How close is America to civil conflict? | The Gray Area

Hey, I'm Sean, host of The Gray Area. For the show this week, I talked to Barbara Walter. She's a political scientist at UC San Diego and the author of an increasingly important book called How Civil Wars Start. We really talk about the state of political violence in this country and what we can learn from other democracies that have gradually tipped into civil conflict of one type or another. It's a sobering conversation, but a not alltogether depressing one. I enjoyed it. I learned a lot. I hope you will, too. Check it out, and I'll see you next week. >> Barbara Walter, welcome to the show. >> It's really a pleasure to be here. Thank you. >> We have had several weeks now to digest, process the killing >> of Charlie Kirk. The Kirk shooting is just one >> of several acts of political violence in recent years. There is obviously nothing new about violence here or anywhere else for that matter. But >> I know you have given three reasons why this moment does feel >> different and and and potentially more dangerous uh than other moments. And if you don't mind, I would I just want to go through those one by one. Yeah. Yeah. >> Is that okay? >> Yeah, absolutely. >> Okay, let's do that. The first reason is, and this I'm reading from a a really nice piece that you wrote. Nice. Not a nice piece. Uh it's it's a it's a good piece. It's a smart piece about a really shitty situation. Yes. Um >> but the first reason is that you say that our leaders, our political leaders are reacting differently now than maybe they have in the past. Um, tell me what you mean by that. >> So, one of the um, amazing things about America up until really today is that when bad things happened to us as a country and to our citizens, we came together. Um, which is absolutely essential for a country as as heterogeneous and multithnic and multi-religious and racial as ours is. Um, and that was the case when assassinations and domestic terror happened in the past. It certainly was the case after 9/11, which was international terrorism, that no matter who perpetrated the crime and no matter who the target was, our politicians, our leaders on both the left and the right immediately would condemn it and they would immediately call for unity. So the message was always peace, stability, let's come together. We can work through this together. And what was different about Charlie Kirk and I think why it's put so many people on edge and why they feel that something is different is that almost immediately um leaders especially on the right um didn't do that. They use this as kind of a tool um for their own political purposes. Um, you know, Laura Lummer Loomer came out, you know, the the the the spokespeople on the far right came out and and uh eviscerated um the left. Um, you know, even Donald Trump, the the president of the United States came out and and basically said, "We're we're going to go after them. Um, uh, we're we're going to make sure that that justice is done to to, you know, the group that did this." And the reality is that this was done by a single individual, as are the vast majority of domestic terror attacks here in the country. They're done by what we call lone actors or lone wolves and and they're they're usually young men who've been radicalized online. Um the Charlie Kirk murder was was exactly the same. This was a single individual. He had no really cohesive ideology. He was not part of a larger group. He certainly was radicalized online. And yet you you heard our, you know, uh many of our leaders um coming down and and saying, "See, this is this is evidence that the the left is evil, that the left is out to get to to get us." Um and we need to take all measures to to destroy them. Um and and that's very different. Instead of a message of of hope and unity and peace, it was a battlecry and and people felt that. >> Yeah. Yeah, I've got a couple more quotes here that stuck out to me. Uh the first is from our our dear friend Elon Musk. >> Oh my gosh. Yes. >> Who said quote, "The left is the party of murder." >> End quote. Um here's another doozy from Megan McCain. She tweeted, >> quote, "I think the fundamental difference between the right and the left in this country is that the left glorifies death." End quote. I mean, that's just making making stuff up, right? Um, if you actually look at the the data, we have fantastic data on domestic terror attacks in this country, and it's collected by the FBI, and it's collected by um various nonprofits like uh the Anti-De defamation league, and there's multiple data sets that that track who perpetrates these types of crimes in this country. Um, and it and it goes back decades and decades. And and the thing that's so astounding is that the vast majority of attacks going back to 2001 um have been perpetrated by the far right and most of those groups have been white supremacist groups. The attack they are also by far the most lethal attacks. Now there have been attacks by the far left. But what's interesting about the those um uh attacks coming from what we think is the far left is that they're they're almost always targeted as at a single individual, not a group. The far right will target um Latino marketplaces. They'll target uh synagogues. They will target um uh places on uh you know on campuses where lots of women women are. Um, so they're they're specifically targeted at at usually minority groups whereas the far-left is targeted at individuals and and they're just the incident has been much much fewer than the far right. So when you talk about America has a domestic terror problem, um, it is until recently it has been almost exclusively a far-right problem. >> And that's that's fine and that's that's fair. I mean, I I have said this on other platforms and and I'm going to say it here. I strongly believe using phrases like the left or the right to describe general intellectual or political trends is fine, necessary, probably unavoidable in some way. But using phrases like the left or the right to assign blame >> to assign blame to millions of people as though they are some kind of monolith acting in concert that is dangerous. That is unserious and that people are still doing it even though clearly the stakes >> keep going up and people are getting killed >> makes me insane with rage. And it just it seems like there's nothing no matter what happens the the violent entrepreneurs as you call them. >> Yes. >> Will not stop. It it doesn't I mean I I don't know what has to happen for people to just you know what let me step back and take >> a beat. >> Yes. I love that you brought that up and and it you know it's something that we're uh we think about a lot when we talk about different states, right? So when people talk about uh what Germany did or what the United States does or what China does, it treats China and the United States and Germany today as if everybody's in complete agreement about everything that that the United States does. And of course we know living here that there are many many different groups with you know hundreds of millions of people all of whom have a different way of looking things and different uh preferences and and to assign them the the title of uh you're behaving like the United States is missing all that nuance. So, so yeah, thank you for that correction. And moving forward, we'll we'll talk about the fact that um the vast majority of these attacks are done by individuals. Individuals and um oftent times they don't really have a coherent um ideology. It's hard to determine what motivated them to do something. Um they do have some things in common. the, you know, the basic profile as I mentioned earlier was they tend to be young and they tend to be male and they and they tend to have spent an enormous amount of time online and that seems to be where they became um sort of hyper passionate about whatever it is that that's motivating them to turn to violence. >> Yeah. I just want to be clear. It's it's not as though I would claim that there's no relationship between ideas and actions. That's not the case. There are there are far-right elements. There are far-left elements. There are extreme ideologies. It's just to blot out any differences and just lump >> Yeah. >> the left or the right. When people use phrases like that in general, they're basically just referring to half the country as though >> Timothy McVey and like your Republican neighbor across the street are like functionally, you know, indistinguishable politically. It's just not helpful. >> Yeah. And let me actually take that a step further. We know um the the the types of people when I say the far right, the types of people who have perpetrated violence have overwhelmingly come from two two ideologies on the right. White supremacists is the most. And then um the second is anti-federal government um individuals, people who for whatever reason um uh feel that the federal government is either too big or too in in intrusive or who who knows what. But if you look at the some of the individuals on the far left and the justifications that they've given, some of them are also anti-federal government. They they come from that um that ideology, the anti-federal government ideology. So, in some ways, thinking about this as a spectrum, like a linear spectrum between far left and far right is is doesn't actually capture what it looks like in the real world. It's more of a circle where the the far left and far left, the far right in some ways, um, you know, come together quite closely on on certain issues and and hatred to the federal government is one of those issues. >> Yeah. Yeah, I mean they they call that the horseshoe theory. Uh that if you go far enough out uh in each direction back together, >> they come back together. >> Um you've touched on this, but but I want to dig into it a little bit because the second reason you point out that this is concerning >> is that violence is no longer one-sided. I think violence is no longer one-sided. But tell me why that is so dangerous. >> Well, let me give you the data first. Um there was just an article that came out. I I just read it this morning um by Dan Bman um from Georgetown and a co-author in the Atlantic um where they looked at um the domestic terror attacks here in the United States. What they found was the and they called it I the the far left um had more uh attacks um than they have in the previous 30 years. Um, so we are absolutely seeing a rise in violence from the other end of the political spectrum. And for those of us who study it, the far and I'm sorry I like this is how the the data uh divides it. The the far right has so dominated the domestic terror landscape for the last, you know, 20 years. Um, and the far left has in some ways been more abundant. um that was not always the case and I'll get back to that in a second. Um that the fact that we're now seeing this um increase and I suspect it's it's going to continue to increase signifies that we're entering a new world where violence is not just coming from one camp or or a series of groups on one side of the political spectrum, but the the the the other side of the political spectrum is starting to react. The left used to dominate, the far-left used to dominate domestic terrorism in the in this country in the 1960s and the 1970s. You know, many of your listeners probably don't remember. Um, but but when we used to talk about uh domestic terror, we were talking about anarchist groups. We were talking about radical environmentalist groups. Uh the Symphony Liberation Army, which who kidnapped um Patty Hurst. These were all far-left groups. Um but that is now shifting and and that makes people nervous. The reason ma it makes us nervous is from a law enforcement uh standpoint or a standpoint of how do you address this problem and eliminate it or at least reduce it. It is much much easier to um address uh domestic terrorism if it's only coming from one side. So and let me give you an example. Um we had a we had a rise in militias here in the United States in the 1990s and um that sort of burst onto the scene in in 1995 with the Oklahoma the federal building attack Timothy McVey McVeyy's attack that killed I don't know 170 something um people um Americans didn't realize at the time that militias were were growing around around the country and Americans suddenly were like where did this come from what does this mean um and they were horrified by it. And what happened was two things. Individuals stopped joining militias and and recruitment into these groups around the country sort of it plummeted. And then the FBI started to take these groups very seriously. Rather than sort of ignoring them, they infiltrated them. They uh they identified who the leaders were. They prosecuted the leaders. and we saw literally a a reversal um in in the growth of violent militias around around the country. Um that started to turn around in the early 2000s and accelerated in 2008 and and we suspect that's because of the election of America's first black black president. But again, we saw in the in after 1995 that if law enforcement actually wants to um reduce their numbers, wants to uh neutralize them, um we have the capacity to do that. um it's much harder if you're seeing um uh growth on both sides because they feed off themselves. And the story that they tell to recruit additional people and to make their members scared and to convince them that they have to uh prepare for for potential war is they point to um the threat on the other side. And and one of the things we know from lots of research um uh in in psychology is that um people love their rights and freedoms, but they love security and feeling safe more than that. And if you can convince them that um they and their families are threatened, they will be willing to give up their rights and freedoms um if if if they think you're going to protect them. and having having, you know, militias or having violence on the other side um just serves as as really effective evidence um for them to recruit and and it creates a much much more heightened threat environment. >> That is the scary part, right? I mean, I don't care across across time, across regions, >> it's almost always it's a it's a very small percentage of the society. >> Yes. that feels like political violence is a justifiable tool like believes in political violence as an offensive >> political weapon. But >> once you get caught up in this spiral and people start to think, "No, no, this is now an act of selfdefense." >> Yes. >> Many more people are willing to use violence to defend themselves if they see an existential threat before them. And >> I I feel like that that feels like the the danger here, right? >> Exactly. And it's it's not it's not based on an ideology really. Um uh because as you said, you know, every country, every society has its its small group of radicals, right? That's, you know, that's just the distribution of people in the world. Um and they usually aren't able to cause trouble because their ideas by definition are radical and most people are not. Um, and so if they have some radical goal that they are seeking, and let's say a radical goal here in the United States is to is to turn America into uh, you know, a a a dictatorship or or or something less than a democracy, which most Americans do not want and do not believe in, then you have to you have to get their support some other way. and and you you have to convince them that the moment that we're living in is is desperately unsafe for them and that big changes need to be made to make them secure. So radicals use violence as a tool for their own agendas. >> The third reason is that America's law enforcement leaders aren't what they used to be. >> Um >> that was a nice title. I changed that title for something from something much worse than that. Well, but see, but that actually could be interpreted in a few different ways. So, when you say that America's law enforcement leaders are not what they used to be, and that this is one of the things that makes this moment a little more dangerous, what do you mean? Do you mean that the law enforcement institutions themselves aren't as good or aren't as or are not as reliable or do you mean the nature of the threat itself is just infinitely more difficult? It's the actual individuals, individuals leading organizations like the FBI and Homeland Security. Um, and we could throw DoD in there as well. um uh that ne you know never in my lifetime have we had um leaders of these three unbelievably important institutions have as little experience have as little character and have um let's just leave it at that uh to run these institutions >> well I get a lot of hate mail or I get more I get more really positive love mail, but I I get a lot of hate mail and I don't want to increase that. Um, >> no, it's it's a clown show right now. >> It's a clown show. Imagine Cash Patel had been head of the FBI after the OK Oklahoma City bombing. Um, he would have had no idea how to proceed to try to eradicate the far right, the the far-right groups that were were growing. and he's he's so partisan and his his boss is so partisan that he would be told not to go after them. So here you have um violent extremism rising in the in the country and and you have um you know leaders of our our our main institutions designed to ensure uh safety, security, law and order in this country who who are are not competent to do that and are politicized so that even if they were competent and they were given all the data to show where where the threat really is emanating from, they would choose to turn a blind eye to it. Um, so when I say, you know, our leaders are not what they used to be, um, it it's really pointing a finger at at at the people who who who are in decision-m roles right now, um, who who do not have the background, the experience, the the talent to actually effectively keep America safe. >> Yeah, I I just want to echo that. Uh, and and the operative word there is leadership because I did not mean to bismerch every FBI agent. I'm sure there are there are plenty of smart, capable, well-meaning people at that institution. The problem is the leadership, which is political. Um, that's that's the the the weakness at the moment. Um, anyway, I just wanted to clarify that. >> Yeah. >> Support for the show comes from Shopify. When you're starting a new business, it can feel like you're expected to do it all. Marketing, design, and everything in between, even if you've never done half of it before. 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But I also believe that political order can collapse very quickly. And we have to take the warning signs seriously. And it is it is in that spirit that I ask you what I'm about to ask you. >> You are an expert in civil wars. You study >> how they start and how they end. You wrote a book about this. >> Yeah. Given everything we've just discussed, given everything that is happening in the world as you see it, how do you currently assess where we are right now as a country? If there's some kind of violence continuum where one poll is perfect peace and harmony and the other poll is MadMax Fury Road, where are we? >> We are in a high-risk zone for political violence. Um, you know, let me be also be clear when we talk about civil war today, when experts talk about civil wars, they're not talking about the type of civil wars that most Americans envision. You know, they they know the first American civil war. So, they think about civil wars as these two big armies meeting on on the battlefield. And and that that back then was unusual. Um, it it doesn't it doesn't happen these days. Um what we see especially in wealthy powerful countries is really more a form of insurgency and and a form of sort of persistent high-grade terror. Um so what Israel lived with for you know for decades with Hamas um having you know bus bombs and and uh you know never actually having you know feeling fully secure um where the enemy is much much weaker than you and is really it's not uh for the most part directing violence at soldiers. it's directing violence at civilians or infrastructure or um particular particularly targeted groups. Um that's what we would see here here in the United States. And we're we're already starting to to see it. um you know when the El Paso shooting happened or when the Buffalo shooting happened or when the um Pittsburgh synagogue um shooting happened uh you know the media tends to portray this as idiosyncratic events sort of isolated oneup events um and and so it makes it hard for for Americans to connect the dots but but we we have been experiencing you know pretty consistent levels of of domest domestic terror and and and we're not even acknowledging it anymore. I mean, every it's like it's happening to the point where it's be becoming normalized. So, so that's the type of violence we're likely to see. Um, and you often see that when one group feels hopeless, that that they feel like the system isn't working for them anymore, when they they feel like their particular group is under under siege and and they lose hope that working within the traditional uh, you know, political avenues will will get them nowhere. Um, if you look at the research, the the underlying conditions that lead to a high risk of political violence are uh a a rapidly declining and weak democracy. Um, to the point where it's it's now in in what we call a middle zone of partial democracy but partial autocracy. these these weak regimes or these these hybrid um illiberal regimes are where almost all the violence happens. The US is in that zone uh today. Um if those countries have ra uh political parties that that divide along racial, religious or ethnic lines, um that tends to be where the violence happens. America's parties are they're not entirely based on on race, but but the Republican party is is almost 80% white, you know, in a country that's multithnic and multi-religious that that starts to look like uh, you know, an identity based uh party. And then the group that tends to initiate violence is the group that had once been politically and economically dominant and is in decline. So, one of the ironies of the violence that we're seeing now from the especially from the far right is um that the you know their man is in power and MAGA controls you know essentially all three branches of government. They they have the keys to the Cadillac. So, they should be feeling like they're they're not losing out. But but I think that a subset of them still feels like they're losing out. They feel like they're under attack. This of course is repeated and encouraged by by Trump and other MAGA leaders telling them that that you know their life that life is getting worse and for them and and so that's motivating them. But on the other side, the far left actually sees that or or or you know, let's just call it, you know, people who didn't support Donald Trump um and his agenda are start starting to see that they could be locked out of power. maybe temporarily, but perhaps even permanently. And and if they feel like they're going to permanently lose power, that's going to have them lose hope and that's going to motivate them to start to turn to violent forms of of of of trying to get their agenda done. >> How much have attitudes about the acceptance of political violence shifted in recent years? I am sure most Americans still reject political violence. But is it true that the percentage of people that accept it is is that going up >> and if it is how much? >> It's absolutely going up. Now there have been many surveys done asking people under what conditions is violence justified and their answer really depends on the the conditions. um uh like high percentages on both sides of of the political spectrum believe as you said earlier that it's justified um you know when you for self-defense or you know wording surrounding self-defense and I I don't know the exact number but it could be as high as 40 40%. How high for for someone like you who studies this? How high would that number have to get in terms of I understand a lot of a lot of things hinge on how the the question is worded in terms of of trying to to tease out of people how acceptable they find political violence. But is there a certain threshold that's common in the literature, right? where if you if you have this percentage of the population that is sympathetic to or open to using political violence to advance your political goals that once you go past this number, you're in you're in the danger zone. >> No, but we talk we talk in terms of annual risk. So if a country has those two features, it's a partial democracy with identity based political parties. Um we the the model that that uh many people have used um uh says that a that country has about a 4% annual risk of um either political instability and or significant political violence. So um that that 4% sounds very low but if those two features of your country don't change. So you you remain sort of this weak um uh uh you remain this weak declining democracy um moving towards authoritarianism. And in fact the faster you move there the the higher the risk is. But let's say you remain there and your parties don't don't do anything to reach across um racial or religious lines. Then that 4% annual risk goes up every year. So that by year 10 it's at 40% annually. by 20 years is at 80% annually. So, um so it doesn't happen immediately. That's why I think you're right to say we're not on the precipice right now. Uh because we really just went into this middle middle zone um probably in the last few months. Um and solidly in the middle zone. Um but if we stay here and we don't um uh reform our political system and strengthen our democracy and and if if um you know the Republicans and Democrats still appeal to their their same bases then um you know every year that risk is going to go up. Let me add what what makes me nervous these days that has always we've always known that that those are the underlying conditions. But there's a second thing we know that I haven't written about yet, but Americans should know about that um those wars that that come from having weak democracies and I and and like and and um tribal politics are started by usually by um um by specific groups in society. Right? There's a second type of war that's started by the leader of a of a country. Um, and that is where war is actually manufactured to help keep a leader in power and in in effect to kick the door finally shut on on democracy. So if you look at how Putin really consolidated power in in Russia after he was democratically elected in the 1990s, he started a war with Cheschna and then he's, you know, he he was engaged in in in a war in in Syria and then he went into Crimea and then he started the war in Ukraine. And and we know that what this helps a leader do, one, it it tends to um generate lots of nationalism. So sort of a raw raw spirit behind uh behind the leader and then we we also know it allows the leader to declare emergency rule and and and basically you know do away with any sort of democratic constraints as long as the war is going on. I actually when I wake when I wake up in the middle of night night and I worry about America um one of the things that I worry about is that Donald Trump before the 2028 elections um in which he should be termlimited out um that he is going to fabricate some sort of emergency and I think that emergency will will include um organized violence um and he's going to use that as a way to stay in the White House. I would say that the the Trump factor, and I really don't mean this in a in like a partisan sense, right? I'm I'm not a Republican. I'm not a Democrat either, really. Um, having someone in charge of the country who very clearly is not interested in bringing people together, who is very clearly interested in using every opportunity he can to drive the wedge more and more deeper between what divides us. That scares me as much as anything. And I don't know how much influence political elites really have anymore in this increasingly sort of fractured society where, you know, we're not all watching the same movie and we're getting our information online. It's not like everyone's watching, you know, the nightly news anymore. >> Yeah. >> But when it's the president of the United States, >> I know >> uh who >> lies with a with a a versatility and a velocity that is staggering. um and is clearly willing to break anything he can in order to consolidate his own political power is very very concerning. Um I'm not I'm not trying to rank order all the things that concern me the most but that's a big one and it seems like there's a lot of there's a lot of research suggesting that that matters a great deal. So, we absolutely have lots of studies that show that violent rhetoric, especially if it's um put out into the public sphere by our leaders, um has effects. It increases the use of violence. Um and people debate what the what the mechanisms are. Um but if you begin to normalize violence, if you justify violence, if you actually encourage it and and when you forgive violence, um that's sending a complete message that that violence is okay. Um and so it's not a surprise that when you have leaders behaving that way and and saying violent things and saying that violence like we should go out and and um you know take revenge and retribution um that there will be a small subset of the population that will take that to heart and to follow what they perceive to be um not maybe not orders but but encouragement and then about accelerance. So um you know we cannot have this discussion without talking about social media right um so imagine a world imagine a world where where everything was the same except social media didn't exist so this is the world you and I grew up in Trump was still in the white house and Trump was saying all these things um and and occasionally the nightly news would would cover it but but mostly they wouldn't because they they would understand um one you you nightly news becomes really boring if you're repeating the same thing over and over again, but also because they understand that this um h how divisive and and potentially damaging this could be for society. So imagine that world where that message doesn't doesn't get out. Um it it doesn't go anywhere. It it's it really doesn't have the same effect as it does in a world today where um where people are not talking to each other as much. you know, they're spending an enormous amount of time um by themselves online um or in chat rooms uh repeating the same thing over and over again um with material that's designed to designed to heighten all of their worst emotions and they're not going outside and talking to their neighbors or or they're they're not um engaging in in various different groups that might, you know, that might have different opinions. So, so it it's it's just a world um where in some ways the basist um elements of humanity are simply um being um emphasized uh to the exclusion of everything else and and and then people are living in isolation of each other. >> Support for the gray area comes from found. You know what's not fun? Finances. I'm sure there are people who disagree with me. I'm thinking about you, Joe, my imaginary accountant. 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Join thousands of small business owners who have streamlined their finances with found. >> A lot of what we're seeing now really does feel post ideological >> in the sense that I mean you know this better than I do. In in the past a lot of America's political violence >> it it felt more organized. Right. whether it's the the weather underground from the 60s or the clan or militias, >> there were clear ideological projects behind it. And this >> I'm I'm sure there are exceptions to this, but there's quite a bit of violence uh including the the individual who shot and killed Charlie Kirk where >> if there is some ideological component to it, it feels so muddled and incoherent that I don't even I don't know what to make of it. It's not legible to me. Um, is that are you seeing that? >> Yeah. Well, it's so interesting, you know, when people were first ident, you know, when Tyler Robinson was first identify the guy who killed Charlie Kirk. Um and um and people were you know desperate to see is he from the right or from the left and and they he'd left some clues and there was you know engravings on the casings of the of of the bullets and um you know they looked at the the pl the you know the social media that he was he was on and it was actually not easy to determine and I'm not sure they still have determined exactly what his ideology It was it was a mixture of memes and and and it was actually kind of funny because you know the people reporting on it um weren't familiar with this whole world this online world and you could tell that they didn't they didn't quite understand it and and and I would be in that category. I'm like I'm like this is not the ideology that we had in the past and it has a mixture of all sorts of things and and in the end it really what it comes down to it just seems almost like entertainment not not not like the real world. This is this is just almost kind of like teenage boy haha you know um uh like I I you know stuff. I'm cool. Look, I got this meme. I can say this. It it it didn't you know it's it's hard to determine like what underlies it except this this world of this insidider world of of jokes. >> It feels nihilistic. It feels like violence in search of an ideology rather than ideology um >> in search of violence um or ideology leading to violence. But I I don't know. No, I mean I've seen some of the reporting. He he he does he did seem to have some some, you know, leftist >> politics, but this is not someone who was reading Karl Marx and decided to, you know, start the revolution, right? I mean, it's just >> it's just it's just I don't know. It's I guess this is what it what it is in in the the internet era, right? Like the digital revolution has just scrambled our politics. Well, and you wonder, you wonder, you know, if the internet didn't exist, would this would Robinson, would Tyler Robinson be in college now on a scholarship, and I think he would I think he would, too. I think he would, too. >> You know, I I think he'd be, you know, maybe he'd be hanging out at 7-Eleven on a Friday night and and drinking too much beer, but um but, you know, he wouldn't be spending hours and hours and hours uh on these sites that are just feeding him crap, you know. I know. I wonder when you have isolated people like this who who are radicalized online the way you're talking about um people who I'm sure in many cases have serious mental health issues. Is it even useful to think of this still as political violence in the traditional sense or is it something new? Not worse, not better, just a different category. Oh, that's a great a great question. >> I can't even I don't have an answer to it. I'm just throwing it out there. >> I would tend to still consider it political violence. You know, you could ask the same thing about, you know, is is a mass murder in a in a synagogue is that political? And I think on the surface you're just like, "No, that's probably religious or that's probably anti-semitic." But I see that as political because um underlying the at least those decisions, let's let's put Tyler Robinson and let's put um you know, let's say let's even say the the guy who drove the the car, the truck into the church yesterday, like things that are hazier and and less cohesive. But a a lot of the violence that we see directed at civilians, you know, black Americans, Jews, um uh Latinos, women, um is perpetrated by white nationalist groups. And and the reason that's political is that they're targeting these groups not because they necessarily hate them and just want to inflict pain. They're targeting these groups because this is their strategy to reclaim America. that and and the strategy is if they c they can intimidate these groups into submission or better yet they can convince them to leave the country entirely or leave Michigan entirely or leave whatever state they're in entirely then the demographics change in favor of whites and whites can one once again regain what they believe is their rightful um head of of the political system. So, so even when something doesn't look political, it it it it looks racist or looks anti-semitic, it is almost always driven by the changing demographics here in the United States. And changing demographics here in the United States matters to white supremacists because it means that their lock on power is declining. >> Yeah. You know, it's certainly some some cases are are are more clear-cut than others. It's just >> look like you were saying when we have kids basically, you know, posting online, inscribing gamer internet memes onto bullets. It's hard to tell sometimes how much of the violence is more like some kind of nihilistic troll job and how much of it is driven by sincere >> beliefs. You know, in the end, murder is murder and it doesn't matter because people are dead. People are dead. But in terms of understanding the underlying problem so that we can figure out what to do about it, the motivations of people do matter. And sometimes the motivations of people are just incoherent. But in some ways it doesn't it doesn't matter if if the if let's say these incoherent individual lone wolf incoherent attacks um continue and they increase which I actually think they will because if we continue not to regulate social media and in an age of AI where we will increasingly have more and more unemployed young people with nothing to do but to stay online and we know that radicalization happens online. um then this type of even incoherent violence is likely to increase. Whether it's political or not doesn't really matter if you have political leaders who are then going to exploit that violence and they're going to exploit it to create an even bigger wedge between members of society and to use it as a justification for emergency powers and potentially martial law. That seems to be one consequence of having more random nihilistic acts of violence is that it actually may make it easier for the violence entrepreneurs to project their own narratives onto otherwise incoherent acts. And ultimately what actually happened and why won't matter. What will matter is what millions of people believe happened. So, wouldn't it be great for Trump if if in the next few weeks we had a number of incoherent terrorist attacks in Portland that we, you know, that there were, you know, a few kids in Portland who kind of lost it over the next few weeks and it wouldn't matter what their motivation was or whether it was political at all. >> Um, but it would be used that way. >> Are you surprised we don't have more violence than we do actually? I mean that the fact that in this country we have a ton of guns, more guns than anyone else. We have uh expansive, robust protections for speech, more than any other country, which I think is good by the way, but it also means there's a lot of reckless and hateful speech. Um given those two conditions, do you think it's just reasonable to conclude that there's just going to be a higher baseline of political violence here? >> Well, for sure we we have more political violence um than you know comparable countries, advanced industrialized democracies around the world. And that is that is because we have more guns than anybody else. Am I surprised we don't have more? Actually, I I'm not. Um uh because like Americans really are pretty extraordinary people. Um I I had dinner last night with um my brother and his wife and his wife is German and and her she had two young people from Germany visiting. We all had dinner together and they said that they were really worried about coming to the United States because they they were like, "Oh my gosh, like it's violent and everybody has guns." and and they they recounted a story that day that that a neighbor knocked on on the front door and my my sister-in-law opened the door and they were like, "Why are you open the door? Don't open the door. They could have a gun." And I just started laughing and and and I was just like, "That's actually not the way it is." And and then when I asked them like, "What has been the biggest surprise for you? You've been here in America for a week." And they're they're just like how friendly and kind and generous Americans are like every interaction we have had has been extremely positive and and that's why I'm not surprised. Drive around the United States, go to the reddest parts of the United States and and go to a you know go to the local restaurant and and people will be friendly. Um and and and and you know there is there is something unique about uh Americans and um and and and what it makes me sort of think about the counterfactual. Oh my god, given how awesome this country is and how warm our our people are, like what would it be like if we if we simply had less guns or what if what would it be like if we had real gun control? um so that you know people with mental health issues or a history of domestic violence don't can't easily get guns like I'm like what if we if we just put reasonable rational humane controls in place God it would be even better >> reasonable rational come on settle down >> settle down >> I know >> look I will say I I'm glad you made those points right because I I live I live in southern Mississippi >> oh >> all right I I didn't live here for a long time, but I grew up here and I moved back not too long ago. >> It's fine. People are are for the most part wonderful. Yeah. Uh like they are everywhere else. Um >> and I don't want to come on this show and use this platform to like hysterically overstate >> how terrible and dangerous things are. But I also know that there >> there's a lot about this moment that actually is >> scary. And I don't know what the right balance is. you know, I don't want to be an alarmist. Um, but I also want to be sober and cleareyed. And >> maybe maybe what I'm really getting at is how should how should we feel about just where we are generally right now? >> I'm genuinely worried. I and I'll I'll um I I think America I I I think for things to get better, it's the only way it's going to happen is from the bottom up that we have, you know, 340 million Americans. And if if they decided to demand um uh real democracy, if they were to uh demand um that um that our leaders uphold democratic norms, um that we have much more power than we think. So, so I you know it for me it's whether the American public actually wakes up and realizes that this moment we're in is a critical, you know, potential turning point and that they have all the power they would ever need to um to stop uh the slide towards authoritarianism. um but that if they remain passive, you know, they're they're going to lose it. Um so, uh let me ask you this. How much of a problem is it that we have a dysfunctional Congress that can't even keep the government open, much less >> enact any reforms or legislation that that might help >> uh with any of our underlying problems? I mean, you say we need this to come from the bottom up. Is that to say that there's no chance in hell any solutions are going to come from the top down? >> I think there's no chance in hell it's going to come from the top down. Listen, the ma uh the main check on executive power in this country is Congress. That is the main check on the president. And they have completely absconded that. They have completely given their power to the president to a president who has outright stated that he wants to be an imperial president. he would love to be king. Um, and they have essentially handed over their own power. Who does that? Usually people are very protective and that and they will they will fight to to keep the power that they have. And here we have a Congress that that simply handed it over to the president. So, it's not going to come from the top down. You know, American citizens are going to have to take their power back. And and that um that happens usually in two ways. Massive turnout at the polls. Imagine imagine if in in the midterm elections um let's just take the midterm elections if you know 75 80% of eligible voters voted like that would just change the outcome of of Congress even with gerrymandering. Imagine um imagine if that happened in the in the 2028 elections if we had massive turnout. So you you see reform coming from the the bottom up through massive uh campaigns for turnout at elections and through peaceful uh peaceful protests that are sustained that include you know usually around three three and a half% of the population and that uh um include a broad range of of the population. So we know what what works to to actually change the system. Um, but it's going to come up. It's going to come down to the American public being will willing to take action. >> Now, you have a lot more to say about this. And if people want to read those thoughts, how can they find your excellent Substack? >> You can find me on Substack. It is called Here Be Dragons. I love the title. Some people don't. Um, but it's a reference to old maps, which I love. Um, the title is here be dragons, warning signs from the edges of democracy. Well, count me in the camp that loves it. >> Thank you, Sean. >> Barbara Walter, this is great. I appreciate you on short notice coming in and talking to us about this. Um, thank you so much. >> My pleasure. Thanks, Sean.