A majority of U.S. citizens believe the country is on the path to a second civil war because of the polarizing nature of modern politics, according to a shocking new poll.
The survey from the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, conducted between October 30 and November 6, asked respondents which issues they felt most strongly about, with 57 percent saying they feared a new war between the states.
Other statements those taking part agreed with most emphatically included the suggestion that consumers are sacrificing too much privacy to Big Tech, 89 percent agreement, that American freedom of speech is under threat, 76 percent, that the government is not doing enough to protect minority rights, 73 percent, that democracy itself is under threat, 69 percent, and that race relations in the U.S. are worsening, 60 percent.
Appearing on MS NOW’s Morning Joe on Wednesday, Maya Wiley, president and CEO of the organization behind the poll, said its findings revealed that U.S. voters are “very much afraid about the state of our union” as the first year of President Donald Trump’s second term draws to a close.
While inflation and affordability remain major concerns for the public, fears about the future of democracy are “right up there with them,” Wiley told hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski.
“Voters are not unidimensional. They’re not just one-sided,” she added. “All of these things come together for them.”
Wiley pointed to the Trump administration’s authoritarian crackdown on undocumented migrants, arguing that Americans are watching “people’s rights and freedoms” being violated before their eyes on the nightly news, which is creating a fear that federal agents could ultimately “come for anybody.”
“We are being driven apart, rather than being united and held together,” she said. “I think one of the reasons we’re seeing such fear about being on a path to civil war is because this isn’t supposed to be partisan – the issue of whether or not we as a country have ideals that say we all belong.”
Wiley did point to one positive to come out of the poll: an overwhelming 88 percent of respondents said they believe America’s diversity makes it stronger.
“Permission to extremism, permission to hate, and the attempts to divide are not landing well, and that’s a good thing.”
Another poll earlier this week touched on some of the same anxieties by revealing that a majority of Americans blame “extreme political rhetoric” for the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk in September, rather than pinning responsibility for the atrocity solely on the actions of its disturbed perpetrator.
The idea of the United States collapsing into a new internal conflict was realised on the big screen last year in Alex Garland’s apocalyptic blockbuster Civil War. It was more recently invoked by influential podcaster Joe Rogan.
The host suggested on The Joe Rogan Experience earlier this month that seeing left-leaning social media users reacting to Kirk’s assassination with gallows humor and cruel memes “might be, like, step seven on the way to a bona fide civil war.”
He continued: “Regular people celebrating somebody getting murdered in front of their wife and kid on television in front of the whole world, as soon as you celebrate that, like man, you’re in dark territory.”
Kirk’s death inspired an equally emotional response on the right, with Fox News host Jesse Watters, for one, declaring on air that “they are at war with us,” without defining precisely who he was referring to, and with the gunman’s personal politics far from clear.
Trump and his administration have hardly struck a soothing chord since taking office in January, with the White House reacting to this week’s congressional manoeuvres to secure the release of the Justice Department’s Jeffrey Epstein files by threatening revenge against Democrats and the president routinely bullying and trolling his rivals on social media, notably mocking “No Kings” protesters with an AI video of himself dumping raw sewage on them from a fighter jet.
In the same week that Trump rebuked two female journalists for asking fair questions he took exception to, calling one “Piggy,” the president went on to call for the arrest of six Democratic representatives and senators who appeared in a video urging military officers to reject orders they believe to be illegal.
Writing on Truth Social Thursday, Trump accused senators Elissa Slotkin and Mark Kelly and representatives Jason Crow, Maggie Goodlander, Chris Deluzio, and Chrissy Houlahan of engaging in “seditious behavior at the highest level” and called the sextet – all of whom are military veterans – “traitors to our country” who should be “arrested and put on trial.”
Earlier this week, he hurled the same insult at Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, once a loyal MAGA cheerleader, prompting her to claim she had been targeted with death threats and respond pointedly: “Let me tell you what a traitor is. A traitor is an American that serves foreign countries and themselves.”
