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IS POLITICAL VIOLENCE INCREASING IN AMERICA - AND IF SO, WHAT SHOULD WE DO ABOUT IT?

INTRODUCTION:

This is an updated version of a meetup we held back in Feb. 2022, albeit with a new 1st section that instead of addressing the anti-police riots of 2020 and storming of the Capitol on 1/6/21 addresses the ongoing debates about a recent rise in political violence in the wake of the shooting of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk while speaking on the campus of Utah Valley University on Wed., Sept. 10th. This shooting happened the same day that a 16-year-old in Evergreen, CO shot & injured two of his classmates then took his own life after apparently being radicalized by far-right content online. These are just the latest of a string of political violence this year, with some previous notable incidents as follows:

Kirk's murder comes about 2 weeks after the murder of a Ukrainian refugee, Iryna Zarutska, on August 22nd while riding a train in Charlotte, NC by a mentally-ill black man who allegedly twice said on video, “I got that white girl.” This received heavy coverage in conservative media and is reminiscent over the debate over why Darrell Brooks Jr. wasn't charged with a hate crime for the Waukesha Christmas parade attack which killed 6 people and injured 62 others two days after the Rittenhouse trial verdict in Nov. 2021, despite plenty of anti-white posts on social media. It's reignited a debate over double-standards with the ways the mainstream media reports interracial violence and what gets officially counted as a "hate crime" in an era when hate crimes are officially on the rise. It should be pointed out that unlike terrorism, hate crimes are mostly not murders or attempted murders but rather vandalism, harassment & simple assault - in 2020, there were only 22 murders out of 7,750 hate crime offenses.

We should also note that although violent crimes with a clear political or racial motive garner lots of media attention, they are much more rare than those without any obvious ideological motive. To put things in perspective, in 2024, the FBI reported 16,935 murders in the U.S., so these high-profile incidents of political & racial violence will almost certainly account for a fraction of 1% of this year's total homicides. And overall, the crime news isn't all bad, in fact it shows big improvement - the U.S. murder rate in 2024 fell to 5.0 per 100K which was a 14.9% decrease from 2023, and the homicide rate continued to decline in the first half of 2025, lowering the overall rate in the U.S. to a level it hasn't seen in a decade - although some cities are still seeing higher homicide rates than they did in the first half of 2019.

So what should we make of all this?

In the first section of our discussion, we'll start trying to assess whether political & racial violence has been risen to heights unseen since the late 1960s && early 1970s as some pundits have suggested, and if so whether the violence is disproportionately coming from the left or the right side of the political spectrum. We'll also look at public opinion polls that might help us gauge whether there's a rise in a broader sense that violence is sometimes justified in the pursuit of political aims. We'll also touch upon how much trust we should put in official numbers from studies by NGOs like New America, a Washington research center that claimed in 2015 that in the years after 9/11, nearly twice as many Americans were killed by far-right extremists than by radical Muslims.

In the second section, we'll try to assess whether racial violence is also reaching a peak not seen in 50 years, and if so whether the violence is disproportionately coming from whites or non-whites. We'll also look at public opinion polls that might help us gauge how Americans views on race & ethnicity have shifted in recent years in a way that might signal a growing sense of division that could lead violence. Once again, we'll touch upon how much trust we should put in official numbers from left-wing advocacy groups like the ADL & SPLC.

In the third 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 Herbert Haines, Erica Chenoweth and Omar Wasow.

In the fourth 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 was entitled "The Fuzzy Epistemology of Ideological Violence" and dealt with the difficulty of measuring political violence due to trouble ascertaining a suspect's motives in many cases and distinguishing terrorism, hate crimes, arson & political/race riots from the much larger pool of similar type of non-ideological violence.

The 2nd was entitled "Media Bias, Hate Hoaxes & Terrorism Panics" and dealt with the debate over selection media coverage of certain types of ideological violence, the problems of hate crime hoaxes, the psychological impact of terrorism & hate crime reports, and whether media coverage of these types of crimes can make them worse.

The 3rd was entitled "The Psychology & Ethics of Political Violence" and and dealt with psychological explanations for why people become terrorists, whether violence is ever justified to stop "hate speech", and whether political violence poses a broader danger to society by eroding the "rule of law" and the state's "monopoly on violence".

And the 4th was entitled "The Tactics & Patterns of Political Violence" and looked at the research by Herbert Haines, Erica Chenoweth, Omar Wasow, and Peter Turchin linked below.

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.

Back in June 2021, Braver Angels hosted a debate entitled "Violence in the Political Process" 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.

In Jan. 2021, the Skeptics hosted a discussion entitled "Bad History & Our Political Crisis" 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".

In June 2022, the Skeptics hosted a discussion entitled "Is 'Christian Nationalism' a Real Threat?" where they looked at what sociologists & psychologists call the "construct validity" of "Christian Nationalism" and then moved on to evaluating the research that linked it with COVID denialism, Trump support, belief in QAnon conspiracy theories, and right-wing terrorism.

In July 2022, the Skeptics hosted a discussion entitled "Is Left-Wing Extremism a Real Threat?" where they looked at construct validity of "left-wing authoritarianism" before moving on to analyze the effects of the anti-police protests & riots in 2020 and the prevalence of left-wing terrorists the FBI classifies as "anarchist violent extremists" (AVEs) and "Black Identity Extremists" (BIEs).

DIRECTIONS ON HOW TO PREPARE FOR OUR DISCUSSION:

Unlike most of my discussion outlines, I haven't included any videos this time because I couldn't find any that were succinct enough and empirically-based in their analysis. Thus the articles you see linked below are intended to give you a basic overview of some of the major debates over the apparent rise in political & racial violence over the last decade in America. As usual, I certainly don't expect you to read all the articles prior to attending our discussion. I've included some brief summaries of the articles in the 3rd & 4th sections to help our members quickly get the gist without having to read all of them.

In terms of the discussion format, my general idea is that we'll address the topics in the order presented here. I've listed some questions under each section to stimulate discussion. We'll do our best to address most of them, as well as whatever other questions our members raise. I figure we'll spend about 30 minutes on each section.

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I. HAS POLITICAL VIOLENCE (AND SUPPORT FOR IT) RISEN OVER THE LAST DECADE - AND IF SO, WHICH DEMOGRAPHICS HAVE THE HIGHER RATES OF RADICALIZATION?

  • WHY IS IT HARD TO ACCURATELY GAUGE THE LEVEL OF POLITICAL VIOLENCE? SHOULD WE FOCUS ON MURDERS WHICH SHOW NO CLEAR SPIKE IN RECENT YEARS (ONCE 2016 PULSE NIGHTCLUB SHOOTING IS EXCLUDED), OR COUNT ARRESTS & PROSECUTIONS FROM PLOTS (SOME FOILED) & THREATS OF VIOLENCE AGAINST PUBLIC OFFICIALS WHICH DO SHOW A RECENT SPIKE?
  • JUDGING FROM THE STATS PRESENTED IN THE ECONOMIST & CATO ARTICLES BELOW, IS IT ACCURATE TO SAY THAT RIGHT-WING ATTACKS TEND TO CAUSE MORE DEATHS IN RECENT YEARS THAN ISLAMIST ATTACKS, OR DOES MEGAN McARDLE'S CRITIQUE OF THE 2015 NEW AMERICA STUDY SUGGEST "RIGHT-WING ATTACKS" MAY BE PADDED OUT WITH WHITE CRIMINALS WITH NO CLEAR POLITICAL MOTIVE WHILE SOME JIHADIST ATTACKS (DC BELTWAY SNIPERS) ARE IGNORED?
  • WHAT SHOULD WE MAKE OF THE FACT THAT IF THE DEATH TOLL FROM FAR-RIGHT ATTACKS ONLY OUTNUMBER ISLAMIST ATTACKS 2-TO-1, THAT MUST MEAN THE RADICALIZATION RATE IS FAR HIGHER AMONG AMERICAN MUSLIMS WHO ONLY ACCOUNT FOR ~1% OF THE POPULATION VS "MAGA REPUBLICANS" WHO THINK THE 2020 ELECTION WAS STOLEN (~15% OF U.S. POP.)?
  • EVEN IF THE NUMBERS ON TERRORISM ARE SOMEWHAT BIASES AGAINST THE RIGHT, IS IT STILL ACCURATE TO SAY THAT RIGHT-WING ATTACKS TEND TO KILL MORE PEOPLE WHILE LEFT-WING ATTACKS TEND TO BE MORE NUMEROUS BUT INVOLVE MORE "MID-LEVEL VIOLENCE" LIKE HARASSMENT & DESTRUCTION OF PROPERTY THAT'S LESS HARSHLY PUNISHED?
  • DO PUBLIC OPINION POLLS SHOW A WORRYING INCREASE AMONG AMERICANS WILLING TO CONDONE POLITICAL VIOLENCE, PARTICULARLY AMONG YOUNGER PEOPLE? DO WE SEE MAJOR DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE LEFT & RIGHT, AND HOW DOES THIS VARY OVER TIME (E.G. AFTER ATTACKS ON THEIR SIDE VS OTHER SIDE)?
  • IS THE RECENT ONLINE CELEBRATION OF THE KILLINGS OF HEALTHCARE CEO BRIAN THOMPSON & BLACKSTONE EXEC WESLEY LEPATNER A WORRYING TREND, OR PROBABLY INDICATIVE OF A SMALL MINORITY?
  • Nicole Narea, "Is political violence on the rise in America? Two charts that show how the attack on Minnesota lawmakers is part of a dangerous trend."
    https://www.vox.com/politics/417351/minnesota-assassination-political-violence-trump-shooting
  • The Economist, "Is 'radical-left' violence really on the rise in America The killing of Charlie Kirk is part of a grim pattern of political violence. This is what the data show..."
    https://archive.ph/EMh4x
  • Alex Nowrasteh, "Politically Motivated Violence Is Rare in the United States"
    https://www.cato.org/blog/politically-motivated-violence-rare-united-states
  • Megan McArdle, "Tallying Right-Wing Terror vs. Jihad: It's complicated enough. No need to stretch the numbers [as 2015 New America study did]."
    https://archive.ph/w7ApU
  • Laura Santhanam, "1 in 5 Americans think violence may solve U.S. divisions, poll finds"
    https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/1-in-5-americans-think-violence-may-solve-u-s-divisions-poll-finds
  • David Montgomery, "What Americans really think about political violence"
    https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/52960-charlie-kirk-americans-political-violence-poll
  • Sean J. Westwood, et al, "Current research overstates American support for political violence"
    https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2116870119
  • Jesse Arm, "The Rise of Luigism: Those celebrating the murder of Wesley LePatner reveal a dark, rising undercurrent in our culture."
    https://www.city-journal.org/article/manhattan-shooting-wesley-lepatner-blackstone-luigi-mangione

II. HAVE HATE CRIMES (AND RACISM) RISEN OVER THE LAST DECADE - AND IF SO, WHICH DEMOGRAPHICS HAVE THE HIGHER RATES OF RADICALIZATION?

III. THE EFFECTIVENESS OF PROTESTS VS RIOTS & 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?

* 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.

* 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.

* 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."

* 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 "

* 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.

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IV. CONFLICT CYCLES & DIRE PREDICTIONS OF A "SECOND CIVIL WAR":

  • 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 BARBARA J. 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?
  • IS THE FBI GOOD ENOUGH AT BREAKING UP EXTREMIST GROUPS THAT LONE-WOLF ATTACKS ARE THE BIGGER CONCERN?

* 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.

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/

* Lindsay Morgan w/ Barbara F. Walter, "Is the US headed toward civil war?"
https://politicalviolenceataglance.org/2022/01/06/is-the-us-headed-toward-civil-war/
Walter, a political scientist, discussed her work with the U.S. Political Instability Task Force that identified 2 factors that best predict where political instability and civil war: "anoracy" (semi-democracy) and "ethnic entrepreneurs" who rile up a shrinking majority that begins to realize they have no way to regain power by working within the system. She pointed out that the Polity Project downgraded the U.S. to "anocracy" in Jan. 2022, and argues that right-wing ethnic entrepreneur-style populist have been made more dangerous by social media which allows them to spread disinformation, and thus she fears that Republicans may start a civil war - or at least a "civil conflict". This is summarized in her book "The Next Civil War" (2022)

* 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". 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.

* 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.

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.

Conflict Resolution
Sociology
Criminal Justice
Protest
Political Polarization

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