I predicted the next American Civil War in 2040 – but it has never felt so close

Back in 2018, when I was working on my book The next civil warI remember talking to an FBI agent who had been working undercover on the far right for many years. By this time, I had already dealt with extremists from both sides myself, and I had a question: the right was responsible for over half of all political murders in the United States, the left for about 4 percent. How could he explain the difference? Why was one side so much more violent than the other?

He knew it immediately. The left will blow itself up before it can blow anyone else up, he told me. The right can muster basic solidarity and order even at its insane fringes. As the 2024 election heats up, this undercover agent truth seems timely again to me. It feels like the right has already blazed a path to autocracy. The left, which loudly claims to defend US democracy, is in shambles.

The causes of the possible collapse of the American republic have been well known since at least 2008. Countries collapse not because of individual events but because of deep systemic flaws, and the United States has many of the worst systemic flaws: its political system and, increasingly, its legal system are characterized by negative partisanship; income inequality has reached levels the country has not seen since its founding; trust in institutions of all kinds—Congress, the media, religious institutions, the courts—is declining rapidly.

At the same time, the archaic electoral system, the Electoral College, simply does not reflect the will of the people in any meaningful way. Fewer and fewer people in the United States believe in their political system – and those who do believe in it, fewer and fewer.

All these realities were true enough when I published The next civil war two years ago, but they were in the background. You had to look to find them. When I developed the scenarios for the chapters, the date I used as a shortcut was 2040, not anywhere near 2024. But countries that collapse are what experts call “complex cascading systems,” where different factors influence each other. The models I used have worked to a degree that I find astonishing. But the process they describe seems to be accelerating so much faster than I ever imagined.

The difference between the two sides in the current American election campaign is that the right seems to be aware of rapid entropy, while the left seems unable or unwilling to acknowledge it. The American Democratic elite, a group that I include not only political activists and elected officials but also analysts and media representatives, still functions as if they were living in the United States of the Obama years. They are still in the West Wing Mindset. They believe that politics in a democracy means consulting political experts, negotiating consensus through compromise, and finding personalities who can embody that consensus in elections.

The right knows and understands that many feel the system is already rotten, and that the right is exploiting the decay of the American dream for the common man and woman to give themselves power.

I believe that the assassination attempt on Donald Trump was by no means the most important political event of the last week. When the history of the demise of the American Republic is written, the closure of the secret documents case, which many thought would land him in prison, will loom much larger. The Republicans have now put everything in order. They have prepared the legal system to give the executive unprecedented power. They have corrupted the electoral system by preemptively casting doubt on any outcome they might disagree with. And of course, they have now prepared their victim narrative.

“Today is not an isolated incident,” JD Vance tweeted shortly after the shot hit Trump’s ear. “The Biden campaign’s central premise is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. This rhetoric led directly to the attempted assassination of President Trump.” The attempted assassination will give them the moral backing they need to pursue their enemies with all their might. The masses are already chanting “Fight, fight, fight.” This is not the language of peace and harmony. It speaks of power “by any means necessary.”

Meanwhile, Democrats can’t even support their candidate. They can’t organize behind another candidate. Democrats have no story to tell. They can’t even build a convincing hatred of their opponents.

The problem goes deeper than the politics of horse racing. Democrats want to keep their institutions alive. And to keep those institutions alive, they have to believe that the institutions still work. In other words, they have to look away from the collapse. Many of them still hold on to Barack Obama in some corner of their hearts, and Obama said there is no red America and no blue America, no black America and no white America. Obama also said if you work hard and play by the rules, you can get ahead in America. These are much more attractive lies than the ones Trump tells his followers, but their beautiful decency has only solidified their seductive deceptions even more.

The trend of America’s decline has been underway for at least a decade. Still, the secret documents decision and the assassination attempt on Trump represent a small but important turning point. The United States has entered a phase of anocracy, a shadowy realm between autocracy and democracy. Any expert on civil wars will tell you that anocracy is the most dangerous political state to live in and that it has the greatest tendency toward violence.

The reason is obvious. If the electoral system does not represent a popular mandate, if the courts appear to be merely tools of powerful interests, and if there are no institutions beyond the tinkering of a malign political system, then the state’s monopoly on violence is inherently illegitimate. The American people are the most heavily armed society in the developed world. There are more guns than people in the United States. The time of American unity is over. It has been over for some time. Only one side seems to realize this. Unfortunately, one way or another, the other side will be swayed later rather than sooner. If civil war does occur in America, it will be fully armed.

“The Next Civil War: Dispatches from the American Future” by Stephen Marche is published by Simon & Schuster