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Mar 9 19 tweets 19 min read
Warnings of ‘Civil War’ Risk Harming Efforts Against Political Violence via @anjalikdayal, @AlexMStark, @Megan_A_Stewart in @WarOnTheRocks

warontherocks.com/2022/01/warnin…
@anjalikdayal @AlexMStark @Megan_A_Stewart @WarOnTheRocks "A year on from the Jan. 6 insurrection, experts warn of catastrophic political violence, while political commentators invoke the specter of the 1860s and throw out sensationalist headlines about a second U.S. Civil War. “The unimaginable has become reality in the United States.
@anjalikdayal @AlexMStark @Megan_A_Stewart @WarOnTheRocks … [T]he basic truth is the United States might be on the brink of [a civil] war today,” read one such argument.

The emerging cottage industry of speculation and alarm specifically about a civil war in the United States worries us. The shape and content of this debate —
@anjalikdayal @AlexMStark @Megan_A_Stewart @WarOnTheRocks covered in venues as mainstream as NPR — risks mis-framing an urgent problem for non-specialist audiences. Rather than asking whether the United States will have a new civil war, commentators ought to be asking: What kinds of risks for political violence does the United States
@anjalikdayal @AlexMStark @Megan_A_Stewart @WarOnTheRocks face? What forms might that political violence take? Who might perpetrate this violence, and which communities will be most affected by it? Retraining our focus on political violence allows us to consider the real risks ahead for the country, to work alongside the many groups
@anjalikdayal @AlexMStark @Megan_A_Stewart @WarOnTheRocks already actively trying to push back illiberal violence, and to protect its most likely victims.

Scholars of civil war typically understand the concept as one specific manifestation of violence among many. Although researchers may disagree on the particulars, they agree
@anjalikdayal @AlexMStark @Megan_A_Stewart @WarOnTheRocks broadly that civil wars are conflicts within a country between the ruling government of that country and named, politically motivated armed groups that commit violence against one another above some threshold of battlefield casualties. For expert audiences, civil war violence is
@anjalikdayal @AlexMStark @Megan_A_Stewart @WarOnTheRocks not one-sided violence — where an armed group targets civilians or the government with no organized retaliation — nor is it simply one-directional state repression. It is not indiscriminate terrorism aimed at the population, or even systematic, targeted campaigns of violence
@anjalikdayal @AlexMStark @Megan_A_Stewart @WarOnTheRocks against minorities or specific groups. Rather, to be categorized as a “civil war,” violence must be part of a meaningful contest over the central government of the country, or a meaningful effort at secession...
@anjalikdayal @AlexMStark @Megan_A_Stewart @WarOnTheRocks These forms of violence could become even more pervasive and could stay that way for decades without ever rising to anything either scholars or lay people would call civil war.
@anjalikdayal @AlexMStark @Megan_A_Stewart @WarOnTheRocks They are worth naming and attempting to address in their own right, not as waystations to an all-out conflagration — particularly because international relations research tells us that priming people to expect a civil war could actually increase political violence.
@anjalikdayal @AlexMStark @Megan_A_Stewart @WarOnTheRocks Canonical models indicate that rhetoric overstating the threat of violence — such as fear-inducing claims about the onset of a new civil war or mass violence — can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Recent work demonstrates that exaggerated misperceptions about rivals’ support
@anjalikdayal @AlexMStark @Megan_A_Stewart @WarOnTheRocks for violence can make groups more likely to support violence — put another way, if you believe that your political rivals are actively seeking a civil war, you, too, may become more committed to violent strategies.
@anjalikdayal @AlexMStark @Megan_A_Stewart @WarOnTheRocks But, if the political violence of today has echoes through American history, then so, too, do transitions out of crisis moments. Treating these forms of political violence as dynamic leaves open the possibility that the actions Americans take now could reverse the course on
@anjalikdayal @AlexMStark @Megan_A_Stewart @WarOnTheRocks which the United States finds itself — especially because conflict research also shows us that even processes as extreme as genocide, ethnic cleansing, and lynching are never inevitable because they rest, ultimately, on the choices individuals make.
@anjalikdayal @AlexMStark @Megan_A_Stewart @WarOnTheRocks When people choose differently, they can resist or interrupt violent processes. Choice by choice, a different, less violent politics can emerge.

A year ago, the United States lost the peaceful transfer of power — a core attribute of democracy itself.
@anjalikdayal @AlexMStark @Megan_A_Stewart @WarOnTheRocks Democracy in the United States is at its most perilous moment in a hundred years, and analysts, journalists, and scholars should be clear-eyed about the forces that threaten the country.
@anjalikdayal @AlexMStark @Megan_A_Stewart @WarOnTheRocks When they do so, however, they should avoid doing so by asking whether the United States is on the brink of a civil war and should instead ask who is in danger of what from whom.
@anjalikdayal @AlexMStark @Megan_A_Stewart @WarOnTheRocks This might make for a poor tagline, but it is a more whole assessment of the threats the United States actually faces. The stakes are too high for Americans to be anything less than precise."

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