Consider This from NPR - Is this fictitious civil war closer to reality than we think?

Episode Date: April 19, 2024

Civil War, the new A24 film from British director Alex Garland, imagines a scenario that might not seem so far-fetched to some; a contemporary civil war breaking out in the United States.And while the film has taken heat for little mention of politics, the question of an actual civil war has everything to do with it. Amy Cooter is a director of research at the Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies. Her work has led her to the question that Garland's movie has put in the minds of both moviegoers and political pundits: Could a second civil war really happen here? Cooter joins host Andrew Limbong to discuss the actual threat of current political movements in the U.S., outside of the movie theaters. For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This, sign up for Consider This+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

When it comes to the state of the U.S., there's one thing we all keep hearing. The country is incredibly divided. The divides between Americans grew even sharper. America is a house divided. And these divides have only magnified as they... Americans are divided over climate change, immigration, even the 2020 election. That's a division so deep it led to violence on January 6, 2021. But could that division lead to another full-blown civil war? There's a new movie out that turns that

question into a dystopian reality. In Alex Garland's Civil War, the U.S. has split into The United States Army ramps up activity. The White House issued warnings to the Western forces as well as the Florida Alliance. In Alex Garland's civil war, the U.S. has split into various factions. The president, played by Nick Offerman, has given himself a third term, and he's hoping to fend off an assault from one of the more powerful groups. Citizens of America, the so-called Western forces of Texas and California have suffered a very great defeat at the hands of the United States military. If the idea of an alliance between Texas and California sounds far-fetched to you, you're not alone. I mean, it's hard to sort of fathom what that would be. And so it's perplexing for about a minute.

NPR film critic Bob Mandela says Civil War doesn't do a lot of explaining, but that's to the movie's strength. What became much more interesting was what it looks like to transpose things that we've always associated with other countries, the bombed out helicopters and things like that, to place that in a JCPenney parking lot. The film has taken some criticism for not seeming to take any political sides. You won't hear any talk of Republicans or Democrats. But Mandela says that decision to avoid politics speaks to the current polarization of the times.

In Battle of the Bulge, there's definitely a good guy side and a bad guy side, right? I think in modern warfare, we have a lot more trouble discerning which side is the good side than we used to. And I think that a film reflecting attitudes of today almost has to take that into account. But a film is one thing. Let's talk real life. This is the Hollywood version of what's kind of the undercurrent in our society right now. Amy Cooter studies militias, armed groups, and conspiracy theories. And her work means she's thought about this question that Garland's movie has put in the minds of both moviegoers and political pundits. Could a second civil war really happen here? Consider this. Polling has shown that 40% of

Americans think a civil war is at least somewhat likely in the next 10 years. Coming up, we discuss the possibility of Hollywood fiction becoming reality. From NPR, I'm Andrew Limbaugh it's consider this from NPR in the near future the U.S. president has given himself a third term he's disbanded the FBI America has broken into various factions that are engaged in armed conflict. It's the premise of one of the buzziest films of the year, the A24 thriller Civil War, directed by British filmmaker Alex Garland. The dystopian thriller imagines a near future in which a deeply divided United States is violently caught in, well, a civil war.

It doesn't wear out. It's like a pretty huge civil war going on all across America. We just try to stay out. With what we see on the news, it seems like it's for the best. The film may be fiction, but it has many viewers and pundits thinking about the parallels to reality in a United States that does often feel more and more polarized. But just how close is the film's reality to our own? To unpack that question, we called Amy Kuder. She's a director of research at the Center on Terrorism,

Extremism, and Counterterrorism at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies. How much, if this is like art is life, life is art film, should we be wary of reading too much into the perils of real life? I think that it represents some real undercurrents that we have in the United States. I don't think that civil war is imminent, but I think there are some people who wish we would have one and wish that they could be effectively culture soldiers to reenact a civil order that they see as better for them and their families. When you say some people, who are those people?

The groups I study tend to be folks who are militia members on the extreme end of the spectrum or other folks who believe that some version of society that they believe existed in the past is better than what we have in our modern day. And they should do something to try to move us back to that past format. Most Americans do not foresee a civil war, according to recent polls, but more than 40% of Americans think civil war is at least somewhat likely in the next decade. Is there a realistic scenario that could lead the U.S. to at least the verge of a civil war? I certainly hope not. I hope that our federal government, our state's governments remain

organized enough that armed militant groups who try to stir up various sorts of trouble can be controlled within the letter of the law. However, I think we are at a moment of extreme political division that may get worse before it gets better. And there are certainly some people who believe that they and their families are going to be put in a position where they have to defend themselves, whether it's against the government itself or against other factions that they see as being opposed to their interests. Does history here have any lessons that could be instructive to understanding the threat of civil war in this country? I think that as a sociologist, we tend not to be super optimistic. But one note of optimism that I do try to latch on to is that we've had moments of extreme

divisiveness in our country before, extreme political polarization. And so far, at least, democracy has won out and become increasingly inclusive over time. I think there are many more people who are pro-democracy, who want to make this country a better place, than there are small factions who want to be disruptive for everyone. Yeah, that's interesting. In your work, do you ever think about highlighting these groups gives them an outsized voice when we're looking at the raw numbers of people here? It's a concern that all of us who work in extremism and related studies have, and yet we also see that these groups have the outsized potential for harm. So if we look at the extreme factions, what our goal is to is to try to

understand the real risks of violence to prevent them, and also simultaneously understand that many times they are simply the more vocal factions of folks who believe very similar things. Just to reference the January 6th case, a lot of those folks weren't involved in formal organized groups, but shared the same ideology, the same urgency for action. And frankly, a lot of folks had taken for granted the need to study militias and other groups before then, because they assumed they were just outliers, that no other groups or no other individuals sort of agreed with them. And we were smacked with the reality that that's just not the case. Yeah. The movie depicts armed factions fighting not so much against like a

central government, but sometimes against each other. A central thesis of the film is that like in war, who's on what side gets kind of blurry. Do you think that's a fair representation of real life fringe extremist groups and how they operate? I do. There is a lot of constant infighting, not usually violent, but very strong infighting across all of these group boundaries. And they would be a lot more powerful if they had an easier time getting along with each other. of pockets of violence, whether it's civil war or not, were occurring across the country, it's highly likely that some people would oppose these groups for various different reasons and also fight them. It wouldn't necessarily just be the government.

Yeah. So these extremist groups, you've studied some that say they are ready to inflict violence. How much of a threat are they? This is something that's really hard to quantify. We know that even among militia groups, it is a minority of militia groups, a minority of militia members, who are really proactively intending to do harm. The ones who are, as we said, can do outsized harm to society as a whole, but they tend to plan their actions amongst themselves. They've gotten a bit more understanding of monitoring and other things that happen online in recent years, and they're really hard to track and monitor. Do you think the U.S. government is adequately prepared? That's hard to say. My personal instinct is no. I think that various different government agencies have done

more to be prepared since January 6th, but I'm also sensing sort of a belief that that was a one-off occurrence and therefore we don't have to worry about these folks so much anymore. We aren't really expecting another January 6th, but I think we're underestimating the risk that different state buildings may face or different politicians as individuals may face or even different flash points of violence around elections or school board happenings as they continue to move forward this year. Amy Kuder is Director of Research at the Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies. Her forthcoming book is Nostalgia, Nationalism, and the U.S. Militia Movement.

Thank you so much for joining us. Thanks so much for having me. This episode was produced by Mark Rivers. It was edited by Jeanette Woods, Janaki Mehta, and Courtney Dorney. Our executive producer is Sammy Yannigan. Thanks to our Consider This Plus listeners, who support the work of NPR journalists and help keep public radio strong. Supporters also hear every episode without messages from

sponsors. Learn more at plus.npr.org. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Andrew Limbaugh.