Artists demand the reinstatement of the European Drama Award to Caryl Churchill

Thu 17 Nov 2022

Playwright Caryl Chuchill (credit Marc Brenner and APUK)

JVL Introduction

It is shocking that the European Drama prize awarded to Caryl Churchill has been withdrawn because of her support for Palestinians, disguised as allegations of antisemitism. Below this letter from Artists for Palestine UK and the long list of signatories are further statements of support; this is from the one from our colleagues in Germany.

“As Jews living in Germany, we are outraged by this systematic use of antisemitism accusations to silence artists and intellectuals who stand for human rights for all. Censorship and smear campaigns, such as the one currently directed against Caryl Churchill, are unfortunately common in Germany today.,. every challenge to Israeli human rights violations can be cast as ‘anti-semitic’. This is a very effective weapon in Germany, because the fear to be perceived as anti-semitic is so great, and this fear is manipulated to actually persecute human rights defenders, including Jews… We are expressing our solidarity with Caryl and remain committed to universal values of human rights and equality, which for many of us are also rooted in Jewish tradition and identity.”

Jüdische Stimme für Gerechtigkeit in Nahost / Jewish Voice for a Just Peace in the Middle East

This article was originally published by Artists for Palestine UK on Thu 17 Nov 2022. Read the original here.

Leading lights of British theatre accuse European Drama Prize of modern-day McCarthyism

• Lifetime achievement award for Caryl Churchill rescinded over support for Palestinians
• Withdrawal prompts major intervention by more than 170 actors, directors, writers

Artists for Palestine UK

More than 170 actors, writers and producers have accused the jury of the 2022 European Drama Prize in Germany of “modern-day McCarthyism”, after it withdrew a Lifetime Achievement Award from renowned British playwright Caryl Churchill over her support for Palestinian rights.

The comments come in an open letter (published below) whose signatories include Dame Harriet Walter (Killing Eve, Succession), directors Mike Leigh (Peterloo, Mr Turner, Vera Drake), Stephen Daldry (Billy Elliot, The Crown), Phyllida Lloyd (The Iron Lady, Mamma Mia!), and the National Theatre’s Dominic Cooke CBE.

Churchill was awarded the European Drama Prize in April this year, only for the decision to be rescinded in October based on Churchill’s support for the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.

“Caryl Churchill deserves the highest international awards for a lifetime of game-changing work in the theatre”, said Dame Harriet Walter. “To withdraw any honour because of her political views is a dishonourable act reminiscent of McCarthyism”.

Pointing to a series of similar attacks on artists and scholars in recent years, the letter states that “this [latest] attack on freedom of conscience… raises urgent questions about a pattern of intimidation and silencing in Germany, and beyond”.

The signatories – who accuse institutions in Germany of “deep-seated anti-Palestinian racism” – also include actors Miranda Richardson, Miriam Margolyes, Khalid Abdallah, Juliet Stevenson, Maxine Peake, and Maureen Beattie as well as leading playwrights Abbie Spallen, Polly Stenham, Hannah Khallil, Nicholas Wright, Sabrina Mahfouz, Tanika Gupta, film director Stephen Frears, and Observer theatre critic Susannah Clapp.

“For the Schauspiel Stuttgart to rescind its prestigious award is irresponsible, illiberal and ignorant; the decision reeks of the very fascism it affects to oppose” said Mike Leigh.

Announcing the withdrawal of the award, the jury also repeated claims that Churchill’s play ‘Seven Jewish Children’ could come across as ‘antisemitic’ – something Churchill rejected, saying “A political play has made political enemies, who attack it with slurs of antisemitism”.

Dominic Cooke, who directed the play in 2009, said: “Drawing attention to Israel’s human rights abuses and its illegal occupation of Palestinian territory is not antisemitic, it is legitimate protest. We must defend artists’ right to comment on it, and on any other abuse of power in the world, without their being subject to defamatory abuse”.

This major new intervention also drew support from Sir Geoffrey Bindman KC, who stated that the withdrawal of the award on the grounds of Churchill’s “support for BDS plainly violates her right to freedom of expression protected by Article 10 of the European Human Rights Convention. It is wrong and the award should be unconditionally restored to her”.

We are proud to publish the letter in full below, with the list of signatories, and full statements by artists and others.

THE LETTER IN FULL

“We are appalled that the Lifetime Achievement Prize awarded to playwright Caryl Churchill for the European Drama Prize 2022 has been rescinded by the jury of the Schauspiel Stuttgart, on the grounds that Churchill supports the nonviolent Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel’s system of apartheid. 

This outrageous turnaround is the latest in a campaign that targets artists critical of Israel’s colonial violence. It follows attempts to censor figures such as musicians Brian Eno, Kae Tempest, Young Fathers, and Talib Kweli, author Kamila Shamsie, artist Walid Raad, philosopher Achille Mbembe, Palestinian journalist and poet Mohammed el-Kurd, and former director of the Jewish Museum Berlin, Peter Schäfer. This attack on freedom of conscience is nothing less than modern-day McCarthyism, and raises urgent questions about a pattern of intimidation and silencing in Germany, and beyond.

We note that the goals of the Palestinian-led BDS movement – ending the occupation, full equality to the Palestinian citizens of Israel and the right of return of Palestinian refugees – adhere to international law.

Yet, in 2019, a resolution passed by the Bundestag falsely equated the BDS movement with antisemitism. This vaguely-worded and non-binding resolution was rejected by leading international authorities on antisemitism and the history of the Holocaust. In 2020, 32 leading cultural institutions in Germany sounded the alarm at the repression of minority and critical voices, declaring the anti-BDS resolution “dangerous” and “detrimental to the democratic public sphere”. Moreover, seven German courts have found that anti-BDS resolutions and actions taken to implement them violate fundamental rights, including freedom of speech.

The repression and silencing we are witnessing suggest deep seated anti-Palestinian racism, and call into question the integrity and independence of cultural institutions.

Failure to defend artists who speak out in support of human rights – even when this upsets the government of the day – brings the cultural sector into disrepute. We demand better. If the only forms of art deemed ‘safe’ for institutions are those that have nothing to say to the dispossessed and oppressed of this earth and that are silent in the face of state-sanctioned repression, then art and culture are emptied of meaning and value.

In recent days, Caryl Churchill has said: “I stand by my support for BDS and Palestinians.” We, too, stand by the Palestinian people. And we are proud to stand by Caryl Churchill and against McCarthyism.”

Signed by:

Khalid Abdallah, Actor

Hassan Abdulrazzak, Playwright

Seven Jewish Children – A Play for Gaza by Caryl Churchill

Sarona Abuaker, Author

Bette Adriaanse, Writer

Hanan Al-Shaykh, Writer

Monica Ali, Writer

Amir Amirani, Film Director

Almiro Andrade, Actor/Director

Jack Arnold, Film Composer

Sahar Assaf, Artistic Director, Golden Thread Productions

Paul Bailey, Author

Amy Ball, Casting Director

Peter Barnes, Actor

Maureen Beattie, Actor

Sarona Bedwan, Writer

Ronan Bennett, Writer

Sonali Bhattacharyya, Writer

Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti, Playwright/Screenwriter

Geoffrey Bindman KC

Boycott from Within (Israeli citizens for BDS)

Haim Bresheeth-Zabner, Filmmaker

Breyten Breytenbach, Author

Justin Butcher, Playwright 

Judith Butler,  Professor

Leo Butler, Playwright

Tom Cairns, Director

John Carnegie, Theatre Director

Daragh Carville, Playwright/Screenwriter

Jonathan Chadwick, Writer/Director

Kathleen Chalfant, Actor

Henry Chalfant, Filmmaker/Photographer

Linda S. Chapman, Artistic Director

Jan Chappell, Actor

Mary Chater, Actor

Tanzil Chowdhury, Senior Lecturer

Julie Christie, Actor

Susannah Clapp, Theatre Critic

Dominic Cooke, Director

Gordon Cowell, Casting Director

Liam Cunningham, Actor

Mandy Cuthbert, Actor

Cherien Dabis, Film/TV Director

Stephen Daldry, Director

Siobhan Davies, Dancer/Choreographer

Angela Davis, Author

Dan de la Motte, Equity Councillor/Performer

Andy de la Tour, Actor

Jeremy Deller, Artist

Shane Dempsey, Director

Es Devlin, Artist

Stephen Dillane, Actor

Paola Dionisotti, Actor

Clare Dunne, Actor/Writer

Matthew Dunster, Director

Deborah Eisenberg, Actor/Writer

Inua Ellams, Playwright

Brian Eno, Artist

Darla Eno, Artist

Gareth Evans, Whitechapel Gallery Adjunct Moving Image Curator

Richard Eyre, Director

David Farr, Author

Giovanni Fassina, Director, European Legal Support Centre

Sylvia Finzi, Artist

Joan D. Firestone, Producer

Ruth Fletcher, Reader in Law

Helen Fox, Actor/Writer/Producer

Stephen Frears, Director

Bella Freud, Artist

Ruth Fruchtman, Writer

Pooja Ghai, Artistic Director, Tamasha

Nick Gill, Playwright

John Gillett, Director/Writer

Natasha Gordon, Playwright/Actor

Neve Gordon, Professor

Orlando Gough, Composer

Andre Gregory, Director

Tanika Gupta, Playwright

Omar Hamilton, Writer

Zainab Hasan, Actress

Iris Hefets, Psychoanalyst/Writer

Weiland Hoban, Composer

Jeffrey Horowitz, Founding Artistic Director,  

Theatre for a New Audience

Alix Hughes, Trustee, Bristol Palestine Film Festival

Tarek Iskander, Artistic Director, Battersea Arts Centre

Annemarie Jacir, Film Director

Jewish Voice For Peace (USA)

Richard Jones, Director

Jewish Voice for a Just Peace in the Middle East (Germany)

Ann Jungman, Author

Aki Kaurismaki, Film Director

AL Kennedy, Writer

Hannah Khalil, Playwright/Screenwriter

Laleh Khalili, Professor

Cindy Kleine, Director

Peter Kosminsky, Screenwriter/Director

Gavin Kostick, Playwright

David Lan, Writer/Producer

Jacob K. Langford, Director/Writer

Ruth Lass, Actor

Danny Lee Wynter, Actor/Playwright

Mike Leigh, Screenwriter/Director

Daisy Lewis, Actor/Director

Phyllida Lloyd, Director

Jim Loach, Director

Ken Loach, Director

Ruth Luschnat, Naturopath

Hettie Macdonald, Director

Sabrina Mahfouz, Playwright/Poet

Morgan Lloyd Malcolm,  Playwright/Screenwriter

Jenny Manson, Co-Chair, Jewish Voice for Labour

Miriam Margolyes, Actor

Kika Markham, Actor

Chloe Massey, Actor

Antony McDonald, Stage Designer/Director

Ellen McLaughlin, Playwright/Actor

Tim McInnerny, Actor

Caitlin McLeod,  Director

Pauline Melville, Writer

Patrick Miller, Actor/Writer/Director

Jenny Morgan, TV Director

Carol Morley, Film Director

Tom Morris, Director

Eileen Myles, Poet

Rosalind Nashashibi, Artist 

James Nicola, Former Artistic Director,  New York Theater Workshop

Ofer Nieman, Translator

Ben Norris, Actor/Writer

Cyril Nri, Actor

Rebecca O’Brien, Producer

Shivaun O’Casey, Actor/Director

Kate Pakenham, Producer

Maatin Patel, Writer

Christine Payne, Equity General Secretary, 2005-20

Maxine Peake, Actor

Phillip Pullman, Writer

Rahul Rao, Academic

Siobhán Redmond, Actor

Miranda Richardson, Actor

Maroussia Richardson, Actor

Ian Rickson, Director

Jacqueline Rose, Professor

Catherine Rottenberg, Professor

Michal Sapir, Musician/Writer

James Schamus, Screenwriter/Producer

Sarah Schulman, Author/Playwright

Stephen Sedley, Lawyer/Former High Court Judge

Lynne Segal, Professor Emerita

Elhum Shakerifar, Producer/Curator 

Kamila Shamsie, Writer

Wallace Shawn, Actor/Playwright 

Abdul Shayek, Artistic Director, Tara Theatre

Lucy Sheen, Actor/Writer

Farhana Sheikh, Playwright

Christopher Shinn, Playwright

Avi Shlaim, Professor

Shma Koleinu, Alternative Jewish Voices of Aotearoa New Zealand

Gillian Slovo, Playwright/Author

Elaine C. Smith, Actor

Lili Sommerfeld, Musician

Nirit Sommerfeld, Musician

Ahdaf Soueif, Writer

Abbie Spallen, Playwright

Maggie Steed, Actor

Polly Stenham, Playwright

Jamie Stern-Weiner, PhD Researcher

Juliet Stevenson, Actress

Adam Sutcliffe, Professor

Kae Tempest, Musician

Jacques Testard, Publisher, Fitzcarraldo

Ruby Thomas, Writer

Colm Tóibín, Writer

Kathleen Tolan, Actor

Jo Tyabji, Director

Jean Urquhart, Artist

V (formerly Eve Ensler), Playwright 

Terry Victor, Actor

Naomi Wallace, Playwright

Harriet Walter, Actor

Stephen Warbeck, Composer

Sacha Wares, Theatre Director

Eliot Weinberger, Writer

Michael Weller, Actor

Hilary Westlake, Director

David Whyte, Professor

Susan Wooldridge, Actor

Nicholas Wright, Playwright/Director

Gary Yershon, Composer

Daniel York Loh, Writer/Director/Actor

STATEMENTS

“Caryl Churchill deserves the highest international awards for a lifetime of game-changing work in the theatre. To withdraw any honour because of her political views is a dishonourable act reminiscent of McCarthyism.”

Harriet Walter DBE, Actor 

“As a fellow British dramatist and a Jew, I stand with Caryl Churchill in her totally justified support of the struggle of the Palestinian people against the Israeli apartheid regime. For the Schauspiel Stuttgart to rescind its prestigious award is irresponsible, illiberal and ignorant; the decision reeks of the very fascism it affects to oppose.”

Mike Leigh, Film director 

“Seven Jewish Children was written after the 2009 bombing of Gaza by Israel, in which many Palestinian children were killed. It is about families wanting to protect children and wondering what to tell them about terrible things, a pogrom, the Holocaust, finally the bombing of Gaza. It is critical of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians; it is not an attack on all Jews, many of whom are also critical of Israeli policy. It is wrong to conflate Israel with all Jews. A political play has made political enemies, who attack it with slurs of antisemitism. I stand by my support for BDS and Palestinians. I am opposed to the German government definition of BDS as antisemitic and the use of it to target artists and academics.”

Caryl Churchill, Playwright

“Caryl Churchill has been stripped of a European Drama Award for her support of BDS but also on the grounds that her play SEVEN JEWISH CHILDREN which I, a Jew,  directed  in 2009, ‘can come across as antisemitic’.  The play was initially labelled antisemitic at the time by apologists for Israel’s mistreatment of Palestinians. When asked to provide evidence to support this claim they misquote the play, misrepresent its title and twist its meaning. SEVEN JEWISH CHILDREN was written in response to Benjamin Netanyahu’s 2009 bombing of Gaza, which killed over a thousand Palestinian civilians, including at least two hundred children.  The confected outrage about Caryl’s play was designed to divert attention away from this fact and scare possible critics of it into silence. But drawing attention to Israel’s  human rights abuses and its illegal occupation of Palestinian territory is not antisemitic, it is legitimate protest. We must defend artists’ right to comment on it, and on any other abuse of power in the world, without their being subject to defamatory abuse and vile slurs.”

Dominic Cooke CBE, Associate Director, National Theatre 

“Withdrawal of the European Drama award from Caryl Churchill on the ground of her support for BDS plainly violates her right to freedom of expression protected by Article 10 of the European Human Rights Convention.   It is wrong and the award should be unconditionally restored to her.”

Sir Geoffrey Bindman KC

“As Jews living in Germany, we are outraged by this systematic use of antisemitism accusations to silence artists and intellectuals who stand for human rights for all. Censorship and smear campaigns, such as the one currently directed against Caryl Churchill, are unfortunately common in Germany today. Artists, intellectuals, journalists, cultural institutions who refuse to participate in the silencing and exclusion of Palestinian people, are easily harassed by authorities, threatened with loss of funding, vilified in the media. German state institutions fail to seriously address anti-semitism and all forms of racism in our society. Instead, every challenge to Israeli human rights violations can be cast as ‘anti-semitic’. This is a very effective weapon in Germany, because the fear to be perceived as anti-semitic is so great, and this fear is manipulated to actually persecute human rights defenders, including Jews. The reality is that when you stand for human rights, equality and justice in Germany, it can come with a price, as Caryl Churchill and so many others are experiencing. We are expressing our solidarity with Caryl and remain committed to universal values of human rights and equality, which for many of us are also rooted in Jewish tradition and identity.”

Jüdische Stimme für Gerechtigkeit in Nahost / Jewish Voice for a Just Peace in the Middle East

“Should you be in any contact with Caryl Churchill, please convey to her my total support in solidarity with the right of Palestinians in their daily struggle for the most basic human rights, for dignity, for the freedom to live in an independent state of their own choosing on the land of their birth and those of their ancestors — and NOT the ghettos controlled by a predatory Israeli State.”

Breytan Breytenbach, Writer

https://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/article/artists-demand-the-reinstatement-of-the-european-drama-award-to-caryl-churchill/

or

https://artistsforpalestine.org.uk/2022/11/17/leading-lights-of-british-theatre-accuse-european-drama-prize-of-modern-day-mccarthyism/

‘These are conditions ripe for political violence’: how close is the US to civil war?

A police flash-bang grenade is detonated during the attack on the US Capitol on 6 January 2021. Photograph: Leah Millis/Reuters

Nearly half of Americans fear their country will erupt within the next decade. Ahead of the midterm elections this week, three experts analyse the depth of the crisis

Sun 6 Nov 2022 04.00 EST

Barbara F Walter. Photograph: Debora Cartwright

Barbara F Walter: ‘Judges will be assassinated, Democrats will be jailed on bogus charges, black churches and synagogues bombed’

American political scientist and author of How Civil Wars Start: And How to Stop Them (Viking)

Americans are increasingly talking about civil war. In August, after the FBI raided Donald Trump’s Florida home, Twitter references to “civil war” jumped 3,000%. Trump supporters immediately went online, tweeting threats that a civil war would start if Trump was indicted. One account wrote: “Is it Civil-War-O’clock yet?”; another said, “get ready for an uprising”. Lindsey Graham, a Republican senator from South Carolina, said there would be “riots in the streets” if Trump was indicted. Trump himself predicted that “terrible things are going to happen” if the temperature wasn’t brought down in the country. Perhaps most troubling, Americans on both sides of the political divide increasingly state that violence is justified. In January 2022, 34% of Americans surveyed said that it was sometimes OK to use violence against the government. Seven months later, more than 40% said that they believed civil war was at least somewhat likely in the next 10 years. Two years ago, no one was talking about a second American civil war. Today it is common.

Are America’s fears overblown? The most frequent question I get asked following my book How Civil Wars Start: And How to Stop Them is whether a civil war could happen again in the US. Sceptics argue that America’s government is too powerful for anyone to challenge. Others argue that secession will never happen because our country is no longer cleanly divided along geographic lines. Still others simply cannot believe that Americans would start killing one another. These beliefs, however, are based on the mistaken idea that a second civil war would look like the first. It will not.

If a second civil war breaks out in the US, it will be a guerrilla war fought by multiple small militias spread around the country. Their targets will be civilians – mainly minority groups, opposition leaders and federal employees. Judges will be assassinated, Democrats and moderate Republicans will be jailed on bogus charges, black churches and synagogues bombed, pedestrians picked off by snipers in city streets, and federal agents threatened with death should they enforce federal law. The goal will be to reduce the strength of the federal government and those who support it, while also intimidating minority groups and political opponents into submission.

A protester calling for Donald Trump’s arrest holds a sign in front of Trump Tower the morning after the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago in August. Photograph: David Dee Delgado/Reuters

We know this because far-right groups such as the Proud Boys have told us how they plan to execute a civil war. They call this type of war “leaderless resistance” and are influenced by a plan in The Turner Diaries (1978), a fictitious account of a future US civil war. Written by William Pierce, founder of the neo-Nazi National Alliance, it offers a playbook for how a group of fringe activists can use mass terror attacks to “awaken” other white people to their cause, eventually destroying the federal government. The book advocates attacking the Capitol building, setting up a gallows to hang politicians, lawyers, newscasters and teachers who are so-called “race traitors”, and bombing FBI headquarters.

Pages of The Turner Diaries were found in Timothy McVeigh’s truck after he attacked a federal building in Oklahoma City in April 1995. Patrick Crusius, the alleged El Paso Walmart gunman, and John Timothy Earnest, the accused shooter at a synagogue in Poway, California, echoed the book’s ideas in their manifestos. A member of the Proud Boys can be seen on video during the insurrection on 6 January 2021 telling a journalist to read The Turner Diaries.

Election deniers are running for office in 48 of the 50 states

The US is not yet in a civil war. But a 2012 declassified report by the CIA on insurgencies outlines the signs. According to the report, a country is experiencing an open insurgency when sustained violence by increasingly active extremists has become the norm. By this point, violent extremists are using sophisticated weapons, such as improvised explosive devices, and begin to attack vital infrastructure (such as hospitals, bridges and schools), rather than just individuals. These attacks also involve a larger number of fighters, some of whom have combat experience. There is often evidence, according to the report, “of insurgent penetration and subversion of the military, police, and intelligence services”.

In this early stage of civil war, extremists are trying to force the population to choose sides, in part by demonstrating to citizens that the government cannot keep them safe or provide basic necessities. The goal is to incite a broader civil war by denigrating the state and growing support for violent measures.

Insurgency experts wondered whether 6 January would be the beginning of such a sustained series of attacks. This has not yet happened, in part because of aggressive counter-measures by the FBI. The FBI has arrested more than 700 individuals who participated in the riot, charging 225 of them with assaulting, resisting or impeding officers or employees. Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the Oath Keepers, will almost certainly go to jail for his role in helping to organise the insurrection, as will numerous other participants. But this setback is likely to be temporary.

Stewart Rhodes, founder of the Oath Keepers, giving evidence in June to the House select committee investigating the US Capitol attack. Photograph: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images

Civil war experts know that two factors put countries at high risk of civil war. The US has one of these risk factors and remains dangerously close to the second. Neither risk factor has diminished since 6 January. The first is ethnic factionalism. This happens when citizens in a country organise themselves into political parties based on ethnic, religious, or racial identity rather than ideology. The second is anocracy. This is when a government is neither fully democratic nor fully autocratic; it’s something in between. Civil wars almost never happen in full, healthy, strong democracies. They also seldom happen in full autocracies. Violence almost always breaks out in countries in the middle – those with weak and unstable pseudo-democracies. Anocracy plus factionalism is a dangerous mix.

We also know who tends to start civil wars, especially those fought between different ethnic, religious and racial groups. This also does not bode well for the US. The groups that tend to resort to violence are not the poorest groups, or the most downtrodden. It’s the group that had once been politically dominant but is losing power. It’s the loss of political status – a sense of resentment that they are being replaced and that the identity of their country is no longer theirs – that tends to motivate these groups to organise. Today, the Republican party and its base of white, Christian voters are losing their dominant position in American politics and society as a result of demographic changes. Whites are the slowest-growing demographic in the US and will no longer be a majority of the population by around 2044. Their status will continue to decline as America becomes more multi-ethnic, multiracial, and multireligious, and the result will be increasing resentment and fear at what lies ahead. The people who stormed the Capitol on 6 January believed they were saving America from this future and felt fully justified in this fight.

America’s democracy declined rapidly between 2016 and 2020. Since 6 January 2021, the US has failed to strengthen its democracy in any way, leaving it vulnerable to continued backsliding into the middle zone. In fact, the Republican party has accelerated its plan to weaken our democracy further. Voter suppression bills have been introduced in almost every state since 6 January. Election deniers are running for office in 48 of the 50 states and now represent a majority of all Republicans running for Congressional and state offices in the US midterm elections this week. Trump loyalists are being elected secretaries of state in key swing states, increasing the likelihood that Republican candidates will be granted victory, even if they lose the vote. And America’s two big political parties remain deeply divided by race and religion. If these underlying conditions do not change, a leader like Stewart Rhodes of the Oath Keepers can go to jail, but other disaffected white men will take his place.

Regulate social media… the result would be a drop in everyone’s collective anger, distrust and feelings of threat

What is happening in the US is not unique. White supremacists have leapt on projections that the US will be the first western democracy where white citizens could lose their majority status. This is forecast to happen around 2044. Far-right parties of wealthy western countries have issued ominous warnings about the end of white dominance, seeking to stoke hatred by emphasising the alleged costs – economic, social, moral – of such transformation. We are already seeing elements of this in Europe, where rightwing anti-immigrant parties such as the Sweden Democrats, the Brothers of Italy, Alternative für Deutschland in Germany, the Vlaams Belang in Belgium, the National Rally in France and the Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs in Austria have all seen their support increase in recent years.

What can we do about this? The obvious answers are for our political leaders to invest heavily in strengthening our democracies and to have their political parties reach across racial, religious and ethnic lines. But here in America, the Democratic party does not have the votes to institute much-needed reforms of our political system, and the Republicans have no interest; they are moving in the opposite direction.

But there is a potentially easy fix. Regulate social media, and in particular the algorithms that disproportionately push the more incendiary, extreme, threatening and fear-inducing information into people’s feeds. Take away the social media bullhorn and you turn down the volume on bullies, conspiracy theorists, bots, trolls, disinformation machines, hate-mongers and enemies of democracy. The result would be a drop in everyone’s collective anger, distrust and feelings of threat, giving us all time to rebuild.

Stephen Marche. Photograph: Carlos Osorio/Toronto Star/Getty Images

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Stephen Marche: ‘America has passed the point at which the triumph of one party or another can fix what’s wrong with it’

Canadian novelist and essayist and author of The Next Civil War: Dispatches from the American Future (Simon & Schuster)

The United States is a textbook example of a country headed towards civil war. The trends increasingly point one way, and while nobody knows the future, little – if anything – is being done, by anyone, to try to prevent the collapse of the republic. Belief in democracy is ebbing. The legitimacy of institutions is declining. America increasingly is entering a state where its citizens don’t want to belong to the same country. These are conditions ripe for political violence.

No civil war ever has a single cause. It’s always a multitude of factors that lead to decline and collapse. The current US has several of what the CIA calls “threat multipliers”: environmental crises continue to batter the country, economic inequality is at its highest level since the founding of the country, and demographic change means that the US will be a minority white country within just over two decades. All of these factors tend to contribute to civil unrest wherever they are found in the world.

But the US is more vulnerable to political violence than other countries because of the decrepitude of its institutions. For 40 years, trust in institutions of all kinds – the church, the police, journalism, academia – has been in freefall. Trust in politicians can hardly fall any lower. And there is no reason for trust. The constitution, while unquestionably a work of genius, was a work of 18th-century genius. It simply does not reflect, nor can it respond to, the realities of the 21st century.

State flags (including Tennessee, front, and Kentucky behind) on the National Mall, Washington DC, before Biden’s inauguration. Photograph: Stephanie Keith/Getty Images

The divide between the American political system and any reflection of the popular will is widening, and increasingly it cannot be ignored. The electoral college system means that, in the near term, a Democrat will win the popular mandate by many millions of votes and still lose the presidency. The crisis of democracy will only grow. With around 345 election deniers on the ballot as candidates in November, the Republicans appear to have evolved a new political strategy, seemingly based on the gambling strategy of Joe Pesci’s character in Casino: if they win, they collect. If they don’t, they tell the bookies to go away. Unless there is a completely separate Republican leadership in place by 2024, they will simply ignore the results they don’t like.

The American electoral system is already hugely localised, outdated and held together by good faith. Any failure to recognise electoral outcomes, even in a few states, could result in a contested election in which nobody reaches the threshold of 270 electoral college votes. In that case, the constitution stipulates a “contingent election” – acclimatise yourself to this phrase now – in which each state gets a single vote. That’s right: if no candidate in an American presidential election reaches the threshold of 270 electoral college votes, the state legislatures, overwhelmingly dominated by Republicans, pick the president, with each state having one vote.

The confusion of legal status of a separate group of persons is a classic prelude to civil war

In 1824, the candidate who won the popular vote and the most electoral college votes, Andrew Jackson, did not become president. John Quincy Adams fudged his way through. A contingent election is one mechanism, just one, by which an American government could be perfectly constitutional and completely undemocratic at the same time. The right has been preparing for exactly such a reality for a while, with a phrase they repeat as if in hope that it will mean something if they say it enough: “We’re a republic, not a democracy.”

Quasi-legitimacy is what leads to violence. And America’s political institutions are destined to become more and more quasi-legitimate from now on. One of the surest markers of incipient civil war in other countries is the legal system devolving from a non-partisan, truly national institution to a spoil of partisan war. That has already happened in the US.

Women in in Lansing, Michigan, protest the US supreme court’s overturning of Roe v Wade. Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images

The overturning of Roe v Wade, in June, was both a symptom of the new American divisiveness and a cause of its spread. The Dobbs decision (in which the supreme court held that the US constitution does not confer the right to abortion) took the status of women in the US and dropped it like a plate-glass window from a great height. It will take a generation or more to sweep up the shards. What women are or are not allowed to do with their bodies – abortions, IVF procedures, birth control, maintaining the privacy of their menstrual cycles, crossing state lines – now depends on the state and county lines in which their bodies happen to reside. The legal reality of American women is no longer national in nature. When a woman travels from Illinois to Ohio, she becomes a different entity, with different rights and duties.

The court itself is well aware of the legal carnage it has caused. “If, over time, the court loses all connection with the public and with public sentiment, that is a dangerous thing for democracy,” associate justice Elena Kagan said shortly afterwards. Her conservative colleague Samuel A Alito responded: “It goes without saying that everyone is free to express disagreement with our decisions and to criticise our reasoning as they see fit. But saying or implying that the court is becoming an illegitimate institution or questioning our integrity crosses an important line.” But what anyone says or implies is of little to no importance at this point. The percentage of the American public having almost no confidence in the supreme court reached 43% in July, up from 27% in April. The confusion of legal status of a separate group of persons is a classic prelude to civil war.

The justices of the court, and the American public, are just catching up with the inevitable consequences of the refusal of Congressional Republicans to allow President Obama to select Merrick Garland for the court and then going on to confirm three Trump nominees, resulting in a court skewed six: three to the right. The supreme court feels illegitimate because it is illegitimate. The Dobbs decision does not reflect the will of the American people because the supreme court does not reflect the will of the American people.

Elections have consequences, right up until the point when they don’t. On a superficial level, the 2022 midterms couldn’t matter more; American democracy itself is at stake. On a deeper level, the 2022 midterms don’t matter all that much; they will inform us, if anything, of the schedule and the manner of the fall of the republic. The results might delay the decline, or accelerate it, but at this point, no merely political outcome can prevent the downfall. America has passed the point at which the triumph of one party or another can fix what’s wrong with it, and the kind of structural change that’s necessary isn’t on the table. This is a moment between two American politics. The wind has been sown. The whirlwind is yet to be reaped.

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Christopher Sebastian Parker. Photograph: University of British Columbia Arts

Christopher Sebastian Parker: ‘Many white people feel the need to take drastic measures to maintain white supremacy’

Professor of political science at University of California, Santa Barbara and author of Change They Can’t Believe In: The Tea Party and Reactionary Politics in America (Princeton)

America is rushing headlong into another civil war, and it’s a matter of when, not if. As political scientist Prof Barbara F Walter argues, civil wars are likely in the presence of two factors: anocracy and ethnic factionalism. When one considers the centrality of race to American politics, it is clear that ethno-nationalism is hastening the movement towards anocracy.

Think about the role of race in the first civil war and the one we’re headed towards. It’s well documented that the repulsive nature of the institution of slavery was the principal cause of the civil war, driven by moral as well as economic and political concerns. In 19th-century America, the Democratic party was a relatively reactionary institution in the south, whereas the Republican party was a relatively progressive institution located in the north. Republicans supported the abolition of slavery, whereas 19th-century Democrats were all for it. Regardless of the outcome of the war – driven as it was by the prospect of material gain or loss, moral redemption or amorality – the war came to rest on the fulcrum of race and racism.

Members of the white supremacist group Patriot Front marching with anti-abortion activists in Washington DC in January. Photograph: Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images

Throughout history, political identity in the US has ultimately been driven by the parties’ respective positions on race, with divisions sorting primarily by way of racial identity and racial attitudes. Contemporary Republicans, for instance, tend to be white and relatively racist. Democrats are more likely to draw from a more diverse pool and, as such, are, typically, less racist. To illustrate this point, Republicans are far more alarmed by a diversifying country.

Likewise, white people were and are more likely to support Trump, driven by the anxiety associated with the rapid racial diversification of “their” country. What, you may ask, do white people and the Republican party have in common? Well, 80% of Republican voters are white.

The consequences of the centrality of race and racism to American politics and the threat of internal war are dire. It was racism that was ultimately responsible for the rise of the Tea Party, a reaction to Obama’s (racialised) presidency. The Tea Party (now the Maga movement), in turn, moved the GOP to the right, eventually setting the stage for Trump.

With Trump pushing the “big lie” that the 2020 election was stolen, and many Republicans buying into it, the stage is set for another American war of all against all. We’ve seen this before. The civil war, as it happens, was set in motion by the refusal of the Democrats to accept Abraham Lincoln as the legitimate winner of the 1860 contest given his views on slavery: he thought it morally wrong.

But it wasn’t the economics of slavery that motivated the south’s insistence on maintaining what was known as the “peculiar institution”. Only 3.2% of white southern families owned slaves. Clearly, then, the maintenance of slavery as an economic institution carried no value for almost all white southerners. With economic reasons absent, why were white southerners willing to fight a war over slavery? The southern way of life: white supremacy. As part of southern culture, these people were not ready to forfeit their social dominance, relative to the Black community.

These conditions remain in place. As many white people (Republicans) confront the fear that by 2044 they’ll no longer be in the ethnic majority, they feel the need to take drastic measures to maintain white supremacy. It’s all they’ve ever known. It happened in the 1860s; what’s to prevent it from happening now?

Look for the next civil war to take place after the 2024 election cycle, when the next wave of violence is likely to emerge. Similar to the original civil war, there’s too much at stake for both sides. Then, as now, the threats are existential. In the 19th century, Democrats viewed the newly established Republican party as a threat to their way of life. Republicans, for their part, saw southern intransigence on the issue of slavery as a threat to the union.

A supporter’s T-shirt at a Donald Trump rally in Delaware, Ohio, in April. Photograph: Megan Jelinger/AFP/Getty Images

Today, Republicans, driven by the existential threat of losing “their” (white) country, will continue their attack on democracy as a means towards preserving America for “real” Americans. Democrats, on the other hand, see the “Magafication” of the GOP as an existential threat to liberal democracy.

Election-related violence generally takes place when the following four factors are present: a highly competitive election that can shift power; partisan division based on identity; winner-takes-all two-party election systems in which political identities are polarised; and an unwillingness to punish violence on the part of the dominant group. All four are present in America now, and will be more amplified in 2024.

We’re almost there. White angst over increasing racial diversity makes another Trump candidacy (and presidency) likely, pushing us into anocracy. Democrats are having none of that. They’ll resist going down the slippery slope to autocracy the same way that their 19th-century counterparts, the party of Lincoln, refused to let the Confederacy bust up the union. Likewise, should Democrats prevail in 2024, Republicans will revolt – the 6 January Capitol attack is a forewarning.

Either way, I’ll wager that a civil war featuring terrorism, guerrilla war and ethnic cleansing will be waged from sea to shining sea. In the end, race and racism will lead to another very American conflagration.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/nov/06/how-close-is-the-us-to-civil-war-barbara-f-walter-stephen-march-christopher-parker