Over the past few years I've heard from, perhaps fringe, political commentators about civil war potentially coming to Western countries. Not of similarity to that of the American Civil War, which featured two standing armies clashing against one another; rather, it would be characterized by widespread societal breakdown and prolonged intermittent violence: public assassinations, politically motivated murders, attacks on infrastructure, etc. However, I have recently come across some expert commentary on the subject and it does seem quite foreboding.
https://www.city-journal.org/article/david-betz-civil-unrest-westQuote
A widely published Professor of War at King’s College London, Betz warns of the retribalization of Western societies. Mass migration and elite overreach, he argues, have created powder kegs of discontent awaiting the next spark of outrage... majorities in these countries believe that they are governed by people who are actively opposed to their national and personal interests... these beliefs—including the conviction that voting doesn’t matter, which he calls the most commonly expressed political view in the Western world—are empirically justified. Western elites—political, military, and corporate leaders as well as civil servants, academics, and the media—constitute an “anywhere class,” at home in any major global city, from Tokyo to London... exclusively attentive to “human rights,” an ever-expanding list of ultimately unsatisfiable wishes, these elites have encouraged mass migration from immiserated and chaotic societies. No less damaging for the stability of Western democracies is the perception that elites have changed long-standing rules of the political and legal game to defeat nationalist and anti-immigrant candidates and parties.
The previous article was ominous enough that I looked up a recent lecture the professor gave on the subject, and if it's of interest to you, I do recommend it. It's about an hour long.
While Betz provides a deep dive into the issues plaguing the contemporary UK, a recent book by an American international relations scholar Monica Toft -
Civil Wars: a Very Short Introduction - details a list of risk factors in contemporary stable democracies. How many would you say are present in our countries today?
Quote
1) Prior history of conflict, unresolved grievances
2) Weakening and lack of faith in institutions, failure of government to address citizen concerns
3) Ethnic sectarian cultural divisions, demographic change
4) Rejection of majority rule, radicalization and violence
5) Political polarization, intense partisan divisions, political gridlock
6) Economic disparities
7) External influences, geopolitical maneuvering
8) Social media, acceleration of information flow
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVl-oV8ONaI (see 7:00 to 13:30 for more details on each of these)
The last thing I would probably be inclined to add to this are comments by the British political philosopher John Gray, who in a recent lecture made the point that 1) liberals believe that populism has nothing to do with their policies, and instead blame external forces like demagoguery, foreign influence, social media, ignorance etc. 2) there is an assumption amongst these people that once right-wing populism is defeated, or fails to deliver on its promises, that citizens and their nations are going to return to "the end of History" trajectory we were previously on from the 1990s - 2010s. He argues that these ideas are wrong insofar that populism represents explicit backlash against the social disruption caused by liberal policies of the past several decades, and failure to address this cause of discontent in a meaningful way will prove politics unsustainable; worse yet, would be for ruling elites to double-down on the same policies which have pushed us towards where we are today.
see
https://youtu.be/TkNRYi5TDrU?t=40Anyway, you gamers got any hot takes on the matter?