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 now seems certain, see second update at end) 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. One 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 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. I personally am not optimistic.
Update: After VP Harris's speech at the Washington ellipse early this week, a pro-Hamas crowd demonstrated there, calling for intifada. Intifada is an Arabic word for a rebellion or uprising, or a resistance movement, according to Wikipedia, and has been the term used for many years to describe violence by Muslim Arabs against Jews and Israel generally. This image is a grab, the link to the video on X here here: https://x.com/TPostMillennial/status/1851427970189242510
Last summer, Richard Pollock wrote, "Palestinian Storm Troopers on the Potomac?" which seems now hardly to deserve the question mark. Well worth reading the whole essay.
[Ryan] Mauro says the militants are trying to create an emotional and violent “new paradigm” that is part of an aggressive political “eco-system” designed to deliver harsh attacks against all Americans - Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, Christians and Jews.
“These aren’t just critics of Israel,” Mauro told me in an interview. “They’re not Republicans or Democrats. They’re not liberals. We really have to think of these groups as a new paradigm because they’re communists, anarchists, radical Islamicists and anti-Americans. It really sets them apart from the categories of people that we’re used to dealing with people like liberals and those demonstrating for women’s rights. No, this is separate. This is an eco-system that is against both political parties, against liberals and conservatives.” ...
So Mauro warns one of the most troubling things about the Palestinian groups is their tendency toward aggressiveness, and eventually, violence.
He says of all American protest groups, the Palestinian organizations “are the most aggressive.”
“They’re not the type of people out there who are interested in positive, civil discourse that brings back healing and unity to the country. They’re terrible bomb throwers that like to cause conflict and they are ferociously anti-American too. That’s what’s often forgotten. Just as much as they hate Israel, they explicitly hate the United States and have actually called for the U.S. to no longer exist.”
Ryan Mauro "follows extremist groups for the nonprofit Capital Research Center in Washington, D.C. Prior to his work at CRC, he served as the Director of Intelligence for the Clarion Project, a counter-extremism organization."
Richard Pollock was one of the founders of the New Left movement in the 1960s and served as it chief tactician (meaning he taught New Leftists how to riot, literally). As he says elsewhere, "For the hard Left, violence has been part of their political religion. I know, as I once was a hard Left activist as I was a roommate with Chicago 8 defendant Rennie Davis. I personally became friends with Tom Hayden, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin and hard-left lawyer Bill Kuntsler. I understand that political violence is part of the Left’s DNA."
Update, 1 Nov: Richard Pollock, yesterday: "Anti-Trump Protests Are Being Readied in the Nation's Capital - National Park Service Records Disclose Protest Plans."
Donald Trump’s opponents appear to be planning potentially violent demonstrations that could rock the nation’s capital if the former President should win the 2024 election.
This dark prospect emerges from current requests for demonstration permit I obtained from the National Park Service (NPS), the federal agency which regulates legal demonstrations in Washington, D.C.
NPS permit records show that nearly all the post-election and Inaugural Day permits have been filed by leftwing anti-Trump groups, including pro-Palestinian and “defend democracy” groups.
The applicants claim about 15,000 protesters could descend on Washington, D.C. on election night and up to 200,000 anti-Trump protests could arrive leading up to and including Inauguration Day, when the next President is sworn in.
Also, Portland, Ore., businesses are boarding up their windows (just as they are doing in D.C.) and expecting the worse.
The Portland Police Bureau says it has received no specific threats, but it has extended shifts to cover for Portland's unique "peaceful" transfer of power. In other words: likely violence.
The PPB said it would not tolerate:
- Impeding transportation by blocking streets and vehicular traffic.
- Lighting fires and burning materials.
- Vandalizing and damaging property.
- Assaultive behavior.
- Unlawful weapons possession and/or use.
PPB Chief Bob Day told attendees of a presser, “Everybody’s talking about Portland. Everybody wants to know how we’re going to show up, how we’re going to be. I think this is our time.”
Portland is where two ballot drop boxes were broken into a few days ago, vandalized, and burned, where the still at-large arsonist left the messages including, "Free Gaza," and "Free Palestine," hardly the script of a rightwing Trump supporter.
