The Observer (2022-01-09)

(EriveltonMoraes) #1

31


Civil war?


A year ago, the Capitol
was under siege. Many
hoped Biden would
help to heal the nation
but today divisions
have deepened, leading
to fears of spreading
and escalating confl ict,
writes David Smith in
Washing ton

Continued on page 32

J


oe Biden had spent a year in
the hope that America could
go back to normal. But last
Thursday, the fi rst anniver-
sary of the deadly insurrec-
tion at the US Capitol,
the president fi nally recog-
nised the full scale of the current
threat to American democracy.
“A t this moment, we must decide,”
Biden said in Statuary Hall, where
rioters had swarmed a year earlier.
“What kind of nation are we going
to be? Are we going to be a nation
that accepts political violence as a
norm?”

It is a question that many inside
America and beyond are now ask-
ing. In a deeply divided society,
where even a national tragedy such
as the attack on 6 January only
pushed people further apart, there
is fear that it was just the beginning
of a wave of unrest, confl ict and
domestic terrorism.
Recent opinion polls show a sig-
nifi cant minority of Americans
at ease with the idea of violence
against the government. Even talk
of a second American civil war has
gone from fringe fantasy to media
mainstream.

“Is a Civil War ahead?” was the
blunt headline of aNew Yorkermag-
azine article last week. “Are We
Really Facing a Second Civil War?”
asked the headline of a column
in Friday’s New York Times.Three
retired US generals wrote a recent
Washington Postcolumn warning
that another coup attempt “could
lead to civil war”.
The mere fact that such notions
are entering the public domain
shows the once unthinkable has
become thinkable, even though
some would argue it remains fi rmly
improbable.
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