The main political issue in the United States over the past week has been the impacts of the first anniversary of the Capitol Hill invasion, when radical far-right groups linked to Donald Trump sought to cancel the congressional session that would have confirmed Joe Biden's victory in the 2020 presidential election. That was the worst moment in the institutional life of the United States since the Civil War, which began in 1861, when the slave states of the South rebelled against President Abraham Lincoln, who defended the abolition of slavery. The military conflict began on April 12th and only ended four years later, on May 9th 1865, with the defeat of rebel forces.

The current level of political polarization makes many analysts fear the occurrence of a second civil war, as Donald Trump supporters have not resigned themselves to the electoral defeat and continue to mobilize against what they call mass media manipulation and conspiracy made by “communists and globalists” who seized power in the 2020 election. Despite criticism from Republican leaders against the events of January 6th 2021, such as Vice President Mike Pence a year ago, most members of the Republican Party believe that the elections were stolen and defend electoral reforms to prevent greater participation of ethnic minorities, who are credited with an allegiance to the Democratic Party.

In recent days, President Joe Biden has made two important pronouncements. The first, on Capitol Hill, to address the January 6th 2021 invasion of Congress. In Atlanta (GA), he made his second speech on January 11th to defend the right to vote in the face of restrictive initiatives adopted by Republican governors.

In his first speech, Biden was very harsh with former President Donald Trump, accusing him of inventing a series of lies about election fraud, a fact that mobilized the most radical groups in the Republican Party. Biden said: “And here is the truth: The former president of the United States of America has created and spread a web of lies about the 2020 election.  He’s done so because he values power over principle, because he sees his own interests as more important than his country’s interests and America’s interests, and because his bruised ego matters more to him than our democracy or our Constitution. He can’t accept he lost, even though that’s what 93 United States senators, his own Attorney General, his own Vice President, governors and state officials in every battleground state have all said: He lost. That’s what 81 million of you did as you voted for a new way forward. He has done what no president in American history — the history of this country — has ever, ever done: He refused to accept the results of an election and the will of the American people. While some courageous men and women in the Republican Party are standing against it, trying to uphold the principles of that party, too many others are transforming that party into something else.  They seem no longer to want to be the party — the party of Lincoln, Eisenhower, Reagan, the Bushes.”

As we discussed earlier, several Republican-controlled states are adopting restrictive voting measures, such as limiting postal voting, distributing water to voters who wait in long lines to vote, cutting of polling stations in districts mostly inhabited by non-whites, and, above all, the creation of new electoral maps that dilute the demographic weight of minorities. In the Atlanta speech, Joe Biden criticized Republicans for creating these restrictive laws. Biden said: “That’s why we’re here today to stand against the forces in America that value power over principle, forces that attempted a coup — a coup against the legally expressed will of the American people — by sowing doubt, inventing charges of fraud, and seeking to steal the 2020 election from the people. And now the defeated former president and his supporters use the Big Lie about the 2020 election to fuel torrent and torment and anti-voting laws — new laws designed to suppress your vote, to subvert our elections. (...) Look, it’s also time to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. I’ve been having these quiet conversations with the members of Congress for the last two months.  I’m tired of being quiet! Folks, it’ll restore the strength of the Voting Rights Act of ’65 — the one President Johnson signed after John Lewis was beaten, nearly killed on Bloody Sunday, only to have the Supreme Court weaken it multiple times over the past decade. Restoring the Voting Rights Act would mean the Justice Department can stop discriminatory laws before they go into effect — before they go into effect. (...) They want chaos to reign.  We want the people to rule”.

In theory, Biden's two attacks on Trump and his supporters could help to regroup the political forces that elected him. But just as he advocates reinstating voting rights for minorities, leaders in those communities boycotted his speech in Atlanta. On January 10, Reuters had already warned about the boycott. Georgia's top minority voting leader, Stacey Abrams, one of the major contributors to the state's 2020 election victory for Democrats, did not attend Biden's event. Former NAPCP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) state president James Woodall also boycotted Biden's event, accusing President Biden of inaction.

Former President Donald Trump did not miss the opportunity to attack Biden. According to The Hill website, he mocked Abrams' absence from the Atlanta event: “Stacey Abrams helped Biden steal Georgia's 2020 election, but now she doesn't even share the stage with Joe (…) Stacey knows that Biden actually lost BIG in Georgia, and in the 2020 Presidential Election as a whole, and he’s been so terrible she now wants nothing to do with him. Even the woke, radical left realizes that Joe Biden’s Administration is an embarrassment!”

Despite Joe Biden's speech in trying to pass a federal law against restrictions on voting rights, the chance of this happening is tiny, as two Democratic senators have systematically boycotted the presidential agenda: Joe Manchin (WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (AZ). As discussed in the last week analysis, political division and the difficulty of finding consensus paralyzes the US political system, even more so in a year marked by midterm elections.

Political polarization and radicalization have raised strong concerns about the future of the democratic system in the United States, including the persistent fear of civil war, a subject that circulates strongly in the face of fears aroused by the attack on the Capitol in January 6th 2021.

The incidents of January 6th 2021 traumatized American society. The prospect of breaking constitutional rules and the peaceful transition of power still provokes many debates. It is no wonder that the mention of a second Civil War has gained strength in the last year and became a recurring concern for the 2024 elections. Dealing with this topic may seem like alarmism or the spread of conspiracy theories. However, attention is drawn to the fact that this issue is recurrent in major media outlets in the United States. On January 6th 2022, CNN aired a report on “How dangerous talk of a 'second civil war' is different today,” in which it discusses the level of political polarization and the mobilization of armed militias that could undermine the country's political stability.

Also, on January 6th, The New York Times highlighted the issue of the civil war by publishing the article by Michelle Goldberg “Are We Really Facing a Second Civil War?”, in which the author brings arguments from two recently released books on the subject: “How Civil Wars Start,” by Barbara Walters and “The Next Civil War: Dispatches From the American Future,” written by Canadian Stephen Marche. She considers the outbreak of a civil war unlikely, but she admits the likelihood of creating an autocratic system like those in Hungary or Poland, something that, according to her, many republican state governments have already started to put into practice.

The Economist magazine also highlighted a book by Barbara Walter, a researcher at UCLA-San Diego. In the introduction to her book, she drew attention to the strong indications that the political situation in her country is very worrying. Walters, when mentioning his participation in the Political Instability Task Force (PITF), a research group on international conflicts sponsored by the CIA, stated: “The idea that researchers could predict civil conflict was revolutionary. And so in 2017, when I was asked to join the PITF myself, I did not hesitate. Almost every year since then, I’ve attended meetings and conferences with other scholars and analysts, in which we study political volatility around the world—the potential collapse of Syria, the future of African dictators—and come up with ways to further refine the predictive possibilities of the data at our fingertips. Our goal has always been to try to anticipate violence and instability in other countries, so that the United States is better prepared to respond. But as I’ve done this work, I’ve realized something unnerving: The warning signs of instability that we have identified in other places are the same signs that, over the past decade, I’ve begun to see on our own soil. This is why I witnessed the events in Lansing—as well as the assault on the U.S. Capitol in January 2021—with such trepidation. I’ve seen how civil wars start, and I know the signs that people miss. And I can see those signs emerging here at a surprisingly fast rate.”. (Barbara F. Walter. How civil wars start. New York: Crown, 2022)

It is also worth mentioning the articles by David Remnick “Is a Civil War Ahead?”, in “The New Yorker” January 5th. “Is the US really heading for a second civil war?”, by David Smith, published in The Guardian, on January 9th; “Imagine another American Civil War, but this time in every state”, by Ron Elving, issued by NPR , on January 10th, and “Half the U.S. Believes Another Civil War Is Likely. Here Are the 5 Steps We Must Take to Avoid That”, by de Peter t. Coleman (https://time.com/6133380/us-avert-civil-war/), issued by Time magazine, on January 6th. The recurrence with which media from different political positions deal with this issue is an indication that an eventual conflict cannot be neglected.

Also, in this sense, we highlight the national survey with young Americans aged between 18 and 29 by the Institute of Politics – Harvard University – Kennedy Scholl, released on December 1st 2021, which indicates that the majority of young Americans believe their country’s democracy is “in trouble” or “failing.” One aspect that deserves to be highlighted is the perception of the chances of seeing a second civil war in their lives or the possibility that at least one state secedes from the Union. For this segment, almost half (46%) of the Young Republicans put the odds of a second civil war at 50% or more, compared with 32% of Democrats and 38% of independent and unaffiliated voters. Similar patterns hold for those who think secession is likely. Overall, 25% rate the odds at 50% or higher

The level of polarization is very high, involving political, religious, sexual, and ethnic issues. Topics such as government intervention in the economy, the right to abortion, same-sex marriage, equal rights between different ethnic groups, and immigration, for example, are the subject of intense turmoil in American society. If the debate of these issues were restricted to electoral processes, this could demonstrate the virtue of the country's democracy. However, distrust regarding electoral results and the spread of conspiracy theories create a strong political radicalization that can lead the United States to a dead end. In addition to the organization of armed militias, especially far-right groups, there is an additional concern about the infiltration of radical ideas within the military itself. Here in this Observatory, we mention the increase in gun purchasing among Afro-Americans and Latino communities in the United States as a defense attitude towards far-right threats.

It is worth asking how the political and economic elite will behave in the face of the possibility of social rupture. We know that there are national projects that conflict, such as disputes over the energy standard to be used by the United States in the coming decades. States where companies linked to the hydrocarbon sector, such as the paradigmatic case of Senator Joe Manchin's West Virginia, resist the adoption of clean and renewable energy sources. Hence the strong opposition to the Build Back Better project, which foresees billions of dollars in investments to make the US economy “greener”. However, if there is a lot of disagreement in this aspect, the US elite is unanimous in extending the hegemonic position in the world to the maximum, so much so that the main bipartisan consensus in Congress revolves around sanctions against China, Russia, Iran, North Korea and Cuba.

In a context of great polarization, history shows us that creating a threat (real or imagined) from an external enemy has the power to galvanize and reunite a given country. Considering the fact that elections will take place in November 2022, would it be unwise to consider that the establishment could create a major international crisis, including a war, so that the United States can glue the pieces of its political and social system? And more, that helps Joe Biden restore his popularity? It is worth remembering that the September 11th 2001 attacks achieved a similar feat. George W. Bush's victory in the 2002 midterm elections was overwhelming.