In response to the FBI search at Mara Lago. Some Trump supporters
have also increased calls for a civil war, Laura Baron Lopez takes
a deeper look at threats of political violence by elements of the
far right.
Those dangerous threats are being fueled by conspiracy theories,
as well as the mistrust of the FBI and Justice Department that has
been promoted by many Republican politicians to explain the rising
extremism on the right. We're joined by Barbara Walter, professor
at University of California at San Diego and author of the book.
How Civil Wars Start. Barbara. Thanks for joining US
Thank you for having me. I want to ask you about the Mara Lago search
prompted a lot of Trump supporters to call for civil war. How does
this fit into the growing pattern of extremism on the right?
So for those of us who study violent extremism here in the United
States, this is not a surprise at all. If you had been on the chat
rooms starting in 2008, you would have seen an increasing narrative
that talked about shifting to more violent strategy. If more conventional
methods of maintaining power and by that I mean white power here
in this country didn't work. And so what we're seeing is is sort
of that narrative moving into the mainstream and yesterday
Gunmen breached an FBI office and Cincinnati, Ohio before being killed
by authorities.
Reports said that he appeared to be at the January 6th insurrection,
and he had also previously said he wanted to attack the FBI. When
you see these incidents connected to violent rhetoric, what does
that say to you?
Yeah, So we know that violent extremism here in the United States
has increased consistently since 2008 and it continues to increase
quite dramatically. We know that much of the violence is being perpetrated
by far right groups, and we know the profile of those far right groups
about 65% of them are white supremacist groups about 29% of them
are anti federal government groups, and there's overlap there, but
the anti federal government groups are agree.
Groups that think that the federal government is illegitimate, if
it is, if they see it as legitimate that it has too much power, and
the reason they don't want the federal government to have too much
power is that federal law overrides state law, and so what we're
seeing is an increase in attacks on law enforcement agents and on
federal government employees. And so, of course, the gunmen in Cincinnati
was targeting the FBI. And, and that's no
Coincidence, and I'll say one more thing that there is a book called
The Turner Diaries, and it's considered the Bible of the far right.
The Turner Diaries. Outlaw outlines exactly how you would persecute
how you would how you would process how you would how he would. Um,
uh, conduct a civil war against the US government. And the very first
thing it says that you should do is to attack the FBI.
Speaking of distrust of institutions. House Minority Leader Kevin
McCarthy has said that if Republicans take control of the House,
they will investigate. Attorney General Merrick Garland and a number
of other Republicans have said that the FBI should be simply destroyed.
What signal does that send to the Republican base?
Well, that signals to them that these organizations are illegitimate,
um, that are somehow corrupted that don't deserve to exist. And when
you get to the point where you begin to believe that, um then your
trust in democracy and your belief that democracy should continue
to exist evaporates. So this is exactly a strategy that would be
autocrat or a strong man would want to pursue.
Mhm and then also in response to this FBI search, there are some
who are arguing that prosecuting former president Trump will absolutely
result in a civil war and therefore a breakdown of democracy. But
would impunity for Trump emboldened the same forces calling for that
civil war?
Well, First of all, I don't believe that Prosecuting President Trump
is going to be a trigger for civil war, and that's because we know
what the triggers of civil war are. And the triggers tend to be things
that bring a loss of hope to the base of supporters and a loss of
hope usually comes from a series of losses at elections.
So if a group that thinks that deserves to be in power loses one
election, then loses a second election that loses a third election,
they begin to lose hope that they will ever come to power again.
That's when you tend to see a shift towards violence. So President
former President Trump is no longer in power. There's going to be
an election in 2020 for a Republican candidate is going to run for
power. And if that Republican wins that election, there's going to
Be a resurgence of hope amongst the base, and we're going to see
less risk of civil war rather than more.
And then very quickly. Barbara, you served on CIA led task force
that studied political instability and violence. That task force
was not able to study the U. S. Should the US be studied under a
similar task force. And how would that be done? Yeah, well, first
of all, I should be clear that the CIA should absolutely never studied
the United States it. It is an agency designed to gather intelligence
on countries outside on countries outside the United States. We do
not want to see a
Looking at American citizens. That is essentially what the FBI does.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is an agency that's designed
to gather intelligence about threats to American citizens from within
the United States. It's designed to enforce federal law. So we have
an agency that already is in place to do that, and, in fact can do
a very, very good job at that. It used to be that the peak of militias
of violent
Extremist groups and militias in the United States was in 1996.
And after the Oklahoma City bombing, the FBI was very effective in
in infiltrating. Um, uh far right groups and essentially disbanding
them. Barbara Walter. Thank you.