A lot of people think that there’s no way we could have civil war again because they are picturing the north versus the south. There won’t be two big armies meeting on the battlefield. That’s a 19th-century version of the civil war.
The 21st-century type of civil war that we’re seeing is very, very different from that. It’s going to be decentralized. It’s going to be fought by many different factions. Militias, paramilitary groups. And that’s why the modern civil war is here. It’s already started.
Domestic Terrorism
Paramilitary and militia groups like the Oath Keepers, the Three Percenters, and the Proud Boys. They’re going to be relying on unconventional tactics, like terrorism.
Terrorism will be a big part of it. We’ve already seen this. They will be targeting civilians, unlike what you saw in the American Civil War. These far-right groups target LGBTQ+ people, especially trans people.
They’re also targeting Jewish people, black people, Asian people, and anyone who is not a straight, white, cis-gendered christian.
You see across many civil wars today, which is this form of leaderless resistance. Very decentralized, almost like cell warfare. It’s very hard to identify. Terrorism. Domestic terrorism.
The Warning Signs
Everyone who lived through the civil war said, “We didn’t see it coming.”
We now know the warning signs. It’s the average citizens that don’t know the warning signs. And so they go about their daily business.
For example, there was a couple in Sarajevo, who were having baby showers, they were going to their friend’s houses on the weekend. They were going to their jobs every day. They heard certain things were happening, but they didn’t want to believe it.
And then they were busy, and so they were distracted. This couple said they were going about their everyday life. And then one night the lights went off and they heard machine gunfire in the hills.
And then, of course, it goes very fast. The next day you go to the grocery store and there’s a roadblock four streets away. And you’re thinking, who’s manning that roadblock? And you don’t know.
And then suddenly there’s a sniper on the building so that you’re scared to go out of your house. That’s how you tend to see it happening at the local level.
Several of these things have happened in the United States recently.
My paraphrased summary of excerpts from Barbara F. Walter’s excellent book How Civil Wars Start and How To Stop Them