Why a second US civil war is closer than you think

Six years ago, writer Stephen Marche predicted a divided America would descend into internecine conflict by 2040. But with the attempt on Trump’s life in Pennsylvania last week, dark clouds are already gathering over the Republic

- Stephen Marche

In 2018, when I was working on my book The Next Civil War, I remember speaking to an FBI agent who had been undercover for many years with the far right. By then I had done my own time with extremists from both sides, and I had a question: The right was responsible for over half of all political murders in the United States, and the left for somewhere around 4 per cent. How could he explain the difference? Why was one side so much more violently effective than the other?

He knew right away. The left blows itself up before it can blow anyone else up, he told me. The right, even on its insane fringes, can muster basic solidarity and order. As the 2024 election heats up, that undercover agent’s truth seems freshly valid to me. It feels like the right has already organised a path to autocracy. The left, which loudly claims to be defending US democracy, is in shambles.

The causes of the potential collapse of the American republic have been well established since 2008 at least. Countries collapse, not because of single events, but because of deep systemic failures, and the United States exhibits many of the most toxic systemic failures: negative partisanship drives its political system and, increasingly, its legal system; income inequality is at levels the country has not seen since its founding; faith in institutions of all kinds – Congress, the media, religious institutions, the courts – is in steep decline.

Meanwhile its archaic election system, the electoral college, simply does not reflect, in a meaningful way, the popular will. Fewer and fewer people in the United States believe in their political system – and those who do believe in it less and less.