
7 November 2019
What We Talk About When We Talk about Civil War (Hint: It’s Domestic Terrorism)
When conservatives talk about “civil war,” they are talking about domestic terrorism. This becomes clear when, in light of the recent upsurge in “civil war” rhetoric, we look past the usual self-styled insurrectionists (like the Oath Keepers, who recently promised a “HOT civil war”), and focus on a certain Major League Baseball umpire named Rob Drake, who tweeted as follows …
I will be buying an AR-15 tomorrow, because if you impeach MY PRESIDENT this way, YOU WILL HAVE ANOTHER CIVAL (sic) WAR!!! #MAGA2020
So, a couple of questions:

How Will Drake Fight His Civil War?
In the U.S. the term “civil war” brings to mind a struggle between the United States of America and the Confederate States of America, the latter being a breakaway nation with its own currency and infrastructure, as well as a standing army. By and large, CSA troops met USA troops on open fields of battle and engaged in conventional warfare. The new civil war, as conceived of by Drake and the Oath Keepers, will not have such tidy delineations. There won’t be separate nations engaged in conventional warfare. Instead, small groups and individuals will commit acts of domestic terrorism to advance their ideologies.
“Any government official in violation of the Constitution should be … killed.”
Drake’s“civil war” is an armed insurrection, a HOT civil war, as the Oath Keepers termed it. Drake isn’t talking about a cultural civil war. If that were the case, he might content himself with voting for ideologues who, once elected, would stack federal courts with unqualified activist judges, or he might work to suppress minority and youth votes. But you don’t need an AR-15 for that.
If you want to kill a lot of people, though, an AR-15 is a good choice. When Drake marches out of his house with his AR-15 to kill people, what will the scene look like? We can assume that given the extreme right’s love for LARPing, Drake will appear in his full work uniform and be known online as Based Umpire. But will he march alongside others, as part of a trained paramilitary group? Does he plan to leave behind his dream job of calling balls and strikes in the world’s premier baseball league in order to move west and join a militia, whose members will teach Drake the best way to take sniper positions against federal personnel, and how to overtake and occupy federal buildings? Failing that, will Drake organize his own local militia? If so, how will he recruit, train, and otherwise prepare?
Bear in mind, Drake has to get all this done relatively quickly. He needs to be war-ready before a Trump impeachment, which is the event Drake has established as antecedent for his civil war.
Or is it more likely, based on the Angry White Man rage of his tweet, that Drake imagines a civil war consisting of asymmetrical tactics, in which he acts as solo combatant? In this case, he would be part of a larger but decentralized insurrectionist movement. The members of this movement include the terrorists who recently attacked a New Zealand mosque, a Pittsburgh synagogue, and an El Paso Walmart. Drake, soon to be the proud owner of a new assault rifle, has special access to Major League Baseball ballparks, where tens of thousands of people routinely cram themselves into long rows of narrow seats that are difficult to exit under the best of conditions.

Who Will Drake Fight Against?
In Alt-America, David Neiwert quotes (by way of journalist Sarah Posner) a Tennessee militia member and RNC delegate for Trump named David Riden. In an interview with Posner, Riden said, “Any government official in violation of the Constitution should be … the polite word is eliminated … the harsh word is killed.”
Will Drake target officials who fail to uphold the Constitution? (And who decides which officials are negligent in their Constitutional duties?) Impeachment is established within the Constitution, so probably not. So his enemy list would be more expansive. Last year Florida police arrested James Royal Patrick after Patrick threatened the lives of Senators and their families, should Brett Kavanaugh not be confirmed to the Supreme Court. Drake might be even more indiscriminate and borrow the kill list of hapless mail bomber Cesar Sayoc. In addition to liberal politicians, government officials, and campaign donors, Sayoc also intended to attack CNN (“enemy of the people,” remember?) and Robert fucking de Niro. Or maybe Drake wants to amplify his message and escalate his civil war by any means, at anyone’s expense. This was the approach of Timothy McVeigh, who via the Oklahoma City bombing murdered 168 people; 19 of them were children at daycare.
Conclusion
In Drake’s civil war, we will see a proliferation of contemporary terrorism, characterized by politically motivated solo combatants and small extremist cells. One such cell, as Neiwert reports in his book, included three Kansas militia members who planned to blow up a Somali housing complex on November 9, 2016. (What follows is my interpretation of the attack; it does not appear in Neiwert’s book.) The date was important. November 9 was one day after the national election that everyone, including the terrorists, expected Donald Trump to lose. It was to be a day of retribution. By killing Somali Muslims, the Kansas terrorists would avenge Trump’s defeat.
Postscript
The recent uptick in civil war talk goes back to late September, when the President of the United States of America floated the idea of a new U.S. civil war …

It’s worth repeating: The President of the United States of America floated the idea of a new U.S. civil war. If Trump were impeached, his staying in the Oval Office would require mass chaos in the streets. His followers in the alt-right and other extreme communities would be happy to make that chaos.
As Neiwert documents in Alt-America, in 2016 Trump indicated that “Second Amendment people” might be able to stop Hillary Clinton from confiscating firearms. Now Trump is priming domestic terrorists to attack in the event of his impeachment. And that message is being picked up, loud and clear, by a wide audience that ranges from people on the fringes of society, like militia members, to men who make their living officiating America’s Pastime.
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