October 21, 2025
By:
Mathew Burrows
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Economic and demographic trends in the United States mirror those of other pre-revolutionary societies in the past.
The Red Cell series is published in collaboration with the Stimson Center. Drawing upon the legacy of the CIA’s Red Cell—established following the September 11 attacks to avoid similar analytic failures in the future—the project works to challenge assumptions, misperceptions, and groupthink with a view to encouraging alternative approaches to America’s foreign and national security policy challenges. For more information about the Stimson Center’s Red Cell Project, see here.
Red Cell
Charlie Kirk’s killing last month has sparked fears that the United States is headed to an all-out second civil war or revolution. According to a
YouGov survey earlier this year, “more Americans than not believe it is likely that the United States will see a civil war over the next decade,” while
several hundred political scientists and historians in an April 2025 survey saw the United States slipping into authoritarianism with Trump’s second term. Trump’s deployment of military and National Guard forces at home, combined with his vow to suppress “the enemy within” while his domestic advisor,
Stephen Miller, labels the Democratic Party a “domestic extremist organization,” can easily be seen as setting the stage for an authoritarian takeover. Revolutions don’t come out of nowhere. Yet, the how and the when often come as surprises.
Political Violence Exploding
Even before the Kirk killing, the number of assassinations was climbing, according to the academic Peter Turchin’s US Political Violence Database (USPVDB). The five years from 2020 to 2024 saw seven assassinations, higher than the previous peak during the 1960s, although only half as large as that of the late 1860s.
Violent threats against lawmakers hit
a record high last year. Since the 2020 election, state and local election officials have become targets of violent threats and harassment,
as have federal judges, prosecutors, and other court officials. As of April, there have been more than 170 incidents of threats and harassment targeting local officials across nearly 40 states this year,
according to data gathered for the Bridging Divides Initiative at Princeton University.
The
Capitol Police investigated over 9,000 threats against members of Congress in 2024, a sharp rise from previous years. The
Department of Homeland Security reported a rise in threats and harassment aimed at election workers during the 2024 election cycle. As fears of a political violence contagion grow, House leaders announced after the Kirk killing that
Congressional members will get “$10,000 per month to cover personal security costs,” doubling the $5,000 currently available. The
White House has also recently asked for “an additional $58 million in security funding for the executive and judicial branches.”
Right-Wing Violence More Prevalent
Both
government and
academic research have shown that the
majority of extremist violence since 1994 has been linked to right-wing extremists. The
Anti-Defamation League’s Center for Extremism indicated in its 2024 report that “All the extremist-related murders in 2024 were committed by right-wing extremists of various kinds.” In recent years, there has been a drop-off in Islamist-fueled violence domestically.
Yet, according to
CSIS’s Warfare, Irregular Threats, and Terrorism Program, the first half of 2025 “was marked by an increase in left-wing terrorist attacks and plots.” Although less deadly historically than right-wing violence, recent left-wing killings—
Luigi Mangione’s assassination of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York City in December 2024, the fatal shooting of right-wing protester
Aaron Danielson in Portland, Oregon, in August 2020, and possibly the
Kirk murder—could signal a growing, broad-based conflict. By contrast, many left-wing extremist attacks in the 1990s and 2000s were tied to
anarchist or environmental movements.
Most of the attackers, left-wing or right-wing, have acted as “lone wolves.” The United States is not the only country experiencing a rise in such attacks. According to the
Institute for Economics and Peace, “In the West, terrorist incidents dropped significantly since their peak in 2017. However, the number of attacks has increased by 20 to 52 in 2024 when compared to the prior year. Attacks in the West peaked in 2017 with 176 attacks recorded.”
These “lone wolves” self-radicalize via online engagement rather than joining a group. According to
Rachel Kleinfeld at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, “White-supremacist ideas, militia fashion, and conspiracy theories spread via gaming websites, YouTube channels, and blogs, while a slippery language of memes, slang, and jokes blurs the line between posturing and provoking violence, normalizing radical ideologies and activities.” A
University of Chicago analysis of participants in the 2021 insurrection at the US Capitol found that these insurrectionists tended to be older than 1960s extremists and often held jobs and self-identified as Christians.
What’s also concerning about recent violence is its growing societal acceptance.
Luigi Mangione, charged with the murder of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, “has become a left populist folk hero,” according to Georgetown University’s
Bruce Hoffman. Now, “
Luigi: The Musical” is selling out, and terrorist organization flags fly at demonstrations and protests.
Trump has “encouraged attendees at his rallies to ‘knock the hell’ out of protesters, praised a lawmaker
who body-slammed a reporter, and defended and pardoned the rioters of January 6, 2021, who clamored to ‘
hang Mike Pence.’”
It’s little wonder an
American Psychological Association survey found that the 2024 election was a significant source of stress in Americans’ lives. More than 7 in 10 adults (72 percent) were worried the election results could lead to violence.
Losing Out
Kleinfeld believes the right-wing extremists are united by a belief that, as Christian white males, they are losing their “cultural power and status” to other groups, including women, ethnic minorities, and Black communities. There is strong evidence to reinforce their views. The
2020 census showed the United States was diversifying faster than anticipated. In 1980, white residents constituted almost 80 percent of the national population, with Black residents accounting for 11.5 percent, Latino or Hispanic residents at 6.5 percent, and Asian Americans at 1.8 percent.
By 2019, the decline of the white share had accelerated, losing almost 20 percentage points from 20 years earlier. By contrast, the shares of the Latino or Hispanic and Asian American populations grew to 18.5 percent and nearly 6 percent, respectively, while the Black share remained stable. Most significantly, for the under-16-year-olds, over 50 percent identified as a racial or ethnic minority.
On top of the actual changes that are shifting America from a majority white country to a majority minority one, there is a tendency to overestimate the percentage of the population that is Black or from an ethnic minority group. A nationwide
2022 YouGov America survey recorded that adult respondents believed that 41 percent of Americans are Black, when the figure is close to 12 percent. The findings from a
2016 academic psychology study of public attitudes in Western countries found that “the increasing diversity of the nation may actually yield more intergroup hostility.”
Fear of economic loss is also part of that hostility, and once again, those fears are not unfounded. Inequality has been growing in the United States at a faster rate than in other countries. There remains a
huge wealth gap between whites and racial and ethnic minorities (except Asians) despite some gains by minorities.
Harvard’s Raj Chetty has shown that children born in lower-income white families not only fell behind higher-income white peers but also their Black peers. Fewer were married, fewer had graduated from college, more have been incarcerated, and many face
lower life expectancy than those who are wealthy and better educated.
Disadvantaged whites often see the world in zero-sum terms, blaming the success of other communities for their misfortune. According to a
University of Chicago study of the 2021 Capitol insurrectionists, “Believing that Blacks and Hispanics are overtaking whites increases odds of being in the insurrectionist movement three-fold.” This is one reason for the
popularity of Trump’s crusade against DEI (diversity, equality, and inclusion) among his base.
Cyclical Factors
Quantitative historians have examined the correlation between such factors as demography and inequality with societal breakdown.
Peter Turchin, perhaps the best-known, places great emphasis on what he calls elite overproduction in the disintegration of advanced societies. As more and more people strive to improve their station, they find fewer openings at the top. Aristocratic privilege in
ancien regime France prevented the rise of the bourgeoisie, while the gentry’s impoverishment in pre-revolutionary Russia radicalized figures like Vladimir Lenin.
In today’s United States, those same class divisions seem to be at work.
A recent academic study has shown that “Children from families in the top 1 percent are more than twice as likely to be admitted and attend” an Ivy League university as those from middle-class families with comparable SAT/ACT scores. “Average wealth of the top 0.0001 per cent of the global population grew on average 7.1 per cent a year between 1987 and 2024, compared to 3.2 per cent for the average adult,”
according to French researcher Gabriel Zucman.
Zucman also found that the top 400 wealthiest Americans had a total effective tax rate of 23.8 percent on their income, similar to the rate paid by the middle class.
Middle-class children born in 1984 have struggled to attain better life outcomes than their parents, and only 50 percent succeed, compared to 90 percent born in 1940.
America has been here before. During the Gilded Age (1876–1900), the great industrialists or “robber barons” flaunted their wealth gained from monopolizing recent technological breakthroughs—railways, steel, and oil—widening the gap with the ordinary middle class and the poor. Like today, the two major parties were evenly divided, making it impossible to pass reforms. Immigration was at its height, as well as
violence and
discrimination against newcomers.
A populist party emerged among farmers and workers. Political violence also grew; one historian,
Beverly Gage, has written that, “Left-wing radical and revolutionary groups—anarchists, syndicalists, Wobblies, militant trade unionists—erupted with remarkable frequency.” This turmoil culminated in the assassination of President William McKinley by self-proclaimed anarchist Leon Czolgosz.
Why didn’t this eruption of violence result in a widespread revolution? Most historians credit the Progressive Era and its numerous reforms with halting the drift toward revolution. Theodore Roosevelt, who assumed the presidency after McKinley, made reform a centerpiece of his administration. The Progressive Era witnessed improved labor conditions and workers’ rights, increased regulation of big business, the enactment of consumer protection laws, and the conservation of natural resources. By 1920, American women had gained the right to vote.
No Clear Pattern to How Revolutions Start
The self-immolation of a fruit seller in Tunisia was the spark that started the
Arab Spring uprisings, overthrowing the Ben Ali and Mubarak regimes in Tunisia and Egypt. However, in the decade since, the Middle East still appears far from democracy. Revolutions don’t require mass rebellions.
Germany and
Italy slipped into fascism and dictatorship through electoral manipulation and political intimidation. The collapse of the Soviet Union was largely peaceful, triggered by a stagnant economy, the failure of Gorbachev’s reforms, and disunity among the Soviet republics.
Coups are the likeliest way for violent revolutions to start. Examples include the Bolshevik seizure of power in October 1917 and Franco’s war against Spain’s Second Republic in 1936. A contested election is sometimes the prelude, as happened in
Myanmar when the military seized power after its side lost the 2020 election. Whether
a coup succeeds or fails depends on the “presence of popular nonviolent mobilization.” According to
the IMF, there has been a secular decline in coups. Still, many of the
underlying factors that contribute to coups exist in the United States, such as political polarization and growing class divisions.
Is a Second American Revolution So Hard to Imagine?
According to
the Pew Research Center, “Trust in our nation’s institutions has never been lower.” Only 22 percent of US adults said they trust the federal government to do the right thing most of the time, down from 77 percent six decades ago. It’s not just the federal government;
Gallup reports that only 36 percent of people have trust in churches and organized religions, down from 65 percent in 1973. Over roughly the same time,
trust in the medical system has fallen from 80 percent to 36 percent.” Trump’s MAGA base sees him as a savior rescuing America from its dysfunction and decline, and even some of Trump’s
opponents are entranced by his energy in defying the usual political sluggishness. Revolutions start when the old order becomes part of the problem.
Trump’s unprecedented deployment of the military to counter crime in US cities is a move that risks undermining the military’s position a politically neutral actor. At the recent military offsite,
Trump told the military chiefs that they should be prepared to battle “
the enemy within,” an ominous phrase with a
fraught history. Moreover, Trump’s pardoning of the protesters who invaded the Capitol sends a dangerous signal, since it effectively sanctions an attempted coup. Not ignoring the warning signs is the first step toward preventing coups and revolutions.
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