IS THIS NATION ON THE VERGE OF A “NERVOUS BREAKDOWN?”

 

…Kacey Dawson, the assistant manager at Fortitude Ranch in central Colorado, stands lookout.

 

Some American cities will have armed, extremist groups showing up at ballot drop-off sites.

 

“Could the election devolve into civil war? Unlikely,” mused Drew Miller, the founder of a members-only survivalist camp named, Fortitude Ranch.  “But look at World War I: Some worthless, low-level archduke gets assassinated and things escalate out of control. I’ve got people who are concerned that all it would take is a close election and some cheating.”

At Fortitude Ranch, Miller is stocking locations for the long haul because of “possible civil war following the November 2020 election.  Our populace is increasingly split,” Miller wrote in a bulletin to members, who pay $1,000 a year for access to his fortified haven.  “President Trump has been questioning and condemning the legitimacy of … mail-in voting in this election. … It is indeed possible that many Americans will refuse the results and serious violence could result.”

Miller said his clients are mainly libertarians and Republicans, but similar anxieties exist across the nation's politics. In the forthcoming New York Review of Books, a bastion of liberal thought, the author and essayist Darryl Pinckney writes that the United States is “a society on the verge of a nervous breakdown, not civil war. We are only at the beginning of a Great Emergency. Something suicidal and reckless is out there.”

Though the membership of armed extremist groups is relatively small, researchers say the country’s broader political factions are so sharply divided that violence is increasingly seen as acceptable.

This last weekend, several dozen people arrived at secret locations in West Virginia and Colorado to ride out the election and its aftermath.  If the vote sparks unrest, Drew Miller’s customers will be secure behind walls patrolled by armed guards.

In Portland, Ore., where a right-wing armed group plans to show up at ballot drop-off sites today with weapons in plain view, some extreme left-wing organizers are preparing to be there as well.

“The right wing is not going to give up their power unless they feel threatened,” said Olivia Katbi Smith, a co-chair of the Democratic Socialists of America in Portland. “People are opening up to the idea that a riot is the language of the unheard. Property destruction is not considered violence.”

On the eve of the presidential election filled with tension, warning flares are bursting across American skies. From federal and local law enforcement to analysts who track radical groups, concern is high about the possibility that violence could erupt, especially if the vote count drags on for days without a clear winner.

The signals are disturbing: A sharp increase in gun sales. A spike in chatter about civil war in online forums where right-wing extremists gather. An embrace of violent language by President Trump and other leaders. And surveys showing an increased willingness by some Americans to see violence as an acceptable tool against political opponents.

“We’re talking about violence in US elections, and that’s insane,” said Lisa Kaplan, the chief executive of the Alethea Group, a Washington company that tracks disinformation efforts. “This is a real threat, and we have seen increased confidence among the militias.”

Even those who take the threat seriously say there is no evidence of any coordinated plan for widespread violence, and that isolated flare-ups are a more likely scenario. Equally important: “The vast majority of Americans across political lines reject violence, no matter what,” said Rachel Brown, executive director of Over Zero, a nonprofit group that focuses on preventing identity-based violence.

Yet Americans are unusually anxious about this election — and about violence in its aftermath. A YouGov poll found 56% of voters saying they anticipate “an increase in violence as a result of the election.”

“Militia groups and other armed nonstate actors pose a serious threat to the safety and security of American voters,” said the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, a nonprofit organization that researches political violence and has tracked more than 80 extremist groups in recent months. The project’s report said Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Oregon “are at highest risk of increased militia activity in the election and post-election period.”

Unfounded rumors spreading in right-wing circles on Facebook and throughout conservative media have fixated for weeks on the notion that civil war is nigh. The longtime radio and TV extremist commentator, Glenn Beck, has plied his millions of followers with the idea that the left has an Election Day “playbook” for civil strife.  However, it's the far right that seems to be ready to fight.

But most Americans take their cues from the nation’s leaders, according to numerous studies tracking public opinion, and those leaders are clearly worried.

“As I look across America today, I’m concerned,” Joe Biden said in a speech in Gettysburg, Pa., this month. “The country is in a dangerous place. Our trust in each other is ebbing. Hope seems elusive.” The Democratic candidate said the country has “too bright a future to leave it shipwrecked on the shoals of anger and hate and division.”

President Trump, in contrast, has regularly used violent rhetoric to describe the threat he says the country faces. Last fall, tweeting about his impeachment, he quoted a minister who tweeted that removing him from office would “cause a Civil War like fracture in this Nation from which our Country will never heal.”

Within minutes, the Oath Keepers, one of the largest armed civilian groups, responded: “This is where we are. We ARE on the verge of a HOT civil war.”

Although Trump said in his first debate with Biden that the threat of violence was mainly from the left — “almost everything I see is from the left wing, not the right wing” — his own administration has repeatedly warned that extremists on the right are the primary danger in the coming days.

“White supremacist violent extremists have been exceptionally lethal in their abhorrent, targeted attacks … [and] seek to force ideological change in the United States through violence, death, and destruction,” the acting Homeland Security secretary, Chad Wolf, wrote in an October report.

The day of the first presidential debate, the FBI’s Dallas field office warned local law enforcement about a rising threat from the ”boogaloo” movement, a loose collection of extremist groups that often assert a need for a second Civil War. The warning called the election a “potential flash point.”

The International Crisis Group (ICG), a Washington-based organization that provides early warnings to countries in danger of falling into violent conflict, never expected to issue alerts about the United States. But early this summer, the ICG did just that, concluding that conflict could arise from the country’s sharp political polarization, the growing presence of armed extremists, the possibility of prolonged uncertainty about the outcome of the vote, and a president who deploys martial rhetoric and refuses to guarantee a peaceful transfer of power if he loses.

Analysist so far have found that Americans have bought more than 18 million weapons this year, with big surges in red and blue states alike.

In more than a dozen states, firearms are being sold at nearly double last year’s rate. In Michigan, where the FBI broke up a group that was allegedly plotting to kidnap Gov. Gretchwn Whitmer (D) gun sales have more than tripled over last year.

At Schultz’s Sportsmen’s Stop in Armstrong County, northeast of Pittsburgh, the parade of customers covers the ideological waterfront. “Blue-collar, white-collar, and my customers are from both sides — Republicans & Democrats,” said owner Debbie Schultz, 65, who hands out Trump support signs. “Doctors, lawyers, people come from all over. People are Googling ‘guns’ and then drive over … from West Virginia. Same thing with New York state.  They’re not for hunting. Deer licenses have dropped by more than half in the past decade.”

“The condition of our country is stirring the gun sales,” Ms. Schultz said. “The mood is different now between people. The pandemic has certainly created a different level. People are on edge.”

The Anti-Defamation League, (ADL’s) Debbie Segal agreed: “What will keep communities safe is leaders calling for calm and responsibility.” A campaign ad created by both major party candidates for governor of Utah, a mutual pledge to “disagree without hating each other shows what’s possible,” she said.  “Maybe, just maybe, we get through Election Day and see that there wasn’t really a will to come out and fight in the streets. If so, we will have dodged a bullet,” she said, “because our public discussion is in a dangerous place.”

It has been said that this is the most important and most significant election of our time.  I, for one, think that’s an under statement of the importance of this election.  If Joe Biden and the Senate are not in the control of the Democrats by election’s end, this nation could be in for a world of hurt.

Copyright G. Ater 2020