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The recent rise of political violence in the United States is sobering but not surprising to the researchers who study this subject. \u201cWe know the factors that put countries at risk of political violence,\u201d says Barbara F. Walter,<\/strong> an expert on violent extremism. \u201cWe also know the factors that put countries at risk of election violence, and the United States has all of them.\u201d<\/p>\n Walter, a professor at the University of California, San Diego and the author of How Civil Wars Start,<\/em> among several other books, told me on this week\u2019s episode of Inside the Hive<\/em> that she is worried about the coming election period\u2014but doesn\u2019t think the threats will abate afterward. \u201cWe\u2019re in for a rocky few months,\u201d Walter says. \u201cWe\u2019re actually, I think, in for a rocky 10 years.\u201d<\/p>\n That\u2019s because the underlying risk factors are so apparent. \u201cThe countries that tend to experience violence around elections are countries that have winner-take-all elections, which the United States has; they have voters and a population who have become deeply divided,<\/p>\n especially by race, religion, and\/or ethnicity; they have weak institutions, or they have a democracy that\u2019s not as strong as it could be and where some of the electorate questions the validity of elections; and they have a candidate that has lost in the past,\u201d Walter explains. \u201cThese are the conditions that social scientists have figured out by looking across countries and over time.\u201d And those conditions all exist in the US today.<\/p>\n Donald Trump,<\/strong> she adds, is \u201csetting up his supporters to believe that if he loses again, it was stolen again. So again, this is the perfect recipe for violence. We will have violence surrounding this election. And really, the key point is, will we be prepared for it?\u201d Thinking ahead and preparing for the possibilities, she says, is \u201cmuch better than keeping our heads in the sand and pretending that everything\u2019s fine.\u201d<\/p>\n Regarding the recent threats to Trump\u2019s life, Walter says that \u201cthe two big drivers of the rise of assassination attempts are guns, and especially the easy access to assault weapons,\u201d and the internet as a source of radicalization. People are \u201cdoomscrolling the internet and they\u2019re on these chat rooms and they\u2019re getting radicalized,\u201d she says. \u201cThey\u2019re starting to believe the conspiracy theories that they\u2019re hearing. And many of these people are not mentally stable to begin with.\u201d<\/p>\n On the topic of civil war, Walter observes that \u201cthere is a cancer growing here in the United States\u201d because a subset of the population doesn\u2019t think democracy serves them anymore. She says the two best predictors of civil war are \u201cwhether a country is a partial democracy,\u201d as opposed to a vibrant democracy or a repressive autocracy, and \u201cwhether its citizens are divided, deeply divided by race, religion, or ethnicity.\u201d<\/p>\n When you have a democracy that\u2019s in decline, that\u2019s when you start to get into trouble, says Walter. She asserts that political science data indicates America has, in recent years, dropped into this \u201cmiddle zone.\u201d \u201cMost violence happens in the middle zone.\u201d The key point is preparedness: \u201cWe need to pay attention. We need to take precautions against it. We need to be prepared.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n