WEBVTT - The Second American Civil War 0:00:02.960 --> 0:00:05.760 You wake up before your alarm. No sunlight peaks through 0:00:05.800 --> 0:00:08.640 your window. It's far too early for that. You're confused 0:00:08.640 --> 0:00:11.280 for just a moment, and then you hear another explosion. 0:00:11.760 --> 0:00:13.880 It echoes in the night, rattling the walls in the 0:00:13.920 --> 0:00:16.400 window of your apartment. This is not the first bomb 0:00:16.480 --> 0:00:18.560 you've heard, and it sounds far enough away that you 0:00:18.600 --> 0:00:21.720 know the danger isn't a minute. That surprises you a 0:00:21.720 --> 0:00:24.520 little bit, the fact that you recognized it's not close. 0:00:24.720 --> 0:00:26.960 You realize you've now heard enough explosions to have a 0:00:26.960 --> 0:00:28.920 pretty good ear for them, and when they're close enough 0:00:28.960 --> 0:00:31.800 to worry about. It's weird how quickly life in a 0:00:31.800 --> 0:00:35.440 war zone becomes just life. You get up, there's no 0:00:35.479 --> 0:00:37.680 sense trying to get back to sleep. As you stumble 0:00:37.720 --> 0:00:39.479 over to the kitchen to grind some coffee, you hear 0:00:39.520 --> 0:00:42.680 the crack of rifle fire. It's distant, too far enough 0:00:42.720 --> 0:00:45.479 away that it sounds almost like firecrackers, but you know 0:00:45.560 --> 0:00:48.080 it's not. You fill the grinder, put on the top, 0:00:48.080 --> 0:00:52.000 and press down. Nothing happens. You realize, belatedly in your 0:00:52.000 --> 0:00:55.480 sleep fogged brain that the powers out again. You wonder 0:00:55.520 --> 0:00:57.920 which of the dozen different rebel and insurgents groups in 0:00:57.920 --> 0:01:00.360 your state might be responsible. You don't even bother to 0:01:00.400 --> 0:01:02.560 get at your phone and check the news. It doesn't 0:01:02.560 --> 0:01:04.720 really matter, and you've got shipped to do. It's still 0:01:04.800 --> 0:01:07.080 dark outside, and since you're already up, you might as 0:01:07.080 --> 0:01:09.440 well take advantage of the situation and beat the crowd 0:01:09.480 --> 0:01:12.559 to the grocery store. They've been short on everything lately, 0:01:12.800 --> 0:01:16.600 thanks to separatists in northern California. Most nuts are basically unavailable. 0:01:16.760 --> 0:01:19.480 Rebel insurgents have been bombing highways in West Texas, so 0:01:19.560 --> 0:01:21.720 beef is way up. You don't tend to buy much 0:01:21.720 --> 0:01:24.320 meat these days anyway, though. All the blackouts make your 0:01:24.319 --> 0:01:26.840 fridge unreliable, and you can't afford to spend money on 0:01:26.880 --> 0:01:29.800 stuff that goes bad. You throw on a light jacket 0:01:29.800 --> 0:01:32.520 and roll downstairs. Two or three years ago, before all 0:01:32.520 --> 0:01:34.600 this started, you'd have popped in your earbuds and put 0:01:34.640 --> 0:01:37.479 on some music to accompany the walk. Today, you figure 0:01:37.480 --> 0:01:40.039 it'd be best to have your wits about you. You're 0:01:40.120 --> 0:01:42.560 lucky you live so close to the grocery store. There's 0:01:42.560 --> 0:01:44.959 a police checkpoint on the way, and the vehicle line 0:01:45.000 --> 0:01:47.680 is always a nightmare this time up day. As you 0:01:47.760 --> 0:01:49.840 close and lock your door behind you. You try to 0:01:49.880 --> 0:01:52.480 ignore the pop and chatter of not so distant gunfire. 0:01:53.560 --> 0:01:55.600 You have friends on the separatist side of town. You 0:01:55.640 --> 0:01:57.320 have a cousin up in the hills. You're not sure 0:01:57.320 --> 0:01:59.640 what he's doing there exactly, but it's probably part of 0:01:59.640 --> 0:02:02.600 why AIGs have gotten so expensive lately. They all have 0:02:02.680 --> 0:02:04.640 reasons for what they're doing, and you don't believe the 0:02:04.680 --> 0:02:06.960 government lying about any of the sides anymore. But you're 0:02:06.960 --> 0:02:08.959 also not dumb enough to want to stand up and fight. 0:02:09.440 --> 0:02:11.760 The official death toll is still just a few thousand, 0:02:11.880 --> 0:02:15.200 but international monitors claim it must be much higher. There 0:02:15.200 --> 0:02:17.600 are days when you do feel like doing something, maybe 0:02:17.600 --> 0:02:21.000 even joining your friends, but most days, like today, you've 0:02:21.000 --> 0:02:24.480 got shipped to do. It's twenty four, an election year. 0:02:24.800 --> 0:02:27.160 Every candidate is doing their level best to not call 0:02:27.200 --> 0:02:29.720 this what it is, a civil war. You hear that 0:02:29.760 --> 0:02:32.480 phrase out on the street, though, more and more every day. 0:02:32.919 --> 0:02:35.560 You reach a crosswalk and start to step across on 0:02:35.600 --> 0:02:37.720 the left. Your eyes are drawn to the massive bulk 0:02:37.760 --> 0:02:40.000 of a police bear cat as it trundles across the 0:02:40.040 --> 0:02:42.760 street parallel to you. A man sits up top in 0:02:42.800 --> 0:02:44.840 the couple up his hands on a machine gun that 0:02:45.000 --> 0:02:47.200 for now has its nose pointed up in the air. 0:02:47.480 --> 0:02:49.760 He stares at you, and you try not to stare back. 0:02:50.200 --> 0:02:52.600 As you hurry along with the supermarket. You ask yourself 0:02:52.600 --> 0:02:54.800 the question you've asked almost every day for the last 0:02:54.840 --> 0:03:00.480 three years. How did it get this bad? Did that 0:03:00.480 --> 0:03:04.120 seem far fetched? You outlandish? If so, let me try 0:03:04.160 --> 0:03:06.800 to show you why the preceding passage might well be 0:03:06.919 --> 0:03:11.040 reality for millions of Americans startlingly soon if something isn't done. 0:03:11.560 --> 0:03:14.560 The second American Civil War doesn't sound like a crazy, 0:03:14.680 --> 0:03:17.519 distant possibility to me, and it hasn't for a while. 0:03:18.080 --> 0:03:20.480 I'm Robert Evans, and it's my job to help you 0:03:20.560 --> 0:03:26.119 see what I see. Two thousand sixteen was the first 0:03:26.240 --> 0:03:29.560 year I started seriously considering the possibility of a second 0:03:29.600 --> 0:03:32.160 American Civil War. It was the year I reported on 0:03:32.200 --> 0:03:35.200 the major protests surrounding the most contentious election in modern 0:03:35.200 --> 0:03:37.520 American history. I was there at the r n C 0:03:37.720 --> 0:03:39.800 in the d n C, and at both I saw 0:03:39.920 --> 0:03:44.000 tremendous hatred on display. Leftist protesters hated Hillary Clinton and 0:03:44.120 --> 0:03:48.840 mainstream Democrats conspicuously armed. Right wing protesters hated the leftists. 0:03:48.880 --> 0:03:51.600 Every one hated the police, and the police certainly seemed 0:03:51.600 --> 0:03:54.600 to hate the protesters. I also traveled to a Rack 0:03:54.680 --> 0:03:57.120 in two thousand sixteen to report on the siege of Mosel, 0:03:57.480 --> 0:04:00.400 but nothing I saw there, nothing I saw anywhere that year, 0:04:00.560 --> 0:04:03.160 scared me more than watching Alex Jones speak on the 0:04:03.200 --> 0:04:06.200 first day of the r n C. A huge crowd 0:04:06.280 --> 0:04:08.480 had gathered to see him. Many of them were armed, 0:04:08.680 --> 0:04:11.080 dozens of young men wearing body armor and packing a 0:04:11.200 --> 0:04:14.880 R fifteens patrolled in the Ohio summer heat. The speech 0:04:14.960 --> 0:04:19.320 was characteristically for Jones, angry, filled with shouted declarations of hatred. 0:04:19.920 --> 0:04:22.440 That did not surprise me. What surprised me was the 0:04:22.480 --> 0:04:25.479 crowd's reaction to how he labeled the Democratic Party. These 0:04:25.520 --> 0:04:35.400 are not liberal. You can hear the reckless hate in 0:04:35.440 --> 0:04:39.239 the audio, the sheer rage these people had. Seeing dozens 0:04:39.240 --> 0:04:42.520 and dozens of armed Americans calling their political opponents scum 0:04:42.680 --> 0:04:47.719 outdoors and broad daylight at a major party political convention. Now, 0:04:47.760 --> 0:04:49.640 in two thousand nineteen, it's the kind of thing that 0:04:49.680 --> 0:04:52.440 seems normal, but at the time it was new and frightening. 0:04:53.200 --> 0:04:55.200 I was just a few feet away when adult swims 0:04:55.279 --> 0:04:58.039 Eric Andre showed up to troll Jones. I know a 0:04:58.080 --> 0:05:00.800 lot of people watched that moment on TV or on YouTube. 0:05:01.000 --> 0:05:02.919 What you may not have seen was how close the 0:05:02.920 --> 0:05:06.320 crowd looked to tearing Andrea apart. Some of those people 0:05:06.520 --> 0:05:10.360 wanted to fucking kill him. Most of that armed, angry 0:05:10.400 --> 0:05:13.279 crowd was polite enough to me, lily white bearded Southerner 0:05:13.279 --> 0:05:15.440 that I am, but several of them made it clear 0:05:15.480 --> 0:05:17.760 that they believed a fight was coming. We have to 0:05:17.800 --> 0:05:20.440 take back our country no matter what. Was the general 0:05:20.480 --> 0:05:23.000 sentiment coming from the mouth of someone dressed like they 0:05:23.080 --> 0:05:25.479 just stepped out of downtown Fellujiah, It's sent a chill 0:05:25.560 --> 0:05:28.880 down my spine. By the time September rolled around, I 0:05:28.880 --> 0:05:31.839 had started seriously thinking about the possibility of a second 0:05:31.839 --> 0:05:34.720 American Civil War. I decided to write an article about 0:05:34.720 --> 0:05:37.039 it for Cracked, where I worked as an editor. I 0:05:37.080 --> 0:05:39.320 didn't want it to just be my speculation, so I 0:05:39.400 --> 0:05:42.080 reached out to a number of experts, ex federal agents 0:05:42.080 --> 0:05:45.240 and military officers and civil war scholars. One of these 0:05:45.279 --> 0:05:48.719 experts was David Kilcolin, former chief strategist for the U. S. 0:05:48.720 --> 0:05:51.680 State Department and a major architect of the surge in Iraq. 0:05:52.200 --> 0:05:55.560 He's one of the world's leading counter insurgency experts. When 0:05:55.560 --> 0:05:57.520 I reached out to these people, I had very little 0:05:57.520 --> 0:05:59.520 faith that any of them would respond to me. My 0:05:59.600 --> 0:06:02.680 topic seemed too far fetched and ridiculous, and these were 0:06:02.680 --> 0:06:05.520 all serious people. I didn't think they'd waste their time 0:06:05.600 --> 0:06:09.559 with my speculative sci fi bullshit. To my surprise, every 0:06:09.560 --> 0:06:12.200 one of them responded to me, and to my growing discomfort, 0:06:12.400 --> 0:06:15.440 none of them thought the topic was ridiculous. David Kilcolin 0:06:15.520 --> 0:06:17.560 told me he'd been researching the idea for a while. 0:06:17.839 --> 0:06:20.120 He did not think a Civil War two was imminent, 0:06:20.320 --> 0:06:22.880 but he worried about it. Everyone I talked, too, worried 0:06:22.920 --> 0:06:25.560 about it. They all saw warning signs that our nation 0:06:25.680 --> 0:06:30.040 might be inching closer to unspeakable violence. In the years since, 0:06:30.160 --> 0:06:32.120 the rest of the world seems to be catching up 0:06:32.160 --> 0:06:35.719 to this possibility. Since President Trump's election, we have seen 0:06:35.760 --> 0:06:39.480 a mighty surge in political violence across the country. Antifa 0:06:39.560 --> 0:06:41.839 in groups like the Proud Boys and Patriot Prayer have 0:06:41.920 --> 0:06:45.480 battled in the streets of multiple American cities. Heather Higher 0:06:45.600 --> 0:06:48.640 was murdered in a fascist terrorist attack on counter protesters 0:06:48.640 --> 0:06:51.880 in Charlottesville. The magabomber and the Tree of Life synagogue 0:06:51.880 --> 0:06:54.640 shooter both struck at political and racial enemies of the 0:06:54.680 --> 0:06:57.760 far right in the same week. In June of two 0:06:57.800 --> 0:07:00.840 thousand seventeen, almost exactly a year after Alex jones Is 0:07:00.920 --> 0:07:03.320 rally at the r n C, Dana Losh of the 0:07:03.400 --> 0:07:05.719 n r A put up a video that seems almost 0:07:05.720 --> 0:07:08.240 tailor made to highlight how much worse things got in 0:07:08.320 --> 0:07:11.080 the months after the election. They use their media to 0:07:11.120 --> 0:07:14.920 assassinate real news. They use their schools to teach children 0:07:14.960 --> 0:07:18.160 that their president is another hitler. They use their movie 0:07:18.200 --> 0:07:21.320 stars and singers and comedy shows and award shows to 0:07:21.400 --> 0:07:24.960 repeat their narrative over and over again. And then they 0:07:25.080 --> 0:07:28.720 use their ex president to endorse the resistance. All to 0:07:28.840 --> 0:07:32.840 make them march, make them protest, make them scream racism 0:07:32.840 --> 0:07:37.760 and sexism and xenophobia and homophobia, to smash windows, burn cars, 0:07:38.040 --> 0:07:42.040 shutdown interstates and airports, fully and terrorize the law abiding 0:07:42.320 --> 0:07:45.400 until the only option left is for the police to 0:07:45.440 --> 0:07:49.600 do their jobs and stop the madness. And when that happens, 0:07:49.760 --> 0:07:52.920 they'll use it as an excuse for their outrage. The 0:07:52.960 --> 0:07:56.120 only way we stop this, the only way we save 0:07:56.200 --> 0:08:00.400 our country and Our freedom is to fight this violence 0:08:00.480 --> 0:08:04.200 of lies with a clenched fist of truth. I'm the 0:08:04.280 --> 0:08:09.160 National Rifle Association of America, and I'm Freedom's safest place. 0:08:09.960 --> 0:08:13.560 A year later, Roger Stone, famed Trump ally and recently 0:08:13.560 --> 0:08:16.800 indicted asshole, had this to say, Try to impeach you, 0:08:17.040 --> 0:08:20.200 just try it. You will have a spasm of violence 0:08:20.200 --> 0:08:23.320 in this country, an insurrection like you've never seen. You think, 0:08:23.560 --> 0:08:25.320 no question, You think if you go in peach like 0:08:25.680 --> 0:08:29.400 the country sides are heavily armed, My friend, yes, absolutely, 0:08:30.040 --> 0:08:33.240 this is not in nineteen seventy four. They the people 0:08:33.280 --> 0:08:37.040 will not stand for impeachment of politician. Who votes for 0:08:37.120 --> 0:08:39.880 it would be endangering their own life. There will be 0:08:39.960 --> 0:08:43.760 violence on both sides. And of course Alex Jones's own 0:08:43.800 --> 0:08:47.200 rhetoric has escalated considerably over the last two years. I 0:08:47.240 --> 0:08:49.160 know the instinct here is to write him off as 0:08:49.160 --> 0:08:51.560 a nut shouting into the wilderness, but more than a 0:08:51.640 --> 0:08:54.440 million Americans watch or listen to his show each month. 0:08:54.840 --> 0:08:57.199 He is not nearly as fringe as you want him 0:08:57.200 --> 0:09:00.559 to be. You're trying to start the civil war with people. 0:09:00.840 --> 0:09:03.960 You're taking our kindness for weakness. Do you understand the 0:09:04.000 --> 0:09:07.280 American people will kill all of you. If you want 0:09:07.360 --> 0:09:12.600 a real war a seventeen seventy six. I'm not the 0:09:12.640 --> 0:09:15.120 one that's called for violence. You're gonna get wrecked, bads. 0:09:15.320 --> 0:09:17.800 I don't want a war. I don't need some you know, 0:09:18.000 --> 0:09:20.160 coming of age deal to kill a bunch of liberals. 0:09:20.200 --> 0:09:22.280 I just can't. But I also feel like I'm in 0:09:22.360 --> 0:09:25.800 dereliction of as a citizen of my duty not saying 0:09:26.160 --> 0:09:29.079 we have to start getting ready for insurrection and civil war. 0:09:29.440 --> 0:09:33.040 After two years of constantly escalating rhetoric and violence, even 0:09:33.080 --> 0:09:36.840 America's political moderates have started to worry. Last October, the 0:09:36.880 --> 0:09:40.319 New York Times published an opinion article titled the American 0:09:40.400 --> 0:09:45.239 Civil War, Part Two. The National Review, a mainstream conservative magazine, 0:09:45.280 --> 0:09:48.400 published The Origins of Our Second Civil War a few 0:09:48.400 --> 0:09:52.160 months later. So maybe this all still sounds ridiculous to you, 0:09:52.360 --> 0:09:54.200 but let the record show that a whole mess of 0:09:54.200 --> 0:09:58.079 heavily armed people are already loudly fantasizing about mass violence. 0:09:58.520 --> 0:10:00.960 That's not the only ingredients you need for a vicious 0:10:00.960 --> 0:10:04.679 civil war, but it is certainly one of them. Even so, 0:10:04.920 --> 0:10:07.720 to most people, the idea of a second American Civil 0:10:07.720 --> 0:10:10.640 war feels more like science fiction than a possible future. 0:10:11.200 --> 0:10:13.679 I even feel that way sometimes when I step away 0:10:13.679 --> 0:10:16.200 from Twitter and ignore my news feed and walk the quiet, 0:10:16.280 --> 0:10:19.319 tree lined streets of my neighborhood. It feels silly when 0:10:19.320 --> 0:10:21.120 I stand in line at the d m V or 0:10:21.160 --> 0:10:24.280 hop onto a public bus or train. The systems that 0:10:24.360 --> 0:10:27.600 govern our lives here are so intricate, so seemingly stable, 0:10:27.679 --> 0:10:30.360 and so settled that any kind of mass upset feels 0:10:30.360 --> 0:10:34.560 almost impossible, fantastic even. But I have walked through cities 0:10:34.559 --> 0:10:37.679 where the public buses still run, just without windows because 0:10:37.679 --> 0:10:40.040 the blasts from mortars have blown them all out. I've 0:10:40.040 --> 0:10:42.480 watched people stand in line and fill out forms and 0:10:42.559 --> 0:10:46.000 government buildings while howitzer shake the foundation and machine guns 0:10:46.080 --> 0:10:49.400 chatter half a mile away. I have seen systems collapse. 0:10:49.920 --> 0:10:52.520 Everything I've seen and everything I've read over the last 0:10:52.520 --> 0:10:55.319 two years has convinced me that the United States is 0:10:55.360 --> 0:10:57.959 closer to that kind of terror than almost anyone is 0:10:58.000 --> 0:11:01.559 willing to admit. And so I can't ignore Alex Jones 0:11:01.559 --> 0:11:03.920 as a cook on the fringe. I think he's dangerous, 0:11:04.000 --> 0:11:06.240 and I think he represents a strain of ideology that 0:11:06.240 --> 0:11:21.360 could collapse this nation into apocalyptic violence. We welcome to 0:11:21.440 --> 0:11:24.240 It Could Happen Here, a podcast where every season I 0:11:24.320 --> 0:11:27.880 take some fantastic, unlikely scenario and explain how it could happen, 0:11:28.000 --> 0:11:30.120 why it might be closer than you'd think, and how 0:11:30.160 --> 0:11:33.840 it will look when or if it comes. This season, 0:11:33.960 --> 0:11:36.480 we are talking about the Second American Civil War, and 0:11:36.559 --> 0:11:40.360 this episode we're exploring one possible way that war could start. Today, 0:11:40.480 --> 0:11:42.920 the perpetrators will be Donald Trump and the American far 0:11:43.040 --> 0:11:46.319 right in its most armed, vicious, and violent incarnation. The 0:11:46.400 --> 0:11:48.400 show will be on the other foot for the next episode. 0:11:48.559 --> 0:11:50.640 My sympathies are with the left, but my goal here 0:11:50.679 --> 0:11:54.120 is not partisan fearmongering. It's an exploration of the possibilities. 0:11:54.800 --> 0:11:57.000 I want to start by dispelling sub myths. I think 0:11:57.040 --> 0:11:59.720 the main reason many people have trouble imagining a second 0:11:59.720 --> 0:12:01.960 Civil war is the First Civil War. And if you 0:12:02.000 --> 0:12:04.080 think of the second Civil War is a replay of 0:12:04.120 --> 0:12:06.160 the first, where a huge junk of the nation decides 0:12:06.200 --> 0:12:08.960 to secede, there are two cleanly defined sides and two 0:12:09.000 --> 0:12:11.920 opposing militaries that clash in the field, then yes, it 0:12:11.960 --> 0:12:15.520 probably does seem impossible. But war doesn't look like that anymore. 0:12:15.960 --> 0:12:18.080 In eighteen sixty one, an army was just a bunch 0:12:18.120 --> 0:12:20.960 of men with rifles, horses, and some cannons. Most of 0:12:20.960 --> 0:12:23.320 the kit and modern soldier would take into battle with 0:12:23.360 --> 0:12:27.800 stuff that many normal people owned already. The existence of aircraft, drones, 0:12:27.840 --> 0:12:31.000 satellite guided missiles and tanks has changed things. A bunch 0:12:31.000 --> 0:12:33.800 of dudes with rifles marching on Washington, d C. Would 0:12:33.800 --> 0:12:35.839 be wiped out by a single eight in war tawk. 0:12:36.640 --> 0:12:39.640 Older wars tend to have real clear beginnings. The U 0:12:39.800 --> 0:12:42.160 s Civil War started with the capture of Fort Sumter, 0:12:42.480 --> 0:12:45.120 the Revolutionary War started with a fighting at Lexington and 0:12:45.160 --> 0:12:48.520 conquered World War two started with the invasion of Poland. 0:12:48.920 --> 0:12:51.520 But the Syrian Civil War didn't suddenly start so much 0:12:51.559 --> 0:12:54.640 as it evolved from popular protests and clashes with police 0:12:54.640 --> 0:12:57.719 in the street, to brutal state repression of those protesters, 0:12:57.840 --> 0:13:01.040 and eventually to a shooting war. And when that war started, 0:13:01.120 --> 0:13:03.360 there were way the funk more than two sides, the 0:13:03.360 --> 0:13:06.960 Free Syrian Army, Jabbat al nusra Isis, the YPG, and 0:13:07.080 --> 0:13:09.920 dozens of other groups all took different positions, many fighting 0:13:09.960 --> 0:13:13.199 against both the Syrian state and other rebel groups. It's 0:13:13.200 --> 0:13:16.640 a gigantic, confusing mess. Any mass civil conflict in the 0:13:16.720 --> 0:13:19.839 U s would probably look similar. So forget the Union 0:13:19.840 --> 0:13:22.560 and the Confederacy, forget clear sides in a clear beginning. 0:13:22.840 --> 0:13:25.640 Imagine you're sitting at home one day, browsing the Internet. 0:13:26.080 --> 0:13:28.440 You read about the beginning of a protest in Wall Street. 0:13:28.679 --> 0:13:31.360 The first pictures and videos that start circulating on social 0:13:31.360 --> 0:13:34.240 media probably look a lot like Occupy Once did. I 0:13:34.240 --> 0:13:36.880 imagine these protesters are angry at Trump. As I write 0:13:36.880 --> 0:13:40.040 this in February of twenty nineteen, protesters have assembled in 0:13:40.160 --> 0:13:42.080 d C and several other points around the nation to 0:13:42.120 --> 0:13:45.000 attack the president's declaration of a state of emergency over 0:13:45.040 --> 0:13:47.800 what he calls a crisis at the border. So let's 0:13:47.800 --> 0:13:49.840 say Trump does something else, fucked up a set of 0:13:49.880 --> 0:13:52.840 mass deportations. Maybe people take to the street to protest 0:13:52.880 --> 0:13:55.600 in huge numbers, millions of folk across the country. Some 0:13:55.640 --> 0:13:57.920 of the largest protests are in New York, right outside 0:13:57.920 --> 0:14:01.320 of Trump Tower. It will be hot. Most large protests 0:14:01.360 --> 0:14:03.320 occur in the dead of summer, and as I write this, 0:14:03.440 --> 0:14:05.520 we're edging ever closer to that time of the year, 0:14:06.040 --> 0:14:08.760 So you'll have thousands of people crowding in around Trump Tower. 0:14:08.880 --> 0:14:12.560 They're hot, sweaty and furious. So far nothing new. The 0:14:12.600 --> 0:14:15.040 first pictures and video clips that you see look normal 0:14:15.080 --> 0:14:16.720 to anyone who's paid attention to the news for the 0:14:16.760 --> 0:14:19.880 last decade. Folks with funny signs, people in costume packed 0:14:19.880 --> 0:14:22.880 crowds of marchers. You go about your day, checking Twitter 0:14:22.960 --> 0:14:25.080 or Facebook every now and again. You visit the gym 0:14:25.120 --> 0:14:27.840 and see footage from the rally on CNN, Wolf Blitzer 0:14:27.880 --> 0:14:30.280 talking to some black clad activist with a mask over 0:14:30.320 --> 0:14:33.720 his face. Lines of riot cops stand ominously in the background, 0:14:33.800 --> 0:14:36.640 sweating through their body armor. It seems pretty normal, at 0:14:36.680 --> 0:14:39.760 least for twenty nineteen, and then, rather suddenly it's not. 0:14:40.120 --> 0:14:42.160 The tone of the news dripping out from New York 0:14:42.240 --> 0:14:46.560 Changes becomes chaotic, erratic, and violent. Now you see people 0:14:46.600 --> 0:14:49.640 running away, blurry footage of blood and bodies on the street, 0:14:49.800 --> 0:14:52.880 evidence that something terrible has happened. For a while, all 0:14:52.960 --> 0:14:55.120 you know is that people are dying in the Big Apple. 0:14:55.760 --> 0:14:58.600 Gradually the story comes out. The police opened fire with 0:14:58.600 --> 0:15:00.640 what we're supposed to be less than the full rounds, 0:15:01.000 --> 0:15:03.640 but they were piste off or legitimately scared, and they 0:15:03.720 --> 0:15:06.240 hit several people in their faces and heads. Several of 0:15:06.240 --> 0:15:09.000 those folks died and others were horribly injured. For the 0:15:09.040 --> 0:15:11.280 rest of the day. For the next week, every new 0:15:11.400 --> 0:15:14.440 station rotates the same grim footage of corpses under streets 0:15:14.440 --> 0:15:17.560 and weeping activists shaking from the aftermath of lethal violence. 0:15:18.320 --> 0:15:20.600 There's video of the shooting. When I see it, I'm 0:15:20.600 --> 0:15:23.120 sure it looks like the police fired without cause. My 0:15:23.200 --> 0:15:26.800 conservative parents disagree, pointing to what might be protesters throwing something. 0:15:27.080 --> 0:15:29.280 We get into a fight about exactly how much force 0:15:29.360 --> 0:15:32.800 that could possibly justify the whole country has that argument 0:15:33.040 --> 0:15:35.280 who you blame for the deaths winds up depending on 0:15:35.320 --> 0:15:39.680 where you stand politically. Remember the confrontation between Nathan Phillips 0:15:39.680 --> 0:15:41.920 and Nick Sandman at the March for Life in January 0:15:41.920 --> 0:15:44.600 of twenty nineteen. As I write this, it's just a 0:15:44.600 --> 0:15:46.800 few weeks old. You can watch hours of video from 0:15:46.880 --> 0:15:50.000 multiple angles, and yet on social media, right wing pundits 0:15:50.000 --> 0:15:53.240 say the full video completely exonerates those kids. Left wing 0:15:53.280 --> 0:15:56.440 pundits say the exact opposite, And these people are all 0:15:56.520 --> 0:16:00.600 working from the same evidence. The inciting incident for theoretical 0:16:00.600 --> 0:16:03.240 civil war will be like that. What was done will 0:16:03.280 --> 0:16:05.720 matter less than how it's interpreted by different segments of 0:16:05.760 --> 0:16:09.440 America in their different social media bubbles. After the murder 0:16:09.480 --> 0:16:12.480 of Heather Higher at Charlottesville, a narrative developed on the 0:16:12.520 --> 0:16:15.320 fascist side of things that claimed James Fields, the killer, 0:16:15.400 --> 0:16:18.080 had been assaulted by antifa will in his car. They 0:16:18.160 --> 0:16:20.640 argued that he'd accelerated into the crowd in a panic, 0:16:20.760 --> 0:16:23.200 and that Heather Higher had actually died from a heart attack. 0:16:23.720 --> 0:16:25.880 None of this was true, but hours of video and 0:16:25.880 --> 0:16:29.160 countless picture based arguments were concocted by Internet Nazis in 0:16:29.160 --> 0:16:32.360 an attempt to exonerate their guy. This narrative did not 0:16:32.400 --> 0:16:35.680 spread widely because fucking nobody wanted to be associated with 0:16:35.720 --> 0:16:38.600 the Charlottesville Nazis. But that will not be the case 0:16:38.680 --> 0:16:41.680 for this protest. We're imagining no one's wearing a swastika 0:16:41.800 --> 0:16:44.080 or holding a tiki torch. You've got cops in riot 0:16:44.080 --> 0:16:47.320 gear and activists in black masks. Both sides are sympathetic 0:16:47.320 --> 0:16:49.640 to one chunk of the country and reviled by the other. 0:16:50.920 --> 0:16:53.920 Even at Charlottesville, President Trump was unwilling to fully condemn 0:16:53.920 --> 0:16:56.880 the neo Nazi demonstrators, declaring that there were good people 0:16:56.920 --> 0:16:59.360 on both sides. So who do you think he'll support? 0:16:59.400 --> 0:17:01.800 In a battle the between cops and protesters outside of 0:17:01.840 --> 0:17:04.760 his big dumb tower. He literally ran as the law 0:17:04.760 --> 0:17:08.760 and order president. Just last October two thousand eighteen, President 0:17:08.800 --> 0:17:12.000 Trump declared Democrats to be anti police and the party 0:17:12.000 --> 0:17:15.760 of crime. Now, this one bloody protest would not lead 0:17:15.800 --> 0:17:19.240 inevitably to a civil war. It just starts a process. 0:17:19.600 --> 0:17:22.480 Crossing the bridge from civil unrest to civil warfare doesn't 0:17:22.520 --> 0:17:25.840 require a magical and improbable shift in the firmament of reality. 0:17:26.000 --> 0:17:27.919 It just takes a bunch of the same fucked up 0:17:27.960 --> 0:17:31.160 ship that's always happening in America, happening all at once 0:17:31.240 --> 0:17:34.680 and in quick succession. One bloody protest on Wall Street 0:17:34.720 --> 0:17:37.479 and a defensive response from the Republican President would lead 0:17:37.520 --> 0:17:40.760 to more protests all around the country. Activists across the 0:17:40.840 --> 0:17:42.880 nation would take to the streets in numbers not seen 0:17:42.960 --> 0:17:45.800 since the Iraq War protests in two thousand three. We 0:17:45.840 --> 0:17:47.679 can look to our last two years of history to 0:17:47.720 --> 0:17:51.520 guess where these demonstrations would be most violent. Berkeley, California, 0:17:51.560 --> 0:17:53.760 and Portland, Oregon are probably right at the top of 0:17:53.800 --> 0:17:56.560 that list. For the last two years, far right and 0:17:56.600 --> 0:17:59.159 far left activists have clashed bloodily in the streets of 0:17:59.160 --> 0:18:01.720 both cities. Portland has seen more street action in the 0:18:01.760 --> 0:18:04.120 last two years than any other city in the country. 0:18:04.160 --> 0:18:06.200 This is thanks in large part to the activism of 0:18:06.200 --> 0:18:08.399 a fellow named Joey Gibson. He's the head of a 0:18:08.440 --> 0:18:11.480 far right protest group called Patriot Prayer, and he's led 0:18:11.520 --> 0:18:13.880 dozens of rallies that have ended with hundreds of injuries 0:18:14.040 --> 0:18:17.919 from minor to life threatening. Recently, the Portland Police Bureau 0:18:17.960 --> 0:18:20.560 were revealed to have been collaborating with Patriot Prayer and 0:18:20.680 --> 0:18:24.040 Joey Gibson via text messages. The collaboration seems to have 0:18:24.080 --> 0:18:26.520 gone as far as to include police advising right wing 0:18:26.600 --> 0:18:30.399 demonstrators where smaller groups of leftist activists were located, and 0:18:30.440 --> 0:18:33.560 giving them suggestions on how they might avoid being searched 0:18:33.560 --> 0:18:36.639 for weapons. At one demonstration last summer, Patriot Prayer members 0:18:36.680 --> 0:18:38.880 were caught on the roof of a nearby building with rifles, 0:18:39.000 --> 0:18:42.000 presumably so they could open fire if ANTIFOD did something 0:18:42.040 --> 0:18:44.960 they considered to be a step out of line. Now 0:18:45.000 --> 0:18:47.919 Portland is a famously liberal city, but it's lodged in 0:18:47.920 --> 0:18:51.679 the middle of some extremely conservative rural and suburban communities 0:18:51.800 --> 0:18:55.880 in a state with an extraordinarily high rate of gun ownership. Portland, 0:18:55.880 --> 0:18:58.520 Oregon is actually a great microcosm for the entire country. 0:18:58.560 --> 0:19:01.679 That way, you've got conservative gun owning America versus bleeding 0:19:01.680 --> 0:19:05.359 heart gun grabbing liberals. So tempers are high in that area. 0:19:05.720 --> 0:19:08.480 And at this set of protests we're imagining the crowd 0:19:08.560 --> 0:19:10.480 is huge and furious about what they see as the 0:19:10.560 --> 0:19:13.080 murder of their comrades in New York. In the middle 0:19:13.119 --> 0:19:15.199 of this, Joey Gibson and his goons show up to 0:19:15.200 --> 0:19:17.360 rep their side of what's still just a culture war. 0:19:17.720 --> 0:19:20.120 They're shoving and punches, as there have been so many 0:19:20.119 --> 0:19:23.280 times before in Portland, but this time someone pulls a gun. 0:19:23.760 --> 0:19:26.359 This person kills two people. There's video of the event. 0:19:26.520 --> 0:19:29.399 It's blurry, confusing, but we get one clear shot of 0:19:29.440 --> 0:19:31.959 the shooter, his hand on a smoking gun and a 0:19:31.960 --> 0:19:34.960 Maga hat on his head. The left sees a mass 0:19:35.000 --> 0:19:39.120 murderer firing on unarmed demonstrators. The president embraces his supporter. 0:19:39.520 --> 0:19:42.199 There's an investigation, of course, but rather than shutting up, 0:19:42.240 --> 0:19:45.120 the shooter does what people do now in nineteen when 0:19:45.119 --> 0:19:48.800 something like this happens. He goes on TV. Nick Sandman's 0:19:48.800 --> 0:19:51.280 response to his kerfuffle with Nate Phillips is now the 0:19:51.280 --> 0:19:53.959 blueprint for how to deal with this kind of public incident. 0:19:54.600 --> 0:19:56.520 So the shooter is embraced as a hero by a 0:19:56.520 --> 0:19:58.840 lot of people. His name becomes a catchphrase on the 0:19:58.880 --> 0:20:01.840 fire right, the term used to describe giving protesters what 0:20:01.920 --> 0:20:04.760 they deserve. Right wingers on Twitter post gifts of him 0:20:04.760 --> 0:20:07.120 holding his gun when they get into arguments with liberals. 0:20:07.520 --> 0:20:10.560 The left responds, of course, with more protests, some outside 0:20:10.560 --> 0:20:12.840 of the same Fox News offices where this man talks 0:20:12.880 --> 0:20:16.560