'They are preparing for war': An expert on civil wars discusses where political extremists are takin

[Nevilledog]

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“They are preparing for war. And not talking about it does not make us safer.”

Barbara F. Walter, author of “How Civil Wars Start: And How to Stop Them,” says sees she echoes of Nazi Germany in polarized America.

washingtonpost.com
‘They are preparing for war’: An expert on civil wars discusses where political extremists are...
Author Barbara F. Walter sees echoes of Nazi Germany in polarized America.
7:00 AM · Jul 9, 2022

https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/03/08/they-are-preparing-war-an-expert-civil-wars-discusses-where-political-extremists-are-taking-this-country/

No paywall
https://archive.ph/j2cQF

Barbara F. Walter, 57, is a political science professor at the University of California at San Diego and the author of “How Civil Wars Start: And How to Stop Them,” which was released in January. She lives in San Diego with her husband.

Having studied civil wars all over the world, and the conditions that give rise to them, you argue in your book, somewhat chillingly, that the United States is coming dangerously close to those conditions. Can you explain that?

So we actually know a lot about civil wars — how they start, how long they last, why they’re so hard to resolve, how you end them. And we know a lot because since 1946, there have been over 200 major armed conflicts. And for the last 30 years, people have been collecting a lot of data, analyzing the data, looking at patterns. I’ve been one of those people.

We went from thinking, even as late as the 1980s, that every one of these was unique. And the way people studied it is they would be a Somalia expert, a Yugoslavia expert, a Tajikistan expert. And everybody thought their case was unique and that you could draw no parallels. Then methods and computers got better, and people like me came and could collect data and analyze it. And what we saw is that there are lots of patterns at the macro level.

In 1994, the U.S. government put together this Political Instability Task Force. They were interested in trying to predict what countries around the world were going to become unstable, potentially fall apart, experience political violence and civil war.

*snip*

[WarGamer]

1. I remember that article from March when it was first posted.

I disagree slightly.

She's right about the Nazi era...

But today is more like 1920's Germany and Europe in general.

A large portion of the world was split between Communist and Fascist urges...

The Nazis wouldn't have existed if it weren't for the Communists... at least not in their historical form.

In the 1920's it was diverse forces pulling apart monarchies and empire...

Today, it's diverse forces pulling apart Democracies around the world.

[Nevilledog]

2. Hell, I probably posted it then.

I've been reading a lot on authoritarianism, fascism etc. This came up in my timeline again and I thought it was worth the time to post.

Read the piece yesterday with Jeff Sharlet's impressions
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100216902540

I had been following his journeys thru trumpland for awhile.

Guess it's on my brain.

[WarGamer]

15. that IS a good read...

[Baked Potato]

3. The word "preparing" appears only once in body of the essay.

That is telling as IMO “they” aren’t preparing anything.

[Hekate]

4. As you say, that is your opinion. Unlike the author of the book and her colleagues, you haven't ...

… spent decades collecting data and sifting it for patterns.

Nor have I, but oddly enough, after 4 years of a Trump presidency and a literal insurrection, I do believe the monsters and hate-mongers among us seriously intend to do exactly what they say they plan to do.

The DC insurrection was mocked early on as “the beer-belly putsch”, probably in an attempt to whistle past the graveyard, given how shaken we all were.

Then someone with a better grasp of history wrote an article about the actual Beer Hall Putsch. We all know it failed. And then something-something Hitler became Chancellor. That something-something took 10 years — Hitler never gave up, and his followers never gave up, and out of their success came the death camps and gas chambers, 6 million dead Jews, and IIRC nearly that number of Gypsies, Jehovah’s Witnesses, political opponents, clergy, gays, Blacks, Slavic peoples, mentally disabled, POWs and Resistance fighters, artists….

Just sayin.’ Evil walks among us, and has awakened.

[Baked Potato]

7. Fair enough. The nugget of hope I have is the Intelligence

agencies also have even more information than the author does and will act accordingly and maintain National Security.

[Model35mech]

9. It's not just the information quantity, it's HOW TO LOOK AT IT

One of her concerns is that the US security apparatus really doesn't understand where in the spectrum of strongly authoritorian governments to robust democracies civil war is most likely to happen.

She claims, as an expert, that it's not at the extremes, but rather in the middle of the spectrum, as institutions are weakened and infiltrated by radical thinkers...

the US has LOTS of radicals, and it has a weakening democracy thanks to the behavior of republicans who don't except elections, and can't tolerate losing elections.

[Baked Potato]

10. I really don't think she is the only expert

looking at this from all angles.

And, the RW isn’t the only threat to order. They just get the most attention.

[Model35mech]

12. Undoubtedly true. One thing academics do is claim angles to defend

When you have an angle that cuts across other angles it makes many more publications possible, which is good for practicing rhetoric, and also good for tenure and promotion.

[roamer65]

5. I'm see more parallels to Yugoslavia than I do Nazi Germany.

The US is multiethnic state, unlike Hitler’s Germany.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

8. History doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes.

https://www.owu.edu/alumni-and-friends/owu-magazine/fall-2018/history-doesnt-repeat-itself-but-it-often-rhymes/

[Elessar Zappa]

11. I think, worst case scenario,

that it will look like the “troubles” in Northern Ireland. But I don’t think we’ll have a true civil war. People are too comfortable. Now if our economy ever collapses, then all bets are off.

[VoteBlue2175]

6. Wow that was really unsettling.

Thank you for sharing.

[Initech]

13. I've never felt more scared and unsafe in this country than I do right now.

Like you can't even have a civilized discussion with your neighbors because so many of them have been brainwashed by the Hannitys and Carlsons of the world. And that network is steering Americans into believing that a Christian fascist authoritarian state is good for America. It isn't. I fear that this country is at the tipping point.

[Nevilledog]

16. I share your disquiet.

[Kid Berwyn]

14. GOP fired US government experts fighting RW hate in 2009.

Why We Don't Know Much About Right-Wing Terrorists

Conservatives Fired The Guy Studying Them in 2009



Why Don’t We Know Much About Right-Wing Terrorists?

Conservatives Fired The Guy Studying Them

JAMESON PARKER
AddictingInfo, JUNE 18, 2015 4:41 PM

After a mass shooting at a historically black church in Charleston, South Carolina, left nine people dead and a right-wing white supremacist arrested, the country once again faces the uneasy question of just how many so-called “home-grown” terrorists are out there – heavily armed, ideologically driven, and violent.

It’s a good question, but it may be tough to answer because for reasons that are astoundingly dimwitted, the Department of Homeland Security pushed out the guy who was in charge of watching them, and dismantled his team all the way back in 2009.

The beleaguered hero of this story is Daryl Johnson, a top government counterterrorism analyst working at Homeland Security who spent six years with the agency amassing a wealth of data on far-right extremist groups that posed various degrees of threat to citizens in the United States. In 2009, in the months after President Obama assumed office, he watched as these groups veered even further right, and began to fear that America’s first African-American president could be the catalyst of a major uptick in hate crimes and anti-government attacks.

In a landmark report released just months into Obama’s term, and now looks downright clairvoyant, Johnson made the case that radical Islam is only a small piece of the terrorism pie:

“Do not overlook other types of terrorist groups,” the report warned, noting that five purely domestic groups had considered using weapons of mass destruction in that period. Similar warnings have been issued by the two principal non-government groups that track domestic terrorism: the New York-based Anti-Defamation League and the Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center.

An annual tally by the latter group of what it calls “Terror From the Right” listed 13 major incidents and arrests last year, nearly double the annual number in previous years; the group also reported the number of hate groups had topped 1,000 in 2010, for the first time in at least two decades.

In response to that report, Johnson was destroyed. It wasn’t his integrity or claims that got him in trouble, his facts were solid. Instead, it was the inconvenient truth that much of the threat comes from right-wing conservatives, and even more awkwardly, radical right-wing conservatives who say and think a lot of the same things mainstream right-wing conservatives say and think.

CONTINUED w/links...

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2015/06/18/why-dont-we-know-much-about-right-wing-terrorists-conservatives-fired-the-guy-studying-them/

That was from 2015.

Internet Archive Waybac, if link doesn’t work:

http://web.archive.org/web/20150910045015/http://www.addictinginfo.org/2015/06/18/why-dont-we-know-much-about-right-wing-terrorists-conservatives-fired-the-guy-studying-them/