America's fractured reality is fueling political violence

The red flags are everywhere. Will we see them in time?

Political violence is at historic levels in the US, and if recent events are any indication, things are about to take a turn for the worse just as we approach the 2024 presidential election campaign. This continues a trend that started in 2016, when politically-motivated violence spiked to levels not seen in decades, but what we’re seeing now seems to represent a shift in the trajectory of political violence — a shift towards more widespread, targeted, and high-impact violence. It’s the type of violence that accelerationist extremists have long espoused; the type that is meant to pave the way to another civil war. 

In just the past few weeks, we’ve seen a rash of swatting incidents targeting political figures, along with bomb threats sent to government offices in at least 23 states, resulting in the evacuation of at least nine state capitals. Most recently, Donald Trump’s trial in New York — where he faces fraud charges — was briefly paused after the judge overseeing the trial received a bomb threat against his home in Long Island. 

Just days before the bomb threat targeting the judge in Trump’s fraud trial, emergency personnel were sent to the home of the judge overseeing Trump’s election interference case, Tanya Chutkan, after a false report of a shooting at her home. This mirrored a Christmas Day incident in which police were called to the home of Jack Smith, the prosecutor who filed the election subversion indictment against Trump. In that case, the caller falsely claimed that Smith had shot his wife inside their Maryland home. 

These incidents are part of a bigger trend of swatting cases, which are generally considered to be a threat to physical safety because they involve sending armed SWAT teams to someone’s home under false pretenses, making the police officers believe that they are heading into a situation of danger. Other recent swatting incidents have targeted elected officials like Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, who had recently drawn the ire of right-wing media for hosting a holiday party for “Boston’s elected officials of color,” and Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, who was targeted just after a decision by her office to ban Trump from the state’s ballot, as well as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Rep. Brandon William of New York, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, Ohio State Sen. Andrew Brenner, Ohio State Rep. Kevin Miller and former State Rep. Rick Carfagna, Georgia Lt. Gov Burt Jones, and Georgia State Sens. Kim Jackson, Kay Kirkpatrick, Clint Dixon, and John Albers. Political operatives like Rick Wilson have also been targeted in the same swatting spree.

This comes just as Trump and his Republican allies launch another push to downplay the events of Jan. 6, 2021, which U.S. Attorney Matthew Graves recently described as “likely the largest single day mass assault of law enforcement officers in our nation’s history.” At a recent rally, Trump described the prosecution of Jan. 6th rioters as “unfair”, while Trump allies like Rep. Elise Stefanik have started using the word “hostages” to describe rioters who have been imprisoned for their role in the violence. The efforts to downplay the Capitol attack and cast doubt on those involved appear to be working, as 25% of Americans and 34% of Republicans now say the FBI instigated the attack, with the help of a laundry list of accomplices including antifa and George Soros.

This type of alternate reality is only possible because prominent right-wing figures, up to and including the president, have spent the past three years rewriting the historical narrative of Jan. 6th, with the help of right-wing media and often-irresponsible news reporting that has framed the Capitol attack as a story with two sides of equal weight that both deserve to be heard and seriously considered.

These incidents are in line with a longer-term trend of increasing levels of political violence that began in 2016 and likely still hasn’t reached its peak despite reaching levels not seen in half a century. From 2021 through 2023, Reuters identified 213 cases of political violence in the U.S., representing “the biggest and most sustained increase in political violence since the 1970s.” At least 39 people were killed in these incidents, nearly all of which were perpetrated by people with right-wing political leanings. Compared to the last major peak of political violence in the 1970s, the aims, tactics, and style associated with political violence today are notably different. In the 1970’s, political violence in the U.S. was often perpetrated by left-wing radicals and focused largely on destroying property like government buildings, whereas the recent wave of violence from right-wing extremists is much more focused on harming or killing people. This may be due in part to differences in the broader political climate: traditionally, political divisions have been driven mostly by policy differences between those on the left vs. right, but today’s divisiveness tends to be rooted in beliefs that members of the opposing political party are evil actors working to destroy America. 

The influence of Trump’s political style cannot be ignored, either. According to a recent study, Trump supporters who doubt the legitimacy of the 2020 election — so-called “MAGA Republicans” — are far more likely to endorse violence than other Americans, including other Republicans, and to believe that their way of life is being deliberately destroyed. More than 50% of these voters believe in the Great Replacement, a conspiracy theory that postulates that white people are being intentionally replaced through policies enabling mass migration, as well as changes in birth rates and cultural erasure. One in five “MAGA Republicans” believe that armed citizens should patrol polling places during elections, and nearly 60% express support for using violence to achieve specific political objectives, compared to about 35% of other Republicans and 25% of non-Republicans. Perhaps most alarmingly, far more “MAGA Republicans” agree with than don’t agree with the statement that “In the next few years, there will be civil war in the United States.” Only 25% of “MAGA Republicans” disagree with that statement, while 30% strongly or very strongly agree and 44% somewhat agree. Put differently, almost three in four “MAGA Republicans” agree that there will be civil war in the U.S. within the next few years. 

For most Americans, including “MAGA Republicans”, personal willingness to engage in violence remains low but the concern is that by normalizing the idea of violence as a political solution and lowering the social costs for engaging in it, those who express support for political violence may embolden the small number of extremists who are ready and willing to commit acts of violence to achieve political aims. 

And those people are not hard to find. Last Monday, the FBI arrested a 26 year-old man in Florida for threatening in online messages to carry out a “racially motivated mass casualty event.” In the messages, he used specific terminology — such as stating that “in 2024 there shall be saints” — that are associated with white supremacist violence. The term “saint,” in this context, is generally understood to refer to an individual who commits violence in the interest of advancing white supremacist and militant accelerationist goals. These killers are martyred by their fellow extremists as part of the radicalization process, in the hopes of inspiring others to carry out the violent attacks.

As someone who has studied domestic extremist movements and ideologies, including accelerationism, for a number of years, the recent spate of political violence and accompanying justifications from political officials and members of the public alike send a chill down my spine, particularly when these incidents are put in proper context. It’s easy sometimes to lose track of the various incidents of political violence and politically-motivated terrorism that take place in the U.S., but keeping tabs on these seemingly disparate incidents is the only way to see the full picture. That picture includes other sprees like the series of attacks on power substations in America in 2022-2023, during which the rate of attacks on the power grid reached the highest level in more than a decade. 

People tend to engage in acts of political violence like this when they lose faith in democratic processes and believe they can no longer rely on actions like voting and protesting to achieve social and political change. This belief is at the core of accelerationism, which seeks to advance the idea that “there is no political solution” — a motto that justifies embracing violence and terrorism as a means to achieve political goals. This idea has become increasingly widespread and mainstream over the past several years, resulting in a heightened threat of political violence and increasing paranoia among some subgroups of the population, who view violence and terrorism as the only means to incite the revolution they believe is necessary to stop the “Deep State” from stealing another election.

With a sizable percentage of the population bracing for civil war, and a small but motivated subgroup willing to take action to incite it, it’s worth asking what a civil war would look like in 2024. I have attempted to start answering this question in previous articles, but I think it merits further consideration. My fear is that we will only recognize the signs when they’re in the rearview mirror — when it’s too late to stop the coming violence. What would those signs even look like? Will we recognize them if and when we see them? Could we already be past the point of no return? As my friend and mentor John Bordeaux wrote a few years ago, the U.S. “has failed before, and it could well fail again. If it does, there is no guarantee it would recover in a recognizable form. Indeed […] we may well be on a path to breakdown, and not recognize it.”