'Sustained havoc': MAGA already has the power to spread 'armed unrest' — without an army

Ahead of the 2024 presidential election, red flags are being waved that federal officials are still not prepared for a wave of rightwing violence designed to create "havoc" and plunge the country into chaos.

In a frightening column for Politico, Steven Simon of the MIT Center for International Studies, and Jonathan Stevenson of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), wrote a civil war as traditionally understood is unlikely to come to fruition, but "smaller pockets of armed unrest could easily ignite and spread disorder."

According to the analysts, it is no longer a matter of whether there will be violence, but if federal officials have their arms around what is coming and are making adequate preparations for civil unrest.

"Far-right Americans are highly unlikely to coalesce into a cohesive force that could wage war, but an army is not required to wreak sustained havoc and destabilize the country. In a deeply polarized environment, smaller pockets of armed unrest could easily ignite and spread disorder," the wrote before adding, "As the 2024 election approaches, the threat of political violence and civil breakdown is only going to increase. And despite all that U.S. national security and law enforcement officials have learned."

According to their analysis, a lack of coordination between federal officials and city and state officials is hindering efforts to plan for widespread attacks.

"There is no federal mandate for state and local authorities to report to federal authorities, so federal agencies must proactively elicit their cooperation. But non-federal agencies often have little interest in this work, because they entertain lower threat perceptions, contentious legal understandings or adverse conceptions of the role of government, they wrote before adding, "In exceptional cases, county law-enforcement officials may not regard a vocally anti-government gun owner as a present danger or even as ideological, and may consider the state government the highest one to which they are answerable. And while most state and local officers are duly concerned about employee grievances, which often do produce mass-casualty events, many of these officers are indifferent to ideological ones."

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As the analysts note, the largest danger would be if Donald Trump ran again and suffered another narrow loss which could lead to more violence.

"A clear rejection of Trumpism might then deflate the MAGA movement for the time being. But if the Republican nominee loses narrowly, declares himself the winner and rallies dispersed local groups prone to violent local resistance rather than an easily repulsed assault on the Capitol, it might be too late for orderly de-escalation," they warned.

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