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This is going to be an online meetup using Zoom. If you've never used Zoom before, don't worry — it's easy to use and free to join.

Here's the link to the event: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82072750783?pwd=TzlNR3dqVTJReHBsT2prZXgzTUlWZz09

Meeting ID: 820 7275 0783
Passcode: 071197

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UNDERSTANDING POLITICAL VIOLENCE

INTRODUCTION:

This is an updated version of a meetup we held back in Jan. 2021, seven months after the widespread riots that followed the death of George Floyd, three months after the riots in Philly after the shooting of Walter Wallace Jr., and just after the storming of the Capitol building on Jan. 6th by Trump supporters trying to "stop the steal" by interrupting the counting of the electoral votes. As we've had a bit over a year to process all of this, I figured it would be a good topic for our group to revisit.

We'll start by discussing the way that social norms about the use of violence by private citizens ties in with broader concerns about the "rule of law" and the state's "monopoly on the legitimate use of violence". We'll compare the riots in the summer of 2020 to the storming of the Capitol on 1/6/21, and debate whether or not this amounts to "whatboutism" or a valid attempt to establish consistency in our prohibitions of political violence.

In the second part of the discussion, we'll address the sociological & political science research into the effects of political violence on public opinion and public policy, as well as how political violence compares with non-violent forms of protests. In particular, we'll focus on the research of Erica Chenoweth and Omar Wasow.

In the third part, we'll look at some theories that try to explain the cyclical nature of political violence and we'll address the chances of a serious breakdown in law & order in the U.S. which the scholars Peter Turchin & Barbara F. Walter see this as a serious possibility, and we'll contrast this with some reasons why other scholars like Sam Harris & Richard Hanania think that an extreme political calamity like a "Second Civil War" or collapse of the U.S. government is unlikely, at least in the near future.

RELEVANT MATERIAL FROM PAST MEETUPS:

Back in May of 2017, we had 4 meetups on political violence from which some of the links in today's meetup outline are drawn. The 1st dealt with the difficulty of measuring political violence: https://www.meetup.com/Philadelphia-Political-Agnostics/events/wxsktmywgbnc/

The 2nd dealt with media bias, hate hoaxes & terrorism panics:
https://www.meetup.com/Philadelphia-Political-Agnostics/events/239785704/

The 3rd dealt with the psychology & ethics of political violence:
https://www.meetup.com/Philadelphia-Political-Agnostics/events/wxsktmywhbsb/

And the 4th dealt with the tactics & patterns of political violence:
https://www.meetup.com/Philadelphia-Political-Agnostics/events/239786314/

Back in Oct. 2021, we had a meetup entitled "Can We Predict Geopolitical Conflict?" In Part 3, we looked at how one might be able to predict when civil unrest could lead to a military coup or popular revolt, and in Part 4 we looked at how one might be able to predict when social tensions within a society could lead to civil war or genocide.
https://www.meetup.com/Philadelphia-Political-Agnostics/events/mxpscsyccnbfb/

Back in June 2021, Braver Angels hosted a debate on whether the threat of violent resistance against oppression by citizens is a crucial check on government tyranny or a grave threat to liberal democracy.
https://www.meetup.com/Philadelphia-Political-Agnostics/events/278695367/

In Jan. 2021, the Skeptics hosted a discussion on why analogies between today & either Weimar Germany in the 1920s or America in the 1850s are flawed, and looked at critiques of Neil Howe's "Fourth Turning" and Peter Turchin's "Ages of Discord".
https://www.meetup.com/Philly-Skeptics/events/kwpswrycccbpc/

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DIRECTIONS ON HOW TO PREPARE FOR OUR DISCUSSION:

I know I've linked a LOT of material below, and I certainly don't expect you to read every article and watch every video that I've linked below in order to participate. Instead, I just want everyone to try to look at one or two links in each section. Total, this shouldn't take more than 30-45 minutes of your time. Hopefully, participants will look at different materials and we'll be able to compare notes during the discussion and you'll find out what you missed. We'll go over the basics in everything linked below, and I'll make sure you leave with a better understanding of these issues. As you can see, I've jotted some notes under each link that summarize the major points so you can get a general overview of what each author says without having to examine everything.

In terms of the discussion format, my general idea is that we'll address the topics in the order presented here. I've also listed some questions under each section heading to stimulate discussion. We'll try to address most of them, as well as other questions members raise. I figure we'll spend about 40 minutes on each section.

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I. THE ETHICS OF POLITICAL VIOLENCE:

  • IS IT EVER ETHICAL TO PHYSICALLY ATTACK POLITICAL ADVERSARIES TO PREVENT OR PUNISH OBJECTIONABLE SPEECH (E.G. HATE SPEECH, FIGHTING WORDS, STOCHASTIC TERRORISM)? OR SHOULD FORCE ONLY BE USED TO DEFEND ONESELF OR OTHERS FROM AN IMMEDIATE THREAT OF PHYSICAL VIOLENCE?
  • IS IT EVER ETHICAL TO DESTROY GOVERNMENT PROPERTY AND/OR PHYSICALLY ATTACK GOV'T AGENTS IF THE GOV'T HAS DONE SOMETHING UNJUST, OR ONLY IN CASES WHERE THE LEGAL PROCESS IS BROKEN?
  • IS IT EVER ETHICAL TO LOOT AND/OR DESTROY LOCAL BUSINESSES TO PROTEST GOV'T INJUSTICES, OR ONLY IN CASES WHERE THE BUSINESSES DIRECTLY CONTRIBUTED TO THE INJUSTICE? DOES IT DEPEND ON WHETHER THE BUSINESS IS A LARGE CORPORATION OR A SMALL FAMILY BUSINESS AND/OR THEIR LEVEL OF INSURANCE?
  • DO ANTI-POLICE PROTESTS TYPICALLY GENERATE A "FERGUSON EFFECT" - I.E. ARE POLICING SLOWDOWNS FOLLOWED BY AN INCREASE IN CRIME RATES? IF SO, COULD LONG-TERM REFORMS IN POLICING COUNTERBALANCE THE SHORT-TERM HARMS FROM A CRIME SPIKE?
  • DO RADICALS ON EITHER SIDE OF THE POLITICAL SPECTRUM ADOPT TACTICS FROM THEIR OPPONENTS? IF SO, DOES THIS LEAD TO AN ESCALATION AS EACH SIDE TRIES TO ONE-UP THE OTHER?
  • DOES STORMING THE CAPITOL ON 1/6/21 TO TRY TO OVERTURN AN ELECTION POSE A SERIOUS CHALLENGE TO THE STATE'S "MONOPOLY OF LEGITIMATE VIOLENCE" & THE "RULE OF LAW" IN A WAY THAT THE 2020 RIOTS & LOOTING DID NOT?
  1. Dave Nicks, "When Is Political Violence Acceptable? -- Just War Theory, Utilitarianism, and the Regressive Left" (video - 23:51 minutes)
    https://www.bitchute.com/video/CVvQIMY6czI1/

Nicks is an anime & videogame vlogger who, for a non-academic, offers a surprisingly cogent argument about why physically attacking people for having abhorrent political ideas is wrong because it endangers the rule of law. He frames his arguments in terms of the "just war theory" from traditional political philosophy. Just War theory is based on the idea that political violence is only justified when it "intends to and results in protecting people from an even greater harm" (e.g. tyranny, widespread persecution, or genocide). In less dire conditions, political violence is not preferable to the rule of law which benefits everyone by keeping the risk of violent victimization fairly low. He also criticizes the naïve utilitarian arguments often used by those who think that "hate speech" by extremists should be met with violence, noting that philosophers like Immanuel Kant pointed out that this type of reasoning would lead to a "tyranny of the majority".

  1. Jason Brennan, "On Looting and Burning"
    https://200proofliberals.blogspot.com/2020/08/if-looting-were-justifiable.html

Brennan is a philosopher whose book "When All Else Fails" (2018) explored the ethics of resistance to state injustice. He wrote a blog post in response to an interview NPR gave the author Vicky Osterweil about her book In Defense of Looting (2018), which justified looting as a way of punishing racist businesses, punishing "the system" more broadly, and as a means of economic redistribution. Brennan argues that the presumption against hurting innocent 3rd parties might be overcome by arguing (1) the 3rd parties aren't actually innocent, or (2) the good consequences of looting justify the behavior. He points out various flaws with both arguments, suggesting only violence against the state is justified to counter state injustice.

  1. Jerusalem Demsas, "The effects of Black Lives Matter protests"
    https://www.vox.com/22360290/black-lives-matter-protest-crime-ferguson-effects-murder

In Apr. 2020, Lopez noted that a study by Travis Campbell, a PhD student in economics at UMass Amherst, found that places with BLM protests from 2014 to 2019 saw a 15-20% reduction in police homicides but an 10% increase in murders. The reasons for this rise in murders are not fully known, but one possible explanation is that police morale drops following protests, leading officers to reduce their efforts and thereby emboldening criminals. Another is that members of the public voluntarily withdraw from engagements with the police after a police homicide delegitimizes the justice system. (While Demsas doesn't discuss this, it's worth considering whether a growing sentiment that the "social contract" is broken and "rule of law" is just a myth to justify oppression could cause far more secondary deaths from a violent crime spike than any riots & looting cause directly.)

  1. Mark Steyn, "This Is Not Who We Are..."
    https://www.steynonline.com/10914/this-is-not-who-we-are

In an interview shortly after the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, Steyn pushed back on the idea that this sort of violence was unprecedented, noting that it was preceded by the anti-police riots over the summer & early fall of 2020. (This phenomenon of the radical right mimicking the radical left recalls the sociologist Charles Tilly's concept of the "repertoire of contention" - i.e. the set of tools & tactics available to a protest movement at a given time, as well as the social norms that govern their use.)

  1. Orion, "Protest, resistance, challenge"
    https://nancylebov.livejournal.com/681472.html

The rationalist blogger Orion recently argued that there's a difference between types of oppositional political activity depending on whether it aims at "resistance" (preventing or deterring the gov't from implementing their policies) or "challenge" (seeking to deprive gov't officials of their office or setting up a competing gov't). Orion points out that both can take legal & illegal forms, as well as non-violent or violent forms. He says he think Democrats have become too cavalier about legal and symbolic challenge (e.g. claims that Russian hackers "stole" the election) and are too cavalier about violent resistance, in terms of the 2020 riots. However, he argues that mainstream Democrats haven't encouraged violent challenges to gov't authority, whereas that's what Trump & his allies precipitated by repeatedly claiming the 2020 election was stolen via massive voter fraud. He argues that storming the Capitol to protest a bill would be less egregious than trying to overturn an election, because the latter threatens to cause a breakdown in the rule of law.

  1. William Vogelei, "About 'Whataboutism' - When turnabout is never fair play"
    https://www.city-journal.org/about-whataboutism-and-political-hypocrisy

Vogelei says that "whatboutism" is an illegitimate rhetorical tactic when it evades a legitimate question by dragging in irrelevancies, but he argues that comparing the summer's anti-police riots to the storming of the Capitol is not a false equivalence. He notes that critics have contrasted BLM’s genuine grievances with the spurious ones about vote fraud that fueled the Capitol riot, but notes that "there is no injustice-validation tribunal to predetermine whose complaints merit suspending the ordinary strictures against rioting" and "contending that any grievance qualifies the otherwise categorical rejection of rioting puts us on a slippery slope to a dangerous place."

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II. THE EFFECTIVENESS OF PROTESTS & THE "RADICAL FLANK EFFECT" AS A DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD:

  • IS THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MODERATES & RADICALS ON THE SAME SIDE OF THE POLITICAL SPECTRUM ADVERSARIAL OR COMPLIMENTARY?
  • IS NONVIOLENT CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE SUFFICIENT, OR IS "DIVERSITY OF TACTICS" (I.E. A MIX OF VIOLENCE & NON-VIOLENCE) NEEDED TO FORCE THE GOV'T TO BARGAIN WITH REFORMERS?
  • IS VIOLENCE USEFUL FOR INTIMIDATING A MOVEMENT'S CRITICS INTO SILENCE, OR IS SHAMING BETTER?
  • CAN PROVOKING A POLICE OVERREACTION WORK IN PROTESTORS' FAVOR?
  • WHEN DO POLITICAL PROTESTS GAIN FAVORABLE MEDIA COVERAGE & PUBLIC SYMPATHY, AND WHEN DO THEY BACKFIRE & LEAD MAINSTREAM VOTERS TO SEEK OUT AN AUTHORITARIAN LEADER WHO PROMISES TO REESTABLISH "LAW & ORDER"?
  • HOW DO DIFFERENT TYPES OF VIOLENT TACTICS ENTER THE ACTIVISTS' "REPERTOIRE OF CONTENTION"? WHAT PREVENTS ESCALATION TO LETHAL FORCE?
  • WHY AREN'T U.S. CONSERVATIVES AS ADEPT AT USING RIGHT-WING MILITANTS AS A RADICAL FLANK? IS IT THEIR DEFERENCE TO LAW & ORDER, OR MERELY BECAUSE THEY USE POLICE BRUTALITY INSTEAD?
  1. Pamela Oliver, "Asking the Wrong Questions About Protest"
    https://www.ssc.wisc.edu/soc/racepoliticsjustice/2017/02/02/asking-the-wrong-questions-about-protest/

Oliver introduces the question of whether moderate activists are right that radicals create a public backlash that interferes with the movement's wider goals, or whether the radicals are right that their protests create space for, at minimum, the achievement of more moderate goals. She references the concept of the "radical flank effect", a term coined by Herbert Haines, a SUNY-Courtland sociologist in his 1988 book Black Radicals and the Civil Rights Mainstream, 1954-1970. Haines argued that radical groups like the Black Panthers and individuals like Malcolm X generated enough fear in the public & government officials that it made the more reasonable demands of the moderates like Martin Luther King Jr. look like an attractive way to head off civil unrest. Haines pointed to the 1964 Civil Rights Act, 1965 Voting Rights Act, and 1968 Fair Housing Act as examples of what he calls this a "positive radical flank effect". But he also raised the possibility of "negative radical flank effects"—indeed, he pointed to the backlash to black radicalism that kicked in by the early 1970s. However, Haines argued the "positive radical flank effects" were more decisive in the long run, since the backlash didn't erase the earlier victories encoded in the civil rights legislation.

  1. Erica Chenowith, "The success of nonviolent civil resistance" (video - 12:33 min.)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJSehRlU34w

Erica Chenoweth is a political scientist at the University of Denver and one of the first researchers to do broad, quantitative analysis of the relative success of violent & nonviolent political movements around the world. She looked at 323 campaigns from 1900-2006, categoried them as violent or non-violent, and looked at whether they achieved their states aims (i.e. regime change, anti‐occupation, secession). She found that violent campaigns appeared to work more in the 1940s-1950s, but that the nonviolent campaigns have had a much higher success rate since the 1960s.

When she looked at why nonviolent resistance was more effective than violent insurgency, she found 2 major reasons: (1) nonviolent campaigns can mobilize more people than violent campaigns (i.e. nonviolent protests are less physically demanding and usually less risky because they are often met with less force by the regime), and (2) mass nonviolent action is more likely to divide the regime, whereas violent action is more likely to unite the regime (i.e. nonviolent protests tend to generate more public sympathy, inspire less backlash, and encourage security force defections). Chenoweth mentions that every movement in her study that achieved sustained participation from 3.5% of the population succeeded - this has come to be known as the "3.5% Rule".

Chenoweth also looked at the consequences of violent & nonviolent campaigns after they achieved success, and she found that violent
campaigns tend to create “structural violence” that lingers after the insurgency ends, whereas nonviolent campaigns are more likely to improve governance and stability.

  1. Ray Valentine, "You Call This an Uprising?"
    http://www.orchestratedpulse.com/2016/06/you-call-this-an-uprising/

Valentine takes issues with Chenoweth's research findings, arguing that she classified several successful campaigns such as India's independence movement, South African anti-apartheid movement, and the 2011 Egyptian revolution as "nonviolent" despite violent flanks & incidents of defensive violence. He argues that new research is revealing that despite the rhetoric of its leaders, many rank-and-file participants in the US civil rights movement were armed to defend themselves from white mobs. Striking workers in the Great Depression defended themselves when police and scabs tried to break their pickets. The contemporary movement against militarized policing and mass incarceration included riots in Ferguson, Baltimore, Anaheim, and Brooklyn. All of these actions would violate the Engler’s guidelines for strict, disciplined nonviolence, and none of them got in the way of mass participation. Valentine concedes that "most civilians movements are surely primarily nonviolent most of the time, but they frequently contain moments of intensified militancy" He says he doesn't want to romanticize or advocate for violence, but also argues that "policing the limits of acceptable tactics is usually counterproductive, and denouncing anything that might be construed as violent — especially in the name of appealing to a hypothetical, implicitly middle-class 'public opinion' — largely serves to split movements and legitimize repression."

Valentine also notes that Chenoweth is is affiliated with a center at the University of Denver that is funded by the Departments of Defense & Homeland Security and the CIA. He notes that these connections have not gone unnoticed on the left, leading some of the global left to instinctively view outbreaks of mass protest against governments hostile to the US as imperialist plots. Valentine resists viewing everything through a conspiracy theory lens, but he notes that the failure of nonviolent activists to bring about socialist revolutions is presumably "a feature rather than a bug" from the perspectives of the neoliberal interests that Chenoweth represents.

  1. Jonathan Chait, "New Study Shows Riots Make America Conservative"
    http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/05/new-study-shows-riots-make-america-conservative.html

Chait cites some recent research by Princeton political scientist Omar Wasow that shows that Herbert Haines may have been mistaken about the net effect of the "radical flank effects" generated by the black radicals of the 1960s-70s. Wasow compared poll data showing the public’s concern for civil rights as well as concern for “social control” with incidents of violent & nonviolent protests, and found they match up pretty closely:

Wasow also looked at county-by-county voting and compared it with violent & nonviolent protest activity, and he found that black-led protests in which some violence occurred are associated with a significant decline in Democratic vote-share in the 1964, 1968 and 1972 presidential elections. Black-led nonviolent protests, by contrast, exhibit a statistically significant positive relationship with county-level Democratic vote-share in the same period. Examining counterfactual scenarios in the 1968 election, Wasow estimated that fewer violent protests were associated with a substantially increased likelihood that the Democratic presidential nominee, Hubert Humphrey, would have beaten the Republican nominee, Richard Nixon.

Thus, Chait argues, "the physical damage inflicted upon poor urban neighborhoods by rioting does not have the compensating virtue of easing the way for more progressive policies; instead, it compounds the damage by promoting a regressive backlash. The Nixonian law and order backlash drove a wave of repressive criminal-justice policies that carried through for decades with such force that even Democrats like Bill Clinton felt the need to endorse them in order to win elections "

  1. Ryan Cooper, "Moderate Liberals' Weak Case Against Riots"
    http://theweek.com/articles/556803/moderate-liberals-weak-case-against-riots

Cooper is critical of Chait's article and the idea that Wasow's research on the civil rights movements & black radicalism in the 1960s-'70s shows why the Black Lives Matter movement shouldn't use riots. He brings up 4 objections: (1) The crime rate was much higher in the '60-'70s which made a public backlash to rioting and the election of a "law & order" candidate like Nixon more likely than today when crime rates are much lower; (2) The relative scale of recent riots is much smaller compared to those of the '60s-'70s; (3) Wasow's analysis shows that black-led riots were associated with a 1.12-1.55% decline in Democratic vote share. That conceivably could have tipped the 1968 election, which was extremely close, but it wouldn't have mattered in 1972, when Nixon won by 23 points; (4) Riots might lead to better policy from the existing government, at the cost of a hit to public opinion. For instance, when Martin Luther King was assassinated, sparking days of chaos in many American cities, only a week later Congress passed the Fair Housing Act.

  1. Curtis Yavin, "Right-Wing Terror As Folk Activism"
    http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2011/07/right-wing-terrorism-as-folk-activism.html

The "Neoreactionary" thinker Curtis Yavin argues that right-wing terrorism cannot be effective in most modern nations because it's essentially a "violent flank" without a moderate center-right. There are conservative political parties, but they tend to disdain the use of terrorism because it goes against their instinctive deference to law & order. Without any covert allies in the establishment, there's no one who can use the looming threat of right-wing violence to push for concessions to conservative political goals. Moldbug says that the only possible change a right-wing activist has to shift the country rightward is to join the political left and subvert it from within.

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III. CONFLICT CYCLES & DIRE PREDICTIONS:

  • WHAT FACTORS ARE BEHIND OUR SOCIETY'S GROWING POLITICAL TENSIONS, AND DO THEY FOLLOW CYCLES?
  • WAS PETER TURCHIN'S 2010 PREDICTION OF A RISE IN CIVIL UNREST AROUND 2020 PRESCIENT OR JUST LUCKY?
  • DO THE 3 CYCLES TURCHIN BORROWS FROM THE STUDY OF AGRARIAN KINGDOMS MAKE SENSE IN A MODERN INDUSTRIALIZED SOCIETY?
  • IS WALTER'S MODEL BASED ON THE CIA'S POLITICAL INSTABILITY TASK FORCE SOUND, OR TOO DEPENDENT ON DUBIOUS DEMOCRACY RATINGS & ANALOGIES WITH THIRD WORLD COUNTRIES?
  • IS JUSTIN KING RIGHT THAT THE U.S. MILITARY'S FAILURE TO PREVENT A CIVIL WAR IN IRAQ & AFGHANISTAN SUGGESTS IT COULDN'T PREVENT ONE AT HOME EITHER, GIVEN THE LARGER LAND AREA & NUMBERS OF PEOPLE INVOLVED?
  • ARE MASS SHOOTINGS & BOMBINGS THE BIGGEST CONCERNS, OR COULD ATTACKS ON CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE CAUSE EVEN MORE CASUALTIES?
  • COULD TIT-FOR-TAT VIOLENCE BETWEEN FAR LEFT & FAR RIGHT GROUPS THRUST THE U.S. INTO SOMETHING LIKE ITALY'S "YEARS OF LEAD" IN THE 1970s-80s?
  • COULD A "WAR ON DOMESTIC TERRORISM" STAMP OUT THE FAR RIGHT, OR IS THIS TOO HARD SINCE MUCH OF THE POLICE & MILITARY LEAN RIGHT? WOULD IT CREATE A LARGER RIGHT-WING BACKLASH?
  • IS THE FBI GOOD ENOUGH AT BREAKING UP EXTREMIST GROUPS THAT LONE-WOLF ATTACKS ARE THE BIGGER CONCERN?
  • IS DETENTE POSSIBLE WITH ECONOMIC POLICY & CENTRIST SOCIAL MESSAGING?
  1. Paul Rosenberg, "Breaking point: America approaching a period of disintegration, argues anthropologist Peter Turchin"
    http://www.salon.com/2016/10/01/breaking-point-america-approaching-a-period-of-disintegration-argues-anthropologist-peter-turchin/

Peter Turchin is a lifelong academic who's shifted from zoology (his PhD) to studying ecology, anthropology & history, and his theories are taken much more seriously in academia than Neil Howe's "Fourth Turning" theory to which it's sometimes compared. His 2016 book, "Ages of Discord", posits a 50-year conflict cycle in American history, starting around 1770 (i.e. lead up to the Revolution), skipping over 1820 ("The Era of Good Feelings" when economic & social factors were very benign), peaking initially around 1870 (Civil War), then in 1920 (First Red Scare), then in 1970 (Civil Rights & Student Protests), and peaking again around 2020. Some of this 50-year cycle is due to generational amnesia about the consequences of political violence & social turmoil - every other generation (25 years each) has to re-live it.

Turchin also sees social conflict as being tied to deeper economic & demographic factors which can make the magnitude of each peak milder or more severe. His "structural-demographic theory" represent complex human societies as systems with 3 main compartments (general population, elites, and the state) interacting with each other and with sociopolitical instability via a web of nonlinear feedbacks. (In other articles, Turchin emphasizes the difference between cliodynamics' use of oscillations & feedback loops and the more rigid "clock-like" cycles that many amateur theorists tend to use. There are a lot of economic & demographic factors that can advance or delay the action of the feedback loop, so one must be cautious about thinking a given society's cycles will always last the same amount of time or that the cycles in different societies will always be the same length.)

Turchin's model has 3 sources of conflict: (1) There's a Malthusian cycle that ties in with the "iron laws" of wages & rent — prosperity leads to population growth that outstrips gains in agricultural productivity, which leads to increased rent, falling wages & declining living standards, urban migration, and eventually civil unrest. (2) There's "elite overproduction," i.e. cheap labor & high rent enriches the elites, whose numbers grow, producing their own set of problems in the form of intra-elite competition. (3) There's a "dynastic cycle" where prosperity & population growth leads to growth of the army & state bureaucracy, as well as higher taxes to fund them, and as this process runs into diminishing returns, it pushes the state toward fiscal crisis & loss of military control, opening the way for an elite coup or popular rebellion.

The article notes that "because Turchin’s focus is on the model and how well it accounts for measurable historical changes, the book is not a set of prescriptions for how to get out of our current mess. But the example of how we escaped the last time [i.e. in the period following the 1920 peak in conflict] is surely useful in a general sense... And what we find is a surprisingly mixed bag of what we might today call liberal and conservative measures, intended to restrain out-of-control competition and conflicts." Turchin argues that the progressive economic policies of FDR's New Deal helped boost wages & employment, and tighter immigration restrictions — although often motivated by racism — helped as well by decreasing the labor supply. Elite universities enacted tighter admission policies which discriminated against non-WASPs, but this helped decrease elite overproduction. As the article states, "One obviously doesn’t have to approve of every social reform of that period to appreciate the fact that they did help rebuild social trust, eventually reaching levels [by the 1950s] not seen since the 1820s. This is what science at its best does for a democracy — not tell us what we must do, but clarify the costs, benefits and trade-offs involved, including the tragic costs of doing nothing."

NOTE: On Jan. 7, 2021, Turchin reflected on how his model can't predict specific events like the storming of the Capitol, but does predict heightened social conflict until the underlying problems are dealt with.
https://peterturchin.com/cliodynamica/the-storming-of-the-u-s-capitol/

14a) Justin King, "How The US Military Is Preparing To Put Down An American Insurgency"
https://www.mintpressnews.com/us-military-preparing-put-american-insurgency/219890/

King, a former military contractor & independent journalist, criticizes an article by retired Army colonel Kevin Benson in the November 2012 edition of the respected Small Wars Journal. The article is entitled "Full Spectrum Operations in the Homeland: A 'Vision' of the Future," and it strategizes about how the US military could suppress a right-wing "militia" insurgency that popped up during an economic crisis. In the scenario, the DoD responds to this threat by establishing a “show of force” to demoralize the insurgents, and then they mount offensive operations by surprise to take down the checkpoints. Towards the end of the campaign, the military seizes power and radio stations and begins mopping up operations once the civilians in the area have fled.

However, King argues there can be no “show of force” to insurgents who don’t take & hold territory but use sabotage and hit & run tactics instead. He argues that US counterinsurgency doctrine is visibly flawed since it failed to pacify Iraq & Afghanistan.

14b) Justin King, "Cycle of Insurgency: What an insurgency in the US would look like"
http://thefifthcolumnnews.com/2016/07/cycle-of-insurgency-what-an-insurgency-in-the-us-would-look-like/

In a follow-up essay, King painted a dire picture of how a civil war in the U.S. would proceed: Bombings and ambushes are daily occurrences. Police forces and other government representatives are targets, as are their families. Attacks on infrastructure become commonplace, and when the roads become unsafe to travel due to ambushes and IEDs or the infrastructure is destroyed, the trucks that deliver all of our food, fuel & medical supplies stop. He predicted food shortages within 3 days and loss off clean drinking water within a month. Anyone dependent on medicine like insulin (~3 million Americans) would probably die, and tens of millions would probably starve, die of disease, or be killed in the fighting & looting.

King argued the US military would be unable to suppress a full-scale insurgency because they simply don't have enough manpower. It took 170K US troops to (fail to) pacify Iraq's insurrection and the US has a population about 10 times the population & 20 times the land area of Iraq. Even if the DoD deployed ever single member of the Army & Marines, they could only field 750K troops and that’s about one million troops shy of the needed number to match the (in)effectiveness of Iraq’s counter-insurgency operation. UN peacekeeping forces would be unlikely to help much, since without US contributions they don't have enough operating funds, and other countries would be hard pressed to offer help since a civil war in the US would cause the world economy to tank.

  1. Chris Blattman, "Why I do not expect a civil war in America (and what does worry me)"
    https://chrisblattman.com/2022/01/31/why-i-do-not-expect-a-civil-war-in-america-and-what-does-worry-me/

Blattman, a political scientist, wrote a critique of Barbara F. Walter's new book "The Next Civil War" (2022). He points out the problem with her use of the Polity Project's dubious democracy ratings to claim that the U.S. is now an "anocracy" (semi-democracy) with today's score somehow comparable to the U.S. in 1865. He also criticizes her use of a model from the CIA's Political Instability Task Force (PITF) which was designed to predict civil wars in Third World countries much poorer than the U.S. He thinks a "civil conflict" like the Troubles in Northern Ireland is unlikely to happen in the U.S. unless the government massively overreacts to riots or incidents of domestic terrorism, causing a popular backlash on the right.

  1. Sam Harris, "Former Air Force data scientist explains why the US won’t see a violent political revolution anytime soon"
    http://www.businessinsider.com/the-us-isnt-on-the-brink-of-a-violent-political-revolution-because-it-doesnt-have-enough-teenagers-2017-4

Harris, a data scientist (not the New Atheist author), argues that there's simply not enough young people in the U.S. to fuel a revolution. When he worked for the military, he did analysis on hundreds of factors across centuries worth of data for many countries to determine what drove the levels of violence in a society, and he found the most significant factor was the number of individuals aged 13–19 relative to the number of individuals aged over 35. If the 35+ year-olds outnumbered the teenagers, there was no chance of civil war. Unlike the U.S. in 1860, teenagers are now drastically outnumbered by the 35+ year-olds.

  1. Richard Hanania, "Americans hate each other. But we aren't headed for civil war"
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/civil-war-united-states-unlikely-violence/2020/10/29/3a143936-0f0f-11eb-8074-0e943a91bf08_story.html

Hanania, a political scientist, notes that his research indicates that political grievances aren't enough to cause full-scale civil wars (defined as 1000+ war deaths/yr) since wealthy, industrialized nations can either buy off the opposition or use their powerful military to put down any insurgency.

  1. Joseph Lanchester, "Years of Lead" (video - 14:40 min.)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnwyv3RyJyc

Back in 2017, Lanchester, an Anglo-German skeptic Youtuber, suggested the clashes between far-right & far-left activists at protests could degenerate into something akin to Italy's "Years of Lead", a period from the late 1960s to the late 1980s marked by a wave of bombings & assassinations by communist & fascist groups. He was alarmed by the growth of lone wolf attacks in the U.S. which are harder to prevent. The only way to prevent this escalation is for the majority to deny any legitimacy to illegal violence and for the authorities to crack down.

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