Anyone following the interrogations about January 6 actions of the Oath Keepers’ leadership knows that before the attempted coup they were talking about civil war. That’s naive on their part, of course, if not downright stupidity. Far-right fascists in America just don’t get it! Talking about civil war then and now with the 2022 and 2024 elections approaching shows an incredible misunderstanding of the American political milieu. Far-right fascists in America are not in the majority! Any attempt of armed insurrection will be met with overwhelming force. These mad dogs are outnumbered!
That’s what defeated the South in the 1860s: A less populated and agrarian area of the South went to battle against the North and were overwhelmed; they didn’t have a chance of winning! Today’s situation is no different. The current US fascist areas are less populated, agrarian areas for the most part and would be hard put to create anything more than a few more militia groups, let alone a standing army. Today’s fascists will lose against the American majority.
Of course, it won’t be pretty if there is a fight. Battling fascism rarely is. We saw that in our Civil War, we saw it in World War II, and we’re seeing it now in the Ukraine. But fascists will lose. That’s inevitable.
Yet the non-fascists won’t win much either, all things considered. Here in the US, the country would forever change with another civil war, and a lot more abruptly than if there were no war. The fascists shouldn’t want that. The country has changed and is now changing, which, of coourse, the rallying cry of a lot of American fascists. Change has always been a constant in America and the world. Slow change is better than abrupt, violent change. A civil war in America would bring on the latter.
Fascists in America have to reconsider what they want. They’ll never convince a reluctant majority to support them. It’s their choice: Death and destruction against overwhelming odds…or learning how to adapt and live with change.