A president holed up in the White House, states rebelling against federal power, death lurking around every street corner… It is with this vision of horror of a not-so-distant future that Civil Warthe number one film at the American box office when it was released in theaters in mid-April. In this election year, marked by the assassination attempt against Donald Trump on July 13 in Pennsylvania, the success of this feature film, intended as a warning, takes on a particular resonance in a country polarized as never before. “American extremists are increasingly organized, dangerous and determined, and they will not disappear,” warned American political scientist Barbara Walter in her book in 2022 How Civil Wars Start (Ed. Crown, 2023). An alarming diagnosis: “We are a country divided into factions […] which is rapidly approaching the stage of open insurrection, which means we are closer to civil war than any of us would like to believe.”
Never have so many Americans considered violence a legitimate means of changing government: 18 million of them consider the use of force justified to bring Donald Trump back to power… and 26 million to prevent him from becoming president again, shows a study conducted by the Chicago Project on Security and Threats, published on July 13, the day the bullet fired from a rooftop in Butler grazed the former Republican president’s ear. “There is no place in America for this kind of violence,” declared, in the aftermath, the current tenant of the White House, Joe Biden. Like a mantra to ward off the worst. “Violence has always been part of American politics,” notes Julian Zelizer, professor of history at Princeton University. “The libertarian ethos at the heart of the revolutionary ideal in the United States implies that the most marginal ideas are accepted in the name of freedom of expression. Combined with the access of all to weapons, this creates an environment very conducive to violence,” adds Clara Broekaert, researcher at the Soufan Center.
Resurgence of violence
In 250 years of history, four presidents have been assassinated and three others injured in attempted murders, including Ronald Reagan in 1981. “And that’s just the tip of the iceberg,” continues Julian Zelizer. At all levels of government, dozens of elected officials have been attacked. And in civil society, activists have not been spared. A dark decade marked this series, opened by the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963. This was followed by the murders of two figures in the civil rights movement: Malcolm X in 1965 and Martin Luther King in 1968. The same year, JFK’s younger brother, Bobby Kennedy, the Democrats’ favorite for the next presidential election, was shot dead on the evening of his victory in the California primary elections. Four years later, another candidate for the Democratic nomination was mown down by five bullets fired at point-blank range: George Wallace would remain in a wheelchair for the rest of his life.
In the land of the sacrosanct “Second Amendment,” by which the Constitution recognizes the possibility for the American people to form a “well-organized” militia to ensure “the security of a free state,” the murderous madness has also affected the masses. On April 19, 1995, during the Gulf War, a former US Army sergeant, Timothy McVeigh, made a truck bomb and detonated it in front of a federal building in Oklahoma City. The result: 168 dead and 680 injured. He hoped to “start a civil war by an act of violence,” the prosecutor would say at his trial in 1997. That was the dream of Donald Trump’s most fanatical activists, supporters of “accelerationism.” “On far-right forums, cats and Facebook groups, they defend the idea that history must be accelerated and the government overthrown as soon as possible to establish their social project,” explains Clara Broekaert.
Some no longer hesitate to move from words to actions. “We are seeing an increase in threats against elected officials or election agents,” says Julian Zelizer. In Washington, the noise of the assault on the Capitol, launched on January 6, 2021 by Donald Trump supporters shouting ” “Hang Mike Pence” (“Hang Mike Pence,” the vice president at the time in charge of validating the results of the vote). More than three years after this unprecedented attack on American democracy, more than 1,400 people have been arrested for their participation in the riot and 500 sentenced to prison terms. The culmination of an increasingly commonplace violence, as evidenced by data from the Capitol Police. While 902 cases of threats against members of Congress had been identified in 2016, this figure rose to 8,008 in 2023! Worse still, elected officials are not the only targets of this sudden rise in fever. A study by the Brennan Center noted in 2022 that in polling stations, 1 in 6 election workers also reported having been threatened while carrying out their duties. “People tend to respond to violent political events by becoming more supportive of violence,” says Lilliana Mason, a political scientist at Johns Hopkins University and author of the book Uncivil Agreement (University of Chicago Press, 2018). A potentially dire scenario is that of one violent event leading to greater approval of violence, which would inspire another violent event, with a cascading effect that would be difficult to stop.”
A firebrand named Donald Trump
The list of recent attacks on elected officials or their relatives is not reassuring in this regard. In 2022, the husband of the then Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, was attacked at his home with a hammer by a man who planned to kidnap his wife. Two years earlier, the FBI announced the arrest of a group of 13 suspects accused of orchestrating a plan to kidnap Michigan’s Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer with a view to overthrowing her government. Before that, in 2017, Louisiana Republican Representative Steve Scalise was wounded in the hip by a semi-automatic rifle during a baseball practice. The shooter, shot dead by police, had been a volunteer on Bernie Sanders’ campaign.
“This increase in political violence is clearly linked to the extreme polarization of American society,” notes Françoise Coste, author of Reagan (Perrin, 2018) and a historian specializing in the Republican Party. This phenomenon is encouraged by leaders like Donald Trump, who consider violence as a mode of action.” His emergence on the American political scene, during the 2016 presidential election, marked a turning point. From his first meetings, the former show business star, made famous thanks to his show The Apprenticemade his mark. Warned that same year of the presence of a tomato thrower at a rally in Cedar Rapids (Iowa), the Republican candidate lost his temper. “If you see someone about to throw a tomato, knock him out, will you? Seriously. I promise you I’ll pay the legal fees,” he told the audience. Along the way, attacks of unprecedented violence against his favorite targets would follow: his renowned Democratic opponent “Crooked Hillary” (“Hillary the dishonest”) or the “corrupt media” (“corrupt media”).
“When political leaders condemn violence, their supporters stop supporting violence,” Mason points out. “But Trump has only condemned violence under duress—and during extremely violent events. He has played a major role in promoting violent political activity.” Hardly surprising from a man who, in his book The Art of the Dealpublished in 1987, boasted of having given his elementary school music teacher a “black eye” because “he didn’t know anything about music.” Less than ten years after entering politics, the Trump style has infused the entire Republican Party. The latest incarnation is JD Vance, a 39-year-old senator from Ohio, chosen by the billionaire to become his next vice president if he wins the election in November. A pure product of Trumpism, this rising star of the Grand Old Party was one of the first to accuse Democrats of being “directly” responsible for the assassination attempt on his mentor.
Country armed to the teeth
Nothing like it to electrify Republican supporters. “Unlike the 1960s, there are almost no more political leaders willing to play a moderating role,” observes Clara Broekaert. “The more the public debate fractures, the more expensive it becomes to enter politics,” agrees William Howell, professor of political science at the University of Chicago. Who wants to subject their family to such a political environment? Who wants to be scrutinized by the media on a daily basis, to be subjected to perpetual vitriol? The most moderate people are therefore led to give up.” It’s the premium on excess, in life as well as on social networks, these formidable echo chambers for the most hateful remarks. According to a recent article by Wiredextremist militias coordinate their actions on more than 100 Facebook groups… without the slightest moderation.
A threat taken very seriously by the American security services, in a country armed to the teeth – 22 million weapons purchased in 2020, a record year. “Some militias recruit specifically from veterans, i.e. men accustomed to urban combat, who train other people in handling weapons,” underlines Maya Kandel, a historian specializing in the United States. In external operations for decades (Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Libya), the United States has no less than 15 million veterans on its soil. How many would be ready to cross the Rubicon? A minority, most certainly. But supported by how many heated activists? At least 14% of the individuals arrested and charged in the attack on the Capitol had ties to the army or the police, recalls Barbara Walter in her book.
The scenario of a civil war, rooted in the American collective unconscious, is no longer taboo in the research community. “It would not resemble the Civil War since there are not two armies formed face to face, Maya Kandel poses. On the other hand, a period of latent violence from one camp against the other, comparable to the ‘troubles’ in Ireland [NDLR : en 1969, des violences éclatent en Irlande du Nord entre catholiques et protestants] is not to be excluded.” The failed assassination of Donald Trump has made the former president a living god, an elected official spared to “save America.” It remains to be seen how far his followers will go.
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