Four weeks of chanting and shouting on the streets were not expressions of anger about politics — but the sound of joy and excitement about the European Championship soccer tournament.
Civil War, the new A24 film from British director Alex Garland, imagines a scenario that might not seem so far-fetched to some; a contemporary civil war breaking out in the United States.
And while the film has taken heat for little mention of politics, the question of an actual civil war has everything to do with it.
Amy Cooter is a director of research at the Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies. Her work has led her to the question that Garland's movie has put in the minds of both moviegoers and political pundits: Could a second civil war really happen here?
Cooter joins host Andrew Limbong to discuss the actual threat of current political movements in the U.S., outside of the movie theaters.
For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This, sign up for Consider This+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org.
The similarities are deep: In addition to aiming to subvert an election, some of the same U.S. voices that amplify former President Donald Trump are echoing Brazil's former president, Jair Bolsonaro.
Trials began this week in Idaho for 31 members of a far-right group accused of conspiring to riot at an LGBTQ event. But calls are growing for federal involvement to bring greater accountability.
Far-right extremists escalated their violent rhetoric after an FBI search of former President Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate. An attempted breach of an Ohio FBI office has those tracking extremism worried.
One year ago Donald Trump infamously said of the far-right Proud Boys, "stand back and stand by." Some members are now in jail, but the once-fringe group hasn't gone away.
Leading members of the far-right gang known as the Proud Boys are facing federal conspiracy charges in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Ahead of the riot, members of the group called for "war."
"The far-right remains highly mobilized and extremely dangerous," with threat numbers as high as in the years before the Oklahoma City bombing, according to an expert at Southern Poverty Law Center.
A slew of arrests in the alleged plot to kidnap the governor of Michigan sends a message to other armed groups agitating for political violence: You are being watched.
