Capitol Siege: What Fissures Await?

Siege of the Capitol, Jan. 6th 2021

The storming of the Capitol by Trump fans at the January 6^th election count has rocked the country. As the polarization of 21^st century America deepens, pundits are scrambling for a comparison. Is this like the 1861 Civil War? The 1773 Boston Tea Party? Is it like the color revolutions we secretly fund abroad? Is it going to lead to a partition, like in India? Or to self-segregation and mutual hostility, like in Northern Ireland? 

Fighting the powers that be

Is America as we know it over and done?

Since our first great scission in 1861, many have predicted another split. Back in 2010, think tanker Jeffrey Kuhner reacted to the passage of Obamacare:

President Obama is splintering America. The passage of Obamacare was a historic victory for liberal governance. Yet, its true cost may be that it triggers the eventual breakup of the country.

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The Obama revolution threatens to tear America apart. ... The bitter debate over Obamacare has exposed the country’s profound divisions. We are no longer one nation or one people. Rather, there are now two Americas: one conservative, the other liberal. Increasingly, we no longer just disagree but we despise each other.

Trump has also aroused such sentiments, as from pundit Elizabeth Drew in ‘The Next Civil War?’:

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Although US President Donald Trump has long hid his tax records and history of business failings, he has never made any secret of his willingness to destroy the US constitutional order if doing so will give him a political advantage. Not since the eve of the Civil War has America been so on edge.

 

Here at TWCS we recently looked at the deepening left/right split and possible break-up scenarios.  But are there societies that have already gone down this path? Where does it lead? What can we learn from them?

Let us take a tour d'horizon...

 

I. Religious Divide

 

Yugoslavia

Some have predicted a Balkans-like split-up of the U.S. in the near future.

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Over centuries of migrations and empires, Southern Slavia had become a mosaic of different ethnies and religions. Catholics, Orthodox, and Muslims lived uneasily side-by-side under the strong-man regime of Tito, but when he disappeared, so did peace. The slaughter that followed the end of Communism was the result of centuries of simmering inter-ethnic / inter-religious anger. 

But it shares little in common with the current situation in the U.S.

 

India partition

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India is the textbook example of a massive country dividing itself in two. Centuries of conquest had left tens of millions of Muslims mixed with hundreds of millions of Hindus. After independence from Great Britain, India decided quite simply to split into two countries: Muslims at the far west and east, Hindus in the middle. The partition process was violent on both sides, and not complete—there are still Muslims in the Hindu nation and vice versa (and inter-group strife still going). 

But again, this is not so analogous to our problems in America.

 

Northern Ireland

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After centuries of incursion and oppression from the British, Ireland was in tumult. Partition was also the choice here. In Northern Ireland, an uneasy quasi-segregation is the solution Catholics and Protestants have found. Even so, violence has flared up regularly over the years. 

But this type of colonial conquest followed by religious enmity is far from the dynamic in the U.S.

 

The idea of a religious split doesn’t seem to apply to us today. While ‘Red’ America is no doubt more religious than ‘Blue’ America, the majority on both sides are (at least culturally) Protestant Christians. Both sides also have their fair share of Catholics and Jews. Real religious enmity (Protestant-Catholic) once existed in the U.S. , but those days are long behind us. 

So where do our real divisions lie?

 

II. Urban / Rural

 

We looked last time at the U.S. urban-rural divide, which seems sharper than in any other first-world country.

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In all wealthy nations the urban tend to vote more to the left than rural. But nowhere in the first world is that split starker than in the U.S.

 

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Where else do we see such a sharp divide? Has it caused similar problems?

 

Middle East

 

The Muslim Middle East shares a similar pattern. The Arab Spring threw into sharp relief what has been true for decades:  In many of these states, the population is almost evenly split between an urbanized, educated, secular ‘left’ and a rural, traditional Islamist ‘right.’ 

As in America, national elections tend to fall on juuuuust one side or the other of this line. (Excluding countries which are divided ethno-religiously where people tend to vote by identity politics, such as Iraq or Lebanon.)

 

Turkey

 

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Considered one of the most liberal Muslim countries, Turkey has a population largely split between more educated, secular urbanites in the west and more conservative Muslims in the rural east. Mustafa Kemal’s forced secularization of the country after WWI largely contributed to this state of affairs. The fragile balance is holding for now, despite a coup attempt in 2016 and a ruling party which is becoming more and more hardline every year.

 

Tunisia

 

Sources: Election, Urbanization

 

Tunisia, the most advanced country in North Africa, launched the Arab Spring ten years ago and ousted its longtime dictator, Ben Ali. Since then, the country has seen an uneasy shifting of power between secular and religious parties. Here again, we have a strong divide between more conservative rural folk and more progressive city-dwellers. It has not led to societal rupture--for now.

 

Iran

 

Iran is another Muslim country which often sees a stark divide between its urban and rural voters. In what may seem counter-intuitive, reformer Khatami in 2001 did best in rural areas, while hard-liner Ahmadinejad in 2005 cleaned up in the cities:

 

Image source: Elections, Urbanization

This can also be seen through the lens of ethnic minorities vs. majority Persians:

Persia's ethnic minorities

This push-pull between city and countryside will seem familiar to us in the U.S. As for Iran, it has managed to stay stable, despite a mass protest movement in 2009 which, we may remember, had American neo-conservatives baying for 'regime change."

The revolution will not be tweeted: 2009 uprising killed in the egg

 

Thailand 

Thailand, the only country in its region to never have been colonized, is an interesting case study. It is a constitutional monarchy which has spent much of its history governed by the military elite. 

In the 2000s, a self-funded billionaire populist came on the scene and electrified the rural working classes who felt forgotten. (Sound familiar?) The rich urban / poor rural divide was stark, leading to two factions (the 'reds' and 'yellows') who nearly came to civil war. 

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Elected in 2001, Thaksin, a telecom billionaire, instituted a range of policies popular in rural Thailand, including microfinance schemes and fuel subsidies. Thaksin quickly became venerated by much of Thailand’s rural poor, especially in the densely populated north and northeastern parts of the country. As a result, Thailand's power center began to shift from the cities and the south to the country's north and northeast. Thaksin's supporters became known as red shirts.

  

The reds and the yellows do battle

Opponents of Thaksin, who wore yellow shirts, say Thaksin's five-year tenure was marked by nepotism, corruption and the creation of an unprecedented rift in the country. In 2006, following massive street protests from yellow shirts and an election win for Thaksin’s party, the military staged a coup, setting the stage for a nearly decade-long, sometimes bloody back-and-forth, power struggle.

 

Could the rural-urban divide in America lead to such a fracture in the future? Some feel that this is the fault line that will tumble us into our next Civil War. 

 

 

III. Socialist / Conservative—the ‘Populist Hero’

 

The rural/urban divide is visible in many countries, especially poorer ones. But another factor driving enmity between groups is socialism/conservatism, most clearly visible to our south in Latin America.

 

Latin America: The populist hero

 

Since independence from Spain and Portugal, many Latin American countries have swung back and forth between socialist populism and conservative military juntas.

 

Chile: Allende and the Sept. 11 coup, 1972

But politics here is often pigmented. The Euro-descended elite lean conservative and the Indigenous / Afros lean socialist. So the left-right divide is not purely ideological—it is also ethnic, and wealth-based.

 

Trump himself became a populist hero, the first of his kind seen for a long time  in the U.S. But south of the border, the populist icon is a recurring theme.

Argentina

Argentina is one such example, with its charismatic leftist leader Juan Péron (his wife Eva immortalized in Andrew Lloyd Weber’s 'Evita'). He drew millions, such as here at his return from exile in 1973:

 

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Argentinian politics today continues to swing back and forth between business-friendly free marketism and redistributional leftism (lately embodied by Nestor Kirchner and his widow Christina).

 

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But now Kirchner herself, the standard-bearer for Péronism, has drawn crowds demanding her departure after trying for a forbidden third term:

Argentinians protest Kirchner with a 'Cacerolazo,' ('casserole-banger') 

 

Brazil

Brazil saw similar swings between military governments and socialist leaders. Champion of the poor Ignacio “Lula” Da Silva is an icon to Brazilians:  

He is simultaneously the most loved and hated figure in Brazil, and people's perceptions of him tend to manifest themselves in extremes. Some see him as the man who finally defeated an elite that had been in power for centuries and who used his powers to better the lives of the masses. Others say Lula is a corrupt populist whose only real project was to perpetuate his party's stay in power through dodgy deals and alliances.

Lula, defender of the little guy

His government is credited with having lifted millions out of poverty through economic growth and cash-transfer programmes - no small feat in a country with one of the highest levels of income inequality in the world. This garnered him international fame, and hero status among Brazil's poorer classes and left-wing intellectuals.

Electoral politics tends to be racialized in Brazil, with the whiter south voting right and the colored north voting left.

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Wealth and color: inextricably linked

It is the model to which many believe  the U.S. is heading in the not-so-distant future. 

Bolivia 

Bolivia is the rare South American country whose population is majority indigenous. Evo Morales, an Aymara Indian, was the first native to be elected president. He is a hero and icon to millions of Bolivian Indians.

Coca growers march for Morales

But his redistributionist policies made him enemies among the country’s Spanish-descended elite who dominate the eastern regions. They almost pulled off a secession in 2008.  

 

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Like so many populist heroes before him, Morales eventually fell prey to his own hubris in trying to prolong his presidency past constitutional limits. He was ousted in a coup last year--yet, like Trump, remains an icon to his loyal supporters.

 

Venezuela

Perhaps no populist hero has been as widely adored—and detested—as Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. The country’s abundant oil wealth permitted Chavez to spend lavishly on the poor, earning their undying devotion.

 

Teflon Hugo 

He survived many attempts to oust him, via coups and recall referendums, due to his unshakeable popularity among Venezuela’s poorest (and most pigmented). The  maps from his elections (declared free and fair by international observers) call to mind Reagan’s legendary landslides:

 

Incredible popularity of Chavez 

Who knows where he’d have ended up if not killed by a massive heart attack a few months after winning his fourth term?

 

Trump resembles all of these populist heroes in more ways than one. He rallies the forgotten working classes like no one else. He stirs up patriotism. He insults the elites. He draws huge crowds.  His followers are fiercely loyal, and his enemies even more fierce in trying to take him down.

Brazil's haves and have-nots

But in Latin America, populism rhymes with socialism: not the case in the U.S. Leftist leaders win votes there by taxing the rich and redistributing to the poor. These champions of the downtrodden have oft been ousted by business-friendly (and U.S.-friendly) right-wing military dictatorships (a reflection of their roots in Iberia, where Franco and Salazar hung on until well into the 1970s).

Nicaragua’s Sandinista revolution in 1979

Anglo-America has not typically gone to such extremes. But as we become more Hispanicized (and in general more third-world) than ever before, such a see-saw dynamic cannot be ruled out. As larded as the Pentagon is with globalists, Trump could have easily succumbed to a military coup under the right circumstances--as might his successor in four years’ time. Our future may be more Latin American than we imagine.

 

IV. Rich / Poor

One of the biggest ruptures Trump has caused in the Republican party is cutting it in two halves, the 'country clubbers' and the 'coal miners'. (That these two groups had come to inhabit one political party is a historical oddity in itself.)

Haymarket Riot of 1886

Up until now, the proletarian revolution has never had much luck on American soil. We've always seemed allergic to European-style socialism.

As blue collar workers are ever more forgotten about, the right and the left seem to have practically joined forces in pushing for open borders, 'free' trade, and perks for big business.

But what does it look like when the proles start to revolt?

France's 'Yellow Vests'

 

The  last presidential election in France was a game changer: the two big parties (socialist and conservative) were both knocked out in the first round, for the first time ever, replaced by center-left Macron’s ‘On the move’ party and Marine Le Pen’s populist ‘National Front.’

 

2017 Election: Macron vs. Le Pen

But back in 2012, Marine Le Pen was up against a classic socialist, François Hollande. Here’s the map from that election:

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Rich-poor plays a large part here. The map on the left shows the France of the ‘left behind’, who voted massively for Le Pen. But her party is anti-immigrant, so the big cities, which are made up of poor brown immigrants and rich white lefties, voted massively for her opponent (see blue dots on map on right).

 

A punishingly high gasoline tax introduced by Macron in November 2018 (part of the ‘green transition’) saw the rise of a massive, grass-roots protest movement all over rural and small-town France known as 'Les Gilets Jaunes,' or 'yellow vests.'   (We did some frontline reporting here.) It eventually bled into the big cities.

Champs Elysées, Paris

This revolt of small-town France has parallels with our ‘Deplorables’ in the U.S. This is the white working class rising up, the group whom globalization has hurt the most. (Conspicuously absent are the Arab and African proletariat who, like Blacks in the U.S., are in big cities living on hand-outs from the left.).

Caen, north (pop. 100k)

These spontaneous, grass-roots marches ended up taking over the whole country.

Map of protests

The protesters succeeded in their major goal; the diesel gasoline tax was revoked. The groundswell of popular anger, though, hasn’t really gone away—it’s just been forced indoors by Covid. Once the virus is under wraps, will the Gilets Jaunes start their marches again, with their cries of ‘Macron demission!’ (‘Macron, resign!’)?

Narbonne (south), tax office set on fire

More importantly, could such a movement of working-class anger take hold in the post-Trump U.S.?  A suivre...

V. People vs. The Regime

 

Color Revolutions

 

The phrase ‘Color revolution’ has been bandied about recently in the U.S. It’s a phenomenon which has touched many ex-Communist countries. Instead of two factions fighting each other, we tend to see a large swathe of the population rising to topple a regime they consider illegitimate.

 

Ukraine is no doubt the most famous example, with its ‘Orange Revolution’ ousting Viktor Yanukovych just after he was elected in a race widely considered (at home and abroad) to have been rigged.

Ukraine: Orange Revolution

The case went all the way to the Supreme Court, who ordered a new election. This time, Yanukovych’s opponent won by a healthy margin, and the crisis ended peacefully.

The cleavage was real, though. The eastern Ukraine favored closer ties with Russia; the western part with the E.U. This conflict came to a head in the 2013 Euromaidan crisis and Russian annexation of Crimea.

 

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Georgia, in the Caucasus, had a very similar ‘Rose Revolution’, ousting its Soviet-era apparatchik leader Shevardnadze in favor of Western-oriented Saakashvili.

 

Georgia: Driving out the last apparatchiks

Kirgizstan, in a similar vein, had its ‘Tulip Revolution’:

 

Kirgizstan: Tulip Revolution

Most of the ‘color revolutions’ have taken place in the ex-USSR, countries where old Soviet puppets remained in power and the masses were demanding real democracy.

But is such a thing imaginable in the U.S.?

 

Some think so: Months before the November election, officials were ‘war gaming’ scenarios where Trump squeaked out a victory and the country descended into chaos:  

In its 22-page report, the Transition Integrity Project warned of tactics Trump could deploy to halt counting of mail-in ballots: lawsuits seeking injunctions, shutting down the U.S. Postal Service, or ordering the censure and sequestration of ballots deemed fraudulent.

And yet, while concerns mostly centered on actions Trump might take, the project found that a scenario in which Biden narrowly loses the electoral college while winning the popular vote could lead to outrage on the left, resulting in mass protests challenging the election outcome and perhaps impasse as well.

Leftists riot during Trump’s 2017 inauguration 

Leftists activist group ‘Shut Down DC’ was openly promising a Maidan scenario in the event of a Trump victory:   

Even if the result is not immediately known, activist groups have vowed to swarm the streets of Washington DC on election day in an attempt to oust the President. The groups, going under the banner of ShutDown DC, say they plan to disrupt traffic around the White House and National Mall with more than 10,000 people. … 

"We're making plans to be in the streets before the polls even close, ready to adapt and respond to whatever comes our way," the group writes. "We're going to make sure Trump leaves."

Leftist violence at Trump’s 2017 inauguration  

In the face of such rhetoric, it is unsurprising that many have felt that anti-Trump forces were planning their own color revolution right here on American soil. 

The January break-in at the Capitol building, however, led some to believe that the shoe was on the other foot—that angry Republicans, feeling the election had been rigged, were about to run Joe Biden out of town on a rail.

Republicans ready for a color revolution?

Whether it be from the right or from the left, a 'color revolution' in the U.S. would bring us back to a level of conflict not seen since our own Civil War.

 

 

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So what can we guess about our future by looking at these examples of deeply divided countries? Urban/rural, socialist/conservative, rich/poor, light-skinned/dark-skinned?   

UK Brexit vote

A well-functioning country, a Germany or a Spain, can swing from left to right to left again without attacks, military coups, or street violence. 

In the U.S. this was once the case too--but it is becoming less so every day. Trump's presidency was met with four years of non-stop leftist street violence, serving as the shock troops for the alphabet-soup agencies trying to oust him in their own soft coup.

Brownshirts at work

Most Swiss, be they on the left or on the right, have the same vision for their country. They fundamentally believe in living in the same kind of society. In Tunisia, that’s not true. Half the country wants to live in an Islamist theocracy, and half wants to live in a secular republic.

 

Berlin Wall protests, 1989

What if half of Americans want to live in a country that is viscerally opposed to what the other half of Americans want to live in?

 

What if one half of the country feels disenfranchised?

Are we heading towards a future like much of Latin America’s? Where a sun people majority and an ice people minority stay locked in political conflict?

 

Or like the Middle East, where the country folk and the city folk disagree over what kind of country they want to live in?

 

Or like the ex-Eastern Bloc, where corrupt and illegitimate regimes are brought down by mass protests?

Romania: Game over for Ceausescu

Or something else?

 

Whatever it is, the fact that our newly invested leader is purging the Inauguration Day troops of those who aren’t personally loyal to him is a sobering sign:

 

The 2010s, like the 1860s, may end up being a line in the sand. There will be a before, and an after. What comes after remains, for the moment, a mystery. Can looking at the paths taken by other deeply divided societies help us learn what pitfalls to avoid? 

Let us hope so.

 

Thank you for reading.