Talk of civil war has been part of the American political landscape for more than a decade. Is it finally on the horizon? Cassie Barnes weighs in.

For more than a decade now, there has been talk of a “second” American civil war. It has become almost too easy to declare that it’s just around the corner, or to declare that whatever most recent act of state terrorism by the Trump Administration is the opening shot of the “second civil war”, or that we’re already in it.

Unsurprisingly, people often mock such dramatic pronouncements by declaring “Nothing Ever Happens” or “Trump Always Chickens Out.” This is usually justified by pointing to the lack of a military force capable of countering the US govt., along with the lack of leaders with the position, popularity and legitimacy to organise such an opposition. This is rounded out by saying that the forces of international capital will take the levers of the US state back into hand (perhaps through a military coup?) before things are allowed to get that far.

But what if these questions of leadership and organisation were premature; and this is all overdetermined? As Marxists, we know well that the way history plays out is infinitely complex and contingent, but always driven by underlying social forces that can’t be denied. If you are outdoors in a thunderstorm, and your hair suddenly stands on end, you don’t need to know the exact path the lightning will take to know what is coming.

The Claim

I claim that the Second American Civil War has not yet begun (March 2026) but it is imminent, and it is now beyond the power of any person or institution to avert. By civil war, I mean the US government will lose its monopoly on the legitimate use of violence within its territory this decade, and that there will be regular, disruptive acts of violence that will become a practical, imminent fact of life for a large fraction of the US population within the next four years.

My reasons are:

1. There are millions of Americans willing and able to kill the enemies of MAGA America, within, without or against the state.

2. There are also millions of Americans willing and able to use violence and risk their own lives to protect themselves and their neighbours, within, without or against the state.

3. Both sides have tens of millions of people who would give support to them (information, shelter, supplies, hiding them from cops, etc.)

4. Any leader or organisation on either of these sides that tries to get their side to compromise will rapidly lose legitimacy and be overtaken by those willing to fight.

5. This means that nothing will resolve this, short of:

a) a campaign of spectacular, overwhelming violence that leaves one side totally routed/demoralised, or

b) an event that completely annihilates and re-forms the fundamental identities that these two groups have formed around (their sense of the “we” is that is at mortal threat from “them”.)

6. No institution capable of contriving such an event exists.

The Irresistible Force and the Immovable Object

Everyone reading this is familiar with the atrocities of ICE under Trump Two. No doubt in the time between me writing this and you reading it, you have witnessed all sorts of horrors infinitely dumber and crueller than I can imagine. This project of cleansing the US of undesirables (non-white immigrants, various other PoC, leftists, queers, people insufficiently mad about Bluey’s dad giving birth, etc.) has found an enthusiastic crew of devotees in the vast ICE intake of 2025.

The construction of paramilitary death-squads out of the cruellest, most resentful ranks of the unemployable is hardly new, and neither is their use in acting as extrajudicial enforcement answerable only to the leader. We can speculate endlessly about what uses Trump (and possible successors) might put them to, but I want to focus on the one thing they can’t be commanded to do: stand down. People tend to assume that if Trump were to fall or be brought to heel they would simply be disbanded or reassigned and that will be that, but this is naive. It would be insane for any post-MAGA government not carrying out this mission to keep such people around; within the government they’d be a heavily armed enemy cell biding their time and totally unsuitable to any other type of work. They must be fired.

A force of people without prospects, money or respect that is trained in violence, organised, armed, and let loose on those they see as their inferiors, will not permit themselves to be returned to their previous status. The more they are hated by their community for enacting that violence, the more they will experience disarmament as an existential threat. As a force assembled out of the unemployable, they are likely to be even less employable after this experience. In a country with more guns than people, if they were to then rapidly become unemployed, what is stopping them from organising themselves under a similar command structure and a means of self funding to continue their arbitrary force onto those they deem criminal? To paraphrase a common saying of the Freikorp and Arditi: “the mission didn’t end, we are the mission.”

ICE members are far from the only ones salivating to purge the undesirables, but they are likely to form a nucleation point for others to get involved, and they provide an example of what this looks like. Various allied groups and informal support networks by sympathisers can be expected to bolster these forces.

The opposition requires far less explanation. The realisation that you or your loved ones are on the list tends to clarify matters. We have seen people organise in the streets against this mission, and increasingly people are turning up armed and with the full understanding that they or others may be murdered.

While it is impossible to say at this stage what character this opposition will have, it seems likely to only stiffen as the violence continues.

Where they Meet

American capitalists have allowed this to get out of hand because they are internally divided among sectional interests and use culture war as the outward manifestation and means of litigating these struggles. They naturally fail to recognise the sincerity of the grievances held by those involved, and how high these stakes might be (or seem) to them. In classic capitalist fashion, they have built golems, and believe they still are in control until they call stop and find their orders ignored.

The path of this spiralling order is unclear, and what this means for the revolutionary proletariat worldwide is anyone’s guess. It is possible that the violence could be relatively short-lived: if the US state aligned itself with one side, was able to effectively purge its agencies of the other and had some lucky breaks, they may be able to enact a reign of terror capable of crushing major opposition quite quickly. All other possibilities imply a much longer period of bloodshed, with an internally divided state acting as the primary force of one side, a silent ally, or a non-aligned third force.

There are both hopeful and concerning signs in the responses from workers so far. Transparently no revolutionary force on the ground is capable of taking a leadership role in defending vulnerable communities at this stage, but such situations can change fast. No doubt different Marxist groups in and out of the US will have a great many differing takes on what needs to be done and what it means for the world as a whole. In any case, we must remember that the historical forces only establish the potentials to be unleashed, it is the choices of individuals and organisations in decisive moments that decide how this energy gets channelled.