass protest, most \nliberals just put up with it, judging it not worth the blood and damage \nto fight for democracy. If it is a real danger that civil war may \nthreaten democracy, it is also a real danger that democracy may die \nbecause its defenders refuse to start one.
[\u2026]
One\u200b possible outcome\n of the next presidential election is that a Democratic candidate wins a\n dispute-proof victory and is straightforwardly inaugurated. Another \u2013 \nperfectly likely \u2013 is that Trump runs again and is unambiguously \nre-elected in line with the law, even if most Americans don\u2019t vote for \nhim. But what if he, or a candidate like him, were to cheat, and he and \nhis party threaded the needle to a victory endorsed by the key national \ninstitutions? Instead of today\u2019s situation, in which there is a \nDemocratic president and \u2013 to use Walter\u2019s terminology \u2013 a downgraded \nsuperfaction of Trump supporters convinced by the lie that he was \ndefrauded and should have won, you would have a Trump base accepting \ntheir champion\u2019s fraudulent victory, and a liberal superfaction aware \nthat the Republican head of state had stolen the presidency, that \npoliticians, bureaucrats and lawyers had seized the apparatus of the \nAmerican state, and that democracy had been killed.
One of the \nstrange things about the reaction to the invasion of the Capitol was how\n few of those dismayed by it speculated that they might one day long for\n just such an assault to succeed. Might a different mob storm into \nCongress to save democracy, rather than attack it? If an autocrat who \nhas stolen an election is about to have his trashing of American \ndemocracy hallowed by Congress, all other recourse having failed, \nshouldn\u2019t Democrats \u2013 or democrats, at least \u2013 take direct action? \nLiberal opinion in North America and Western Europe has tended to be \ngung-ho about pro-democracy protesters storming ruling institutions in \nother countries, notably Ukraine in 2014. But it\u2019s one thing to imagine,\n as Walter encourages her readers to do, the gradual spread of white \nsupremacist, anti-government terrorism across America against a \ndemocratic framework, until one day the progressive left, and the people\n of colour she suggests are likely to be targets of violence, arm and \norganise for self-protection. It\u2019s another to wake up one morning and \nfind that without any bloodshed or violence, without any seeming change \nin the smooth running of traffic signals and ATMs and supermarkets, \nwithout, even, an immediate wave of arrests or a clampdown on free \nspeech, your country is run by somebody who took power illegally. \nSomething must be done! But what, apart from venting on social media? \nAnd by whom? Me? In Ukraine, students and the liberal middle class found\n fighting allies among football ultras, small farmers and extreme \nnationalists. Such an alliance would be hard to pull together in the \nEuro-American world. Describing liberal protests against government \ncorruption and malfeasance in Bulgaria in 2013, Ivan Krastev spoke of \n\u2018the frustration of the empowered\u2019 and an urban middle class that \u2018risks\n remaining politically isolated, incapable of reaching out to other \nsocial groups\u2019.
In autumn 2019, when Boris Johnson got the queen \nto prorogue Parliament, avoiding scrutiny of Brexit by the absolutist \nexpedient of shutting the legislature down, I thought I glimpsed, far in\n the distance, the vaguest outlines of the foothills of civil war. In \nthe end, the courts intervened, before the then MP\n Rory Stewart had a chance to convene an alternative parliament which, \nhe admitted, \u2018sounds quite Civil War-ist\u2019. Watching the Capitol riot a \nyear and a bit later, the pro-lie votes of the pro-Trump Republicans \nwere more troubling than the conduct of the rioters. The protesters were\n deluded; many seemed to have been driven over the edge of sanity by \nTrump and other forms of internet-borne conspiracism. There was a lot of\n malice, aggression, hate, bitterness and ignorance in the mob. There \nwas also a wasted sincerity, ruthlessness and will. Who, I wondered, \nwould do for the truth what these people were ready to do for a lie?
Says \u201chow\n few of those dismayed by it speculated that they might one day long for\n just such an assault to succeed\u201c but the Claremont institute has explicitly contemplated shutting down exactly the protest described here.
I first glanced at this and parsed the opening as “If civil war hadn’t begun, hundreds of thousands of people would have gone undead” and now there’s an image
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