How civil wars work in the modern world

If you believe that a civil war involves marching armies, you are right, we will not have one. I will be more than just wrong... in fact so wrong it is not even funny.

But the late 20th century and 21st century version of those same events have the hallmarks of what is going on in the US right now. It i also known as insurgency. Most insurgency movements across the world are like this. They have the hallmarks of "lone wolves" because we all know this could not be organized, really... :sarcasm: and no state can even acknowledge what is going on, or how dangerous it can be to civil society. Oh and by the way when they get a little hotter, you start seeing other things... like bombings.

Most Americans are not aware of how civil wars have been fought over the last forty years or so. They still have these images of the blue and the gray marching at each other at places like oh Gettysburg... but the last civil war where that actually happened was the Russian revolution in 1917. Not even the wars in central america saw armies doing that. And the few times we saw regiment on regiment action, like taking off cities, the guerrilla didn't wear uniforms either, jeans, shirts, and perhaps an armband. Why they were portrayed as irregulars, and they were.

Also most Americans are fully unaware of how civil wars develop and the fact that you need a small, if committed and fully disenfranchised sub-group of any nation. And this group has to be willing to die for what they believe in and organize. The extreme right fits that description to a T.


By the way all civil wars in the modern world are preceded by a generation or two of coarsening language. And in you study the American Civil war, the one most Americans imagine as a civil war... study its origins. It goes back to the 1820s and the Kansas little war... as well as John Brown. By the time the shooting started at Fort Sumpter, well things have gotten to that point over twenty to forty years... ok. So even that one took a while to develop.


Of course there is a certain, and very understandable, level of denial that this could even happen here. And by what I know about insurgencies and how they rise... by the strict definition of it, we have been in a civil war since the 1990s and we may be entering a new hot phase... only time will tell. And as I posted with the economy... yes I want to be wrong and eat my hat.

toward terror based asymmetrical warfare.
On the field the Algerian force was ineffective. But hitchhikers in parts of southern France still do not get picked up.

The effects of terrorism on a population seem to linger in the folkways of the subjected group for a period of time.

indeed and that was in the 1950s

Vietnam as well.

We did well when fighting the NVA regulars, but don't get me started on the irregulars.

there isn't a paper's width of difference between us on this.

And yeah, I 've gotten a lot of chaff over the years about it, as well.

but I fear for the future. Partly because I got to see some of the victims first hand (Central America)

But I do get why people give you and me flack. Partly we don't know our own history and we expect people to know somebody else"s? Partly the denial is understandable... I mean if you and I are right, it could get very scary.

Also the effects on civil rights in a situation like that are down right frightful

I come at it through a couple of approaches.

The first is through the approach to the first American Civil war and bleeding Kansas.

The second is a feel for how highly interdependent systems cascade in failure, and here we are, in a bona fide depression at peak oil at the beginning of a climate shift.

The third is an understanding of how pernicious scapegoating as a political strategy is. Dr. Arendt, in her masterwork, The Origins of Totalitarianism,
shows how pan national movements refined medieval techniques of jew and gypsy baiting into race politics for the radical new democracies of Europe.


I'd like this to just be a simple listing of crises with no synergistic effect.
I too, would dearly love to be wrong about this.
I am going to try to sleep now.

... what those who tried to laugh you off as a nut for suggesting we're heading for a "hot" civil war are thinking today, given this context.

As you know, I think you're on target ... unfortunately.

It sounds like we are already in the cycle.

I do not feel that I have anyone to trust, nor do I have any right to trust anyone.

but for civil society to reject these radicals... we need to realize civil society has to first get involved.

This is going to go on at a simmer for a (very short) while yet until the public just doesn't care about political killings....which might be the case now.

I fear these latest killings are going to instigate bolder, organized slo-mo death squads, not prosecuted as terrorism, nor fully investigated...

Anyone who thinks it can't happen here needs to look at Beruit - once referred to as the Paris of the middle east, turned in to a floating kill zone by religious extremists.


And I don't think Congress gives a damn.

when they are the one's who start being targeted. Of course, some argue that left leaning Congress-people are already being targeted by the Republican Civil War team (all those plane crashes, you know).

I lived through the beginning of the civil war in Beirut - the 1st event which moved the civil war from the southern coast to Beirut was a bomb which exploded across the street from my apartment. However, unlike what's happening here right now, in Lebanon the initial uprising really was that of an oppressed majority against an oppressive, rich, powerful minority. It started as the little guys against an oligarchical government. Here its a fringe group of mostly privileged fanatics whose oppression is nothing more than anger over fantasy wrongs and the loss of a little bit of their power against a majority. Furthermore, they will be fighting on behalf of their REAL oppressors - the Cheney's et al. of this world.

and as a historian this has been an interest of mine.

But you do point to something most folks miss, the pattern,

Here is one thing Lou Dobbs got out today in one of the interviews. Our boy today at the museum... he is a fellow traveller of Franklin Pierce... (turner diaries). No, not a follower, a fellow traveller.

That got my attention, FULLY.

As to Congress... they will present a strong face in public, nothing to see here, even when they might know this is serious. Again, part of the pattern.

the thin veneer of civility and order that can be pulled off of a society like a scab.......

This country can go homicidally crazy just like anywhere else.....

I suspect few Americans know the details of the Lebanese civil war. I only know a little - I was about 12 when we left - I did a bit of a report on it for school the last year we were there. And it pisses me off that the people turning up the heat in this country are NOT the one's being oppressed.

One thing which would very much change the dynamic in the US compared to other countries is the shear physical size of our country. We're damn big with multiple population centers. God only knows how things would/will play out.

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Chechnya? What parallels are there in that example of a contemporary civil war? Sudan? (if you can call it a civil war) Please give us an example that serves as some sort of a template. Your vague posts don't really touch on history at all. And no, we haven't been in a civil war since the nineties. Oh, and the right wing extremists are not potent enough to start a hot civil war. Support for them is very limited. Just as folks like Bill Ayres failed in the sixties to ignite revolution, so too will the right wing extremists fail.

the red brigades didn't get a revolution either, not in Germany nor in Italy. But they got a classic insurgency, going, what some call a LOW LEVEL CONFLICT OR CIVIL WAR.

YOU ARE READYING WHAT YOU WANT AND HAVE NO FUCKING CLUE OF SOME OF WHAT THOSE OF US WHO ARE CONCERNED ABOUT THIS AND HAVE SOME EXPERIENCE IN COUNTER INSURGENCY ARE TALKING ABOUT.

Me, mostly who I hung around during my earlier years.

You are thinking the CLASSIC American civil war with organized armies, Sorry, that won't happen here. By the way, Chechnya still does not have an organized army on the rebel side, in the conventional sense. It is much hotter than I am sure the Russians would like, but has far more in common with the jihadist movement in Afghanistan than it does with the Red Brigades. Incidentally that would be the model these idiots seem to be using, small cells, "lone wolf" operations.

by the way, in case you wonder Cali, you are way out of your league. You have facts but cannot connect dots.

Here are some dots for you

An insurgency does NOT require a large majority of the population, in fact, it prefers not to have one, a small group of disenfranchised idiots is far better for it, Check

The economy, any bad economy, is a driver for creation of the other, look up any period of US history where we have had massive anti immigrant feelings... check

These people have been organized for this "race war" for decades, and have many fellow travelers in the right wing christian identity movement, try to do some readying on that... you may be shocked... the Southern Poverty Law Center Intel Reports are a good start. They also have groups all over the country. Yes, even in my back yard...

We have had terror operations ongoing in this country for at least ten years, thanks to Operation Rescue and other groups (Longer but you get the point why a certain act was passed by Congress and signed by Clinton)

Now lets go into the US CIVIL WAR, any historian worth his or her salt, and you are not one... knows the US Civil War officially started at Fort Sumpter, but the seeds were planted in the 1820s and both the Kansas Little War and John Brown were part of the prelims to that. Go ahead, read any worthy historian that does more than just military history.

ANY civil war you study, no matter whether it is the Spanish Civil War, the Russian Civil War, the American Civil War... the central American wars, no matter, they all have a brewing period that can last a generation or two. During this period you see coarsening of language and the radicalization of the aggrieved MINORITY.

Now do me a favor, and do yourself a favor and pick up a book or two on this, and not a military history one. A real one. You may try Shama, or even any intel report from the SPLC, or the Simon Wiesenthal center, or for that matter the DHS report.

Oh and I have never said that a new American Civil war will involve the blue and the gray or any other organized armies. That has been your imagination.

By the way, expect this to be the last I tell you on this in this thread.

You needle, you attack and you try to discredit, but you are way out of league when it comes to these things, you are in a very healthy sense of denial.

Oh and one more thing, I was so wrong about the Economy that we are in the midst of the greatest economic expansion ever, silly me... :sarcasm:

Go on, say whatever you want to say Cali.

Denial is just not a river in Egypt.

with lots of money.

terrorist-type acts by extremists on both the left and the right. I haven't heard of any such stirrings on the left, but we are seeing a lot of it on the right. We liberals were very angry at Bush, but I never heard anyone suggest anything violent. I only heard about peaceful demonstrations, non-violent conduct.

I think that the violence on the extreme right in our country is partly explained by the fact that they are in general less articulate. Granted there are exceptions. But, just compare the comments from subscribers on the right-wing websites with those on sites like FiredogLake, Huffington Post and DU. The complexity of the thought, the originality, the ease of expression, even the spelling is far better on the liberal sites.

We express our frustration and anger with words. Many on the extreme right cannot do that. They hit out or reach for a weapon.

Let's be fair though. Those who actually act on their violent impulses are few and far between at this point. They need to be given swift but very fair trials and sentenced for their crimes. That is the most effective response. That will be the best deterrent. And if there are co-conspirators, they too need to be prosecuted under the law.

In my view, however, political speech is not a crime unless it pretty clearly calls for criminal conduct.

these extreme right wing elements are.

And I might add, you do not need a majority for an insurgency to rise. You need a very committed, very angry, and very disenfranchised minority.

Also the model of the Weimar republic, while useful, is not what I am thinking about here. Look up Red brigades in both Italy and Germany in the 1970s, they were left, but they engaged in similar acts and in the beginning they were called lone wolves.

Think IRA... perfect example... and yes, the bris called them terrorists, and they were, but it was a civil war, solved the way most are solved, the IRA has been coopted. They either are coopted in the end, or take over the government.

Or for that matter when the Sandinistas and the FMLN started working in CA they were a few, organized in cells, and working to destabilize the central government.

When I talk civil war I don't mean large armies, or large groups of people throwing stones at each other. Though your example has one thing in common with modern civil wars, or even the American war of independence. MOST of the population doesn't want to have a thing to do with it. They want to be protected, but they want NOTHING to do with it. The American War of Independence had at best case, one third of the population actively involved in fighting the brits... at any one point, the same went for the loyalists. Their numbers were a little high but that is because they promised slaves their freedom if they joined up. But at least one third, at any one time, didn't want or care to have anything to do with it. Those are the numbers we are talking about. Yes, even that storied civil war, and it was one, didn't have the majority of the population participating on either side.

not become violent. The difference is that Democrats (on the left by American standards) have adopted non-violence as a value. We just do not believe in achieving our goals through violence. In a sense change through non-violence is a basic tenet of our movement. The problem is that the right wing does not share our belief that living together without violence is an important goal in and of itself.

early organizing... for terror operations. And it would have taken about 20 years for the first successful operations to take place.

Democrats still believed they had a role to play WITHIN the political system and instead of organizing for active armed resistance organized for active political resistance. This site is a good example of that organization,

The Christian Identity Movement, the Militia Movement and the White Supremacist movements do not feel they have a place WITHIN the political system. That is the difference. So their only choice is.... the ammo box.

of gaining power and money.
It was a divide and conquer strategy and very successful.
Until Obama was elected.
The civil war is now in its final death throes.

It looks like we have a standard insurgency movement that is just now getting really started in the violence department.

But the divide and conquer is part of it... and started way back... as in the reagan years.