Is civil war imminent in the U.S.?

By Robert Saleem Holbrook 

I have been asked to address the Rosa Luxemburg Conference on the subject “Is civil war imminent in the United States?” Well, that question implies that the first U.S. Civil War, fought over enslavement, has ended. The truth is since the conclusion of that civil war there has in its place been a long war over nearly two centuries that has revolved around defending capital and the exploitation of Black and oppressed minorities in the United States and maintaining white supremacy, which is tied intricately to capital.  

What we are witnessing today in the United States is the culmination of the “long war” against equal rights, social justice and socialism. After the Civil War, the project of Reconstruction brought a brief period of freedom and equal rights for Black Americans, but that was quickly suppressed, and those freedoms and rights were rolled back through white supremacist violence in the form of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) aligned with state capital in the South and North. 

Uprisings for social justice have occurred in the United States in the 1920s, 1960s and 2020. The leading political line of all of these uprisings was that capitalism was incapable of bringing justice to Black Americans and the working class. However, in the wake of these uprisings, some freedoms were gained but not social justice. 

Today, the U.S. empire is dying, the facade of legitimacy is gone. It has expired under the weight of imperial hubris. People in the U.S. are slowly realizing that they live in a failed state; however, there is no consensus who to blame. For many whites in the U.S., the “American Dream” is no longer attainable — they cannot afford homes, health care or a quality of life they were promised. However, the MAGA movement has been successful in blaming Black people, immigrants and minorities for the decline of the U.S. standard of living. 

In the words of U.S. political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal:  “The Trump presidency signaled a great leap backwards. It was the expression of a deep, profound fear of the future, of change, of transformation.”

The reality of the decline of the U.S. standard of living is because billionaires and corporations have enriched themselves. Not content with plundering the world, billionaires and corporations are now plundering the public commons in the United States. 

This brings us to Trump. If the Obama presidency was the pinnacle of neoliberalism, then Trump is the pinnacle of end stage capitalism. Fascism is crude, it is offensive, and this is what we are seeing in the U.S. today. Trump is deliberately dividing the United States. Along with other billionaires they are rewriting the rules of the post-World War II international order. Domestically and internationally, the global order is being reset. It brings chaos, but it also brings opportunity. It is the opportunities we must embrace. 

The transparency of Trump’s plunder is developing an emerging class consciousness that is transcending race and ethnicity. 

New opportunities are arising to transform a decaying system, some even dare to dismantle it. The traditional Democratic / neoliberal party has shown itself incapable of stopping fascism in the United States and genocide in Gaza. In many cases it collaborates with it. People are waking up to the fact that a new politic is necessary. Socialism is no longer a boogeyman in the U.S., and capitalism is polling unfavorably, because people can no longer afford to live under it. 

The ultimate question is where this will lead. No doubt a battle is brewing in the United States, however its roots do not lie in Trump’s presidency — its roots lie in the failure to hang the traitorous leaders of the Confederacy in the aftermath of the U.S. Civil War and put a stake through the heart of white supremacy. Its roots lie in a capitalist system that prioritizes billionaires over people. The battle is capital versus people. 

The question in this round of struggle and the upheaval to come is, “Will people in the U.S. be united against billionaires and corporations and around creating a just society, or will another long war set in for a next generation to pick up the ashes?” 

One way or another the U.S. will forever be changed, and a new world and international order is being created before our eyes. In short, the world is up for grabs. The power is in the streets waiting to be picked up. 

I choose to close in the words of U.S. political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal, who sends us hope from a prison cell in the United States: “As we look at protests rolling throughout the country, the first thing we must recognize is that this isn’t about monuments. Nor is it about the Civil War. It is about the present. It is about how this country will define itself, how it sees itself and how it understands its future.

“But history, true history, is more about today than yesterday. For it is the pathway to tomorrow, and it lives or dies in the minds of the young who learn, or unlearn, how this country came to be and what role they play in the days to come.”

Holbrook is the Executive Director of the Abolitionist Law Center.