Several links here. I will excerpt from each, but I hope you will read them all. My prediction (and I am hardly a lone voice here) is that the time following the presidential election will see widespread violence in our country. Not necessarily on election day (though that is possible) or immediately thereafter, but at minimum on and after Dec. 17, which is when the electoral college votes.
And most Americans agree: "Many expect post-election violence, most blame media."
“The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 51% of likely U.S. voters believe it’s likely there will be a violent reaction if Vice President Kamala Harris is elected, including 26% who say such a reaction is ‘very likely.’ However, 47% also think a violent reaction is likely if former President Donald Trump wins, including 23% who say violence is ‘very likely’ to follow a Trump victory,” said the survey analysis.
Which begs the question: "Could Civil War Erupt in America? The United States is now showing preconditions for political violence, scholars say. Here’s how it can prevent disaster." (Foreign Policy, paywalled):
... the U.S. Civil War was highly, highly unusual. Most civil wars look like insurgencies and guerrilla warfare and tend not to be fought by large armies. They are fought by small militias or paramilitary groups. And sometimes those groups are working together, and sometimes they’re actually competing against each other. And the reality is they don’t want to engage the government soldiers. They’re trying to avoid battles and avoid direct fights with the government because in most cases, governments are much, much more powerful than these ragtag groups of insurgents or militias. And so they tend to take the violence to civilians.
Terrorism is one of the main tools of 21st-century civil wars. Think about the IRA in Northern Ireland. By the definition of civil war, that was a civil war. But most Irish Catholics were not fighting. They called it the Troubles. This fight was by a minority of citizens on the ideological extreme.
One of the reasons why skeptics have said this can’t happen here again is because the model they’re using is the first Civil War. And that is true. That is never going to happen again here. Something different, however, could easily happen here.
How might it start? Well, the 2016 election's aftermath gives us a clue:
But anti-Trump or anti-Harris rioters are not the only snakes in the woods: "U.S. Adversaries Could Stoke Post-Election Unrest, Intel Report Warns. Iran and Russia may seek to foment violence after the vote, according to a newly declassified analysis."
U.S. adversaries are likely to try to undermine confidence in the outcome of the upcoming presidential election, stoke unrest, and boost their preferred candidates even after polls close on Nov. 5, according to a newly declassified assessment released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) on Tuesday.
“Iran and Russia are probably willing to at least consider tactics that could foment or contribute to violent protests, and may threaten, or amplify threats of, physical violence,” according to the assessment, which was prepared on Oct. 8.
The seven-page memorandum also says Tehran’s efforts to assassinate former President Donald Trump and other former U.S. officials are likely to persist after Election Day regardless of the result.
In fact, FBI Director Christopher Wray has been warning of foreign terrorist threats inside the US for at least a year:
Foreign terrorists targeting US 'increasingly concerning': FBI director
Foreign adversaries and terrorist groups are sharpening their aim at the United States -- targeting cyber operations, security and "mafia-like" tactics in an "increasingly concerning" way, FBI Director Christopher Wray said in a speech on Tuesday.
At the American Bar Association luncheon in Washington, D.C., Wray said the agency is working to prevent a coordinated attack from terrorist groups such as ISIS-K, an affiliate of ISIS.
"Foreign terrorists, including ISIS, al-Qaida and their adherents, have renewed calls for attacks against Jewish communities here in the United States and across the West in statements and propaganda," Wray said. "The foreign terrorist threat and the potential for a coordinated attack here in the homeland, like the ISIS-K attack we saw at the Russia Concert Hall a couple weeks ago, is now increasingly concerning. Oct. 7 and the conflict that's followed will feed a pipeline of radicalization and mobilization for years to come."
The warning comes as experts predict ISIS will try to carry out an attack on the United States.
"We should believe them when they say that. They're going to try to do it," retired Gen. Frank McKenzie told ABC News' "This Week" co-anchor Martha Raddatz last month.
Director Wray's Opening Statement to the Senate Appropriations Committee Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies:
When I sat here last year, I walked through how we were already in a heightened threat environment. Since then:
- We’ve seen the threat from foreign terrorists rise to a whole 'nother level after October 7;
- We continue to see the cartels push fentanyl and other dangerous drugs into every corner of the country, claiming countless American lives;
- We’ve seen a spate of ransomware and other cyberattacks impacting parts of our critical infrastructure and businesses large and small;
- Violent crime, which reached alarming levels coming out of the pandemic, remains far too high and is impacting far too many communities; [and]
- China continues its relentless efforts to steal our intellectual property and most valuable information.
And that’s just scratching the surface.
Looking back over my career in law enforcement, I’d be hard pressed to think of a time when so many different threats to our public safety and national security were so elevated all at once, but that is the case as I sit here today.
There are many more such links. The question is: Will foreign operatives take advantage of homegrown post-election violence to carry out potentially devastating attacks, using homegrown violent actors as cover? Such attacks need not cause massive casualties to be devastating. Attacking our civil infrastructure such as power grids and transportation hubs would cause untold chaos.
America is more divided now than ever, including the years leading up to the Civil War. The coming weeks or months will be critical in determining whether the inevitable, coming post-election violence will accelerate this country's political and social dissolution, or whether Americans still have enough sense of national unity to overcome and rebuild.
