Experts are warning that the Trump administration’s ongoing crackdown in Minnesota could quickly get out of hand and could even result in a second US civil war.
Claire Finkelstein, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, wrote in a Wednesday column published by the Guardian that she and her colleagues at the Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law (CERL) conducted a tabletop exercise in October 2024 that simulated potential outcomes if a US president were to carry out law enforcement operations similar to the ones being conducted by the Trump administration with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers in Minnesota.
“In that exercise, a president carried out a highly unpopular law-enforcement operation in Philadelphia and attempted to federalize the Pennsylvania’s National Guard,” Finkelstein explained. “When the governor resisted and the guard remained loyal to the state, the president deployed active-duty troops, resulting in an armed conflict between state and federal forces.”
I’m pretty sure that’s actually the point.
They want violence so they can justify themselves. Because if it ever gets to the point where these monsters are in front of a judge they’re going to need some justification or they’re going to have a bad time. They knew this, or at least some of them know this, and therefore are trying to manufacture consent.
This is blindingly obvious. Everything this administration do is basic, they have the political strategies of a toddler who is having a tantrum because he’s not being allowed to drink bleach. In trump’s case, literally.
American friends: None of you deserved this. Watching this shit from the sidelines is insane. Somehow you have normalized it. Like a frog in boiling water. Europeans are turning away now. Everything is about to get really fucking ugly.
The GOP normalized this. They brute forced Trump in as a candidate the second time around. It didn’t matter if he joined the primaries or not, he was going to ballet no matter what.
Remember that our alliance was born in the blood of our grandfathers. My grandfather died in old age from old shrapnel causing a bleed. He was shot diagonally by a machine gun with bullets hitting leg to shoulder and then grenaded. Other scout with him shot dead through the neck beside him.
Be warned! What is happening here is a pathogen. Those within will need each other.
It’s pretty awful… I’m taking the steps to get my LTC now. I see the wisdom in the 2nd amendment now but I’m not foolish enough to think I stand a chance against a silent drone that flies above the clouds and can shoot laser guided missiles and is piloted by a guy 50 miles off shore… it’d be used to get the hell out of dodge.
That’s what they want
Actually, they don’t. If a civil war started, it would likely end with the death of some billionaires and rightfully so. Ideally they want to deport and detain more people before starting a Civil War. If they do it too soon, they won’t have the numbers to win. So please let them be stupid enough to do it too soon.
I’m ALL for 8 dead billionaires instead of decades of more governments becoming enshitified by the tech these clowns control.
It all depends on how much of the military remains loyal to the administration and how much of their infrastructure remains accessible to them.
But based on the militaries willingness to commit war crimes, I’m not holding out much hope in that regard.
The Second American Civil War started with the murder of George Floyd.
Open civil war is starting right now.
Open civil war is starting right now.
Has this term “civil war” just lost all meaning along with “literally” and “gaslight?”
A civil war is definitionally when two internal armies of a country fight on a large scale.
We do not have that, we do not have an army. Organized protests turning violent are “civil disruption” or “destabilization” at worst. We’re about a century off from this turning into a “civil war” because there would need to be opposing armies.
I get that it feels viscerally satisfying to imagine actually firing weapons at these assholes but we’re not in that world yet. They have the system, they have the national guard and other armed forces. They have most of the police and most of the justice system.
If we want to change this, we do it with community and organization. In the words of one powerful protestor in Minneapolis: “The democrats will not save you. The republicans will not save you. Nobody is coming. Only your neighbor will save you.” We have to get back to community and organization or this will go from isolated protests and unrest to a quiet, locked-down nation of people too afraid to move LONG before it turns into an actual war.
I despise these headlines and stories, it’s just attention-baiting, and you’re all falling for it because you want to see change happen but you don’t know how to get there. There are better ways to get there, but they require involvement in some boring shit. I’m sorry and I wish there was a better answer for this.
I think being a “century off from civil war” is a little disingenuous. Things are too tumultuous right now to predict what things will look like in 4 years, let alone 100.
I think we’re currently in a time of dramatic transition that will go one of two ways: full on opposition from a coalition of states against the current regime, or total capitulation that will likely only be broken by foreign intervention. This of course relies on Trump not backing down or anything that would be reasonably expected to de-escalate the situation, but with him and the current Republican party, I am not willing to give them any benefit of any doubt. I’ve been around Republicans my entire life and fit into the disguise of “straight white guy” very well as a kid. I know what they say when they think they’re amongst like minds. I saw it all the way back in 2000.
I don’t know if you would technically define it as civil war, but I believe the systems are in place for such a conflict to occur if the current situation were to “go hot” and states were to decide to mobilize their national guard regiments/reserves and (for lack of a better word) “nationalize” the military assets within their borders. A schism in the military could very well happen at that point with individual units placing their loyalty with either their states or the federal government. The feds may control the country on paper, but thanks to state’s rights, much of the daily workings are purely at the digression of the states. The highway system is federally owned, but it’s the state DoTs that maintain them and the states that patrol them and allow access for trade and commerce between their borders. As easily as we have checkpoints along the borders with Mexico and Canada, states could fashion along the interstate transit corridors and strangle the flow of goods and people between regions.
I do think the most likely scenario though is total capitulation by the state governments in favor of a justice that will never come from the courts, and I expect to see a growing movement of armed militia groups akin to the Black Panthers and leftists drifting further into militant extremism as trust in any sort of rule of law continues to erode under the continuing circumstances. Weapons are too easy to get or to make here for groups to not emerge. The FBI spends 50% of their time putting down white supremacist militias - or at least they did before 2016.
But I don’t believe that we’re “a century off” from civil war because I think the government will break long before then and whatever exists here in 100 years won’t be the same as the US as we think of it today. It will be a Roman Empire vs Holy Roman Empire kind of thing imo. The same people living in the same dirt, but a government pretending to be a nation that once stood in the same place but has since vanished into the annals of history.
They already said this is the second American Revolution that will be bloodless if the left allows it to be. They have already declared war in July 2024. For fucks sake! That was the heritage foundation! They are running the fucking government now!
Wake the fuck up already. Quit lecturing and pay the fuck attention!
You’re not wrong about community but you’re wrong to play down the fact they have already declared war on the United States!
This is some internet brain panic, if you think it’s “lecturing” you really need to go outside and spend time with the vast majority of America who are in their own states who have their own agendas and laws in play. The ICE thing is happening in isolated areas with the intention of making people like you say things like this:
“they have already declared war on the United States!”
I’m not saying it’s not bad, I’m saying focus for fuck’s sake. There is no revolution happening, there is no civil war, there are politics happening and we beat it with counter-politics, no other way. Keep marching and protesting, it’s helping, but it’s not the solution by itself.
It’s blunt and disappointing to people who want to see justice, but it’s just the way it works. I promise you, it will be okay… if the US is really in the decline, which it might be, you likely won’t be alive by the time states stop sending representatives to DC.
Did the first one ever truly end? You’ve had people waving the Confederate flag since the North “won”.
This is the price of doing half a job.
I’d argue it started in 2010 with the occupy Wall Street movement. It made oligarchs nervous and start us down the road we are on currently.
Tim pool came out of that. I think ows did scare the shit out of them.
Well worth a read. Phases of the American Civil War:
A “2nd” Civil War would just be going from a cold to hot phase of the same conflict, ongoing since the 18th Century
https://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2014/09/phases-of-american-civil-war.html?m=1
We never made them take down their idols and they were able to name buildings after their generals. They kept their flag. We incubated them.
Now, that’s not to say that stopping all of this would have fixed it, there are still Nazi’s in Germany and they were really good at suppressing that bullshit.
Nah this just like World War Two, disreguard everything up until white women are endangered /s
all i know is, as someone born in the early 90s, I know I never got to experience the ‘before’
I disagree. It started with electing Obama. That is what truly broke all the minds of all the racists.
Awfully peaceful cival war you’ve been having sir. Iran be wanting some of that peaceful civil war action, can you serve it up for them?
What the actual fuck is with this what aboutism? Dude, civil wars take many forms sometimes it’s the Russian civil war that goes on for years with numerous factions other times it’s the Swiss civil war where it lasted for 3 weeks and five days and was honestly pretty mild by war standards.
civil wars take many forms
Definitionally it’s when two internal armies clash on a large scale. Everything else is considered civil instability, armed rebellions or coups or insurrections, there IS a difference and words have meaning. Because the outcomes of each can have profound consequences.
The better question we should be asking is why do you want it to be a civil war?
Because I’m a Californian Nationalist and want to see the United States reduced to the historical record, mostly because I think the feds do way more bad than good and I don’t see a path forward that doesn’t end result with the destruction of the United states.
Honest. Points for not trying to paint it with some kind of liberal aesthetic like most people.
Understand though that if the USA dissolves, and the Cascadian states form their own power bloc, which may well likely happen, it most likely won’t be in your lifetime.
Couldn’t give less of a fuck about the Cascadian region joining or not, I’m from SoCal my interests are firmly Eastward not northward. Namely removing that blight apon North America known as the Mormon corridor.
But besides my genocidal ideations, I think the dissolving of the United States would overall be better in the long term within and without its territory. It’ll just suck liquid ass for a decade or two while shit stabilizes into a new status quo. I want to see the various cultures under the United States flourish but that ain’t happening with the continued existence of an American identity.
But also the rabid nationalism on my side of things that has me barely caring if I’m right or not.
It kinda sounds like roleplay but at least you have passion. Get involved in your community, you wont get that NC Ranger Armor outfit in your lifetime but you can make a world of difference understanding the current politics and supporting people who actually represent values for better outcomes. Less fun, a lot more realistic.
I see “civil war” posts pop up in Lemmy as often as I hear Tim Fucking Pool talk about “civil war” it’s just bait and pandering bullshit. We’re about a century from a civil war and a lot of things would need to line up. Even the violence in Iran is barely approaching a “civil war” because they don’t really have an opposing army… I see that turning into is an “armed rebellion” or a “coup” at most, but I swear the majority of people just say words without knowing or caring what they mean.
Maybe it’s been peaceful for you, however I imagine the citizens of Minneapolis would heartily agree that this feels anything but peaceful.
The ten thousand dead in the past month in Iran would love some.of that Minneapolis prelivedged soap opera style violence.
Yeah both things are wrong, you aren’t incorrect there. However it is an absolutely unfair and bad faith comparison and you know it.
How is it a bad comparison? If one person in a car accident gets a scraped toe, and another one gets their leg cut off; the person with the amputated leg absolutely has the right to tell the other one to quit their bitching.
You’re so much better than them. We fucking get it.
These are similar to the tactics used before the full invasion of Ukraine by Russia. Masked and umarked paramilitary performing any destablizing action on an opposing political group. The excuse is just immigration but it’s clear the longer term goals are “regime change”. People in these areas need to accept that they are already at war. Financial, political and militarily with a large collection of states backing the Federal regime. Many of those states have literally deployed soldiers to other states under the false justification of enforcing immigration laws. Even if they deport every immigrant, they will stay and continue to accelerate these plans. Ukraine has shown how a smaller force can challenge a larger one. It’s only a matter of time for those under occupation look to Ukraine and their asymetrical use of drones and other kinds of warfare to begin fighting back. They will not leave voluntarily and once they are out of immigrants to target, they will target other groups. Time to be clear about what is happening and respond accordingly.
We know. All of this is very horrible
And incredibly predictable. I lost friends ten years ago when I said this is exactly what would happen.
Yeah, my sister thought I was a doomsayer for predicting it after Jan 6. She doesn’t think that anymore now that she’s driving her Hispanic friends’ kids to school so they don’t get kidnapped by the government.
Yeah, and it’s not like we haven’t been through this before…
it can’t happen here!
It can, and it has, and it is.
We had two separate armies before. Not this time.
You underestimate yourself
Even with willing bodies, how is an army supposed to organize when most of them are scattered across the US in urban areas?
Nobody said it wouldn’t be difficult. But believing that it is impossible before you even try is a pretty silly position to take.
Yeah, why do you think Trump is doing this?
the regime offers us two choices:
- organize and fight in the civil war they’re so thirsty for
- get genocided
It’s the same choice, why else do you think they want civil war so badly?
one involves organizing a resistance effort with your neighbors to keep vulnerable members of your community of your safe
the other involves saying “i don’t appreciate being killed” as you’re killed
USians seem to be pathologicaly blind to everything that doesn’t involve them shooting each other, it’s like some kind of curse you’all have. Nobody can even imagine that there is something between politely talking and a civil war. How are you still alive as a country and individually is a great mystery
i’ve been pleading the world around me to stop the shooting for 19 years now. an overt fascist wing is running the country now. we missed the opportunity for polite discussion i’m afraid.
i said in another comment that where we are right now is that 1/3 of the country, the 1/3 in control, fully plans to kill the other 2/3 of the country. 1/3 of the country is working to slow or stop them. a remaining 1/3 doesn’t understand this is happening.
we missed the opportunity for polite discussion i’m afraid.
Yeah, that you probably did. So the next logical step is shoot each other, right? Damn, if only I wrote a comment describing this exact thing a while ago, I could just reference it.
Cuz we ending WW2 by talking to Hitler and asking him to stop. Braindead take to think fascists give up power willingly.
i’ve been reflecting on this for a couple hours trying to gather my thoughts and find where it is i’m failing. so let’s go through what we’ve been through to get here
- we tried politely asking not to be killed
- we tried offering racists and rapists benefits to a co-equal society in exchange for not being killed
- we tried organizing our labor to gain the strength necessary to not be killed
- we tried performing mass demonstrations everywhere we could that we have the numbers, we have the culture, not killing us is what makes life worth living
- we even tried industrial sabotage
in all of this, we have continued to get killed. now the only pretext our killers need is that they want to kill us. and so we’re falling into a civil war because we’ve exhausted everything else.
and still, across lemmy i get told to either fight my police directly, or someone like me tells me that fighting the police is not the only option.
the only conclusion i can reach is a lot of people who don’t know what we’re going through feel real confident they know better than me what’s going on
Trolling or stupid? I’ll let you pick which one you are.
You’re suggesting polite talk, to this?
The people we need to talk to, to negotiate with, just stormed in and took a country and are threatening to take a few more.
You act as if negotiations haven’t been tried and failed.
Trully, the levels of reading comprehension I’ve come to expect. Shoot a gun at your screen, maybe that will help you read, I don’t know
ohh gotcha, trolling, hey good luck with that, have a block on me
The simulation also projected that the judiciary would be of little help to any state that found itself in the president’s crosshairs.
“We concluded that in a fast-moving emergency of this magnitude, courts would probably be unable or unwilling to intervene in time, leaving state officials without meaningful judicial relief,” Finkelstein explained. “State officials might file emergency motions to enjoin the use of federal troops, but judges would either fail to respond quickly enough or decline to rule on what they view as a ‘political question,’ leaving the conflict unresolved.”
So that panned out as predicted… (pdf of 8th circuit of appeals rubber-stamping the continuation of ICE violence on innocents)
Especially now as courts were forbidden from nationwide injunctions. That decision was a huge betrayal and the fact that media has not told us that just further proves they are failing in their jobs across the board.
Oh fuck I forgot about that. That’s going to effectively balkanize the states as the reds pass more and more talibangelical legislation.
Whether a Civil War starts now or later…it isn’t an if anymore, it’s a when and I think we need to accept this and prepare / organize accordingly.
Please be after the steam frame is out.
I dunno, I have to stake in this clownerie.
If trump destroy the US we will work with China, no big deal.
It will retard the steam frame though, big deal.
+1 for the lulz
But how do you play when the electricity is out lol.
Are you rich enough to have an apocalypse bunker or something?
I have a 60w solar panel <3.
Can’t do a thing from Europe buddy. That not like I am Macron or any people with any power.
Boycott is already in progress. (Need a steam frame before going full boycott)
Its always been when, capitalism is hostile to the mass of society, its also based on infinite extraction in a finite world.
, it’s a when
About a hundred years.
I’m sorry, but I know a little history and politics. We’re about a century from an actual internal civil war because a LOT of things would need to fall into place and be normalized before we had two opposing armies actually going at it on a large scale. I don’t care what grifters trying to sell substack subs say, words have meaning and we’re nowhere close to an actual “civil war” because that term has a LOT of meaning behind it, and a LOT of consequence.
Right now we have civil unrest, it could turn into armed unrest, it could turn into destabilization or an insurrection or coup at the most in the current state, but for there to be a civil war proper, we would need a coalition of states raising their own military and openly going against federal mandate and we’re so far from that happening in this current environment that it’s pure fantasy.
I’m not saying it can’t happen, only that it’s much further away than the headlines are making it out, because they know that a lot of people really, deeply want some kind of populist justice, so it sells clicks and views.
If we want to fix this, we need to lean in a LOT harder on community and organization. It’s not fun, but I promise a real civil war would be even worse and there wouldn’t be a winner.
Well, if they do end up going that way, I hope they are a bit more thorough with the follow through this time.
Simulations are stored in the piss.
starts with the premise, ‘there will be civil war’. i reject the premise but may have unregistered weapons
Everything happens in Minnesota
I am so happy I’ve been training for the last few years physically and with fire arms. Just wish I was able to locate a MRAD sooner.
We need community defense classes. Seriously!
