There’s been an inevitable and necessary discussion about what words to use to describe recent political developments in the United States. Is Donald Trump a fascist or an authoritarian? Did he attempt a coup, an autogolpe, or an insurrection? Should the people who attacked the Capitol be termed rioters, insurrectionists, or domestic terrorists? Words shape our sense of reality, and given our recent experiences, it’s probably a sign of health that reporters and others are so heavily interrogating the language they use to describe these events.
It’s not a word, but a phrase and an idea, that’s caught my own attention in the last couple weeks: the notion that certain right-wing extremist groups are preparing for, or are trying to foment, a “civil war.” Before Donald Trump, and certainly before the Capitol assault, this idea held a certain abstract or even unreal quality that I think let it pass unexamined. The idea seemed so fantastical that it was on a spectrum with hearing about people preparing for the Rapture.
But with the sight of camouflaged men with machine guns storming the Capitol and hunting around for politicians to lynch, and the Department of Homeland Security issuing a warning about further extremist violence inspired by “perceived grievances fueled by false narratives,” I’m starting to think that describing extremists’ interest in “civil war” has begun to perform a somewhat, or even deeply, misleading function. A movement that attacks civilians and government buildings to achieve political ends is engaging in terrorism, not classical warfare. A movement that seeks to assassinate political leaders has not prepared for civil war, but for domestic terrorism.
After the attack on the Capitol, it’s fair to infer a larger point about what these groups mean when they use the phrase “civil war.” They are not talking about engaging in firefights with opposing armies or groups. After all, one of the things they hate about liberals is their supposed desire to rid America of guns. Nor are they talking about a suicidal stand against a U.S. military equipped with tanks, high-tech fighter-bombers, and submarines armed with ballistic missiles. Instead, what they fantasize about when they talk about a civil war is more along the lines of a mass slaughter against unarmed adversaries: not a civil war, but a one-sided killing spree. Given the white supremacism at the center of many of these groups, it’s hardly going too far to say there’s a genocidal aspect to their ideas of civil war — a chance to cleanse the nation of the racially impure.
The concept of these groups “preparing for” civil war is particularly pernicious. When you’re the only side preparing for war, that means you’re actually preparing for the slaughter of unarmed civilians. Associating their actions in any way with those of soldiers, or even legitimate “militias” like the state national guards, strikes me as deeply misleading as to their ideologies and intentions, in a way that serves to hide their true ends. Civil war is an awful thing — but what these groups desire is far worse even than that, and the term suggests an entire society bent on violence, when in truth these right-wing extremists are in a league of their own, psychos longing to murder innocents.