The mainstream rhetoric was striking:

One GOP congressman issued literal battlefield commands on Twitter.

Another GOP rep. tweeted, “We have now reached a war phase.”

Former AZ gov candidate Kari Lake invoked the NRA, saying Republicans have a lot of guns and would use them to defend Trump.

The “MAGA Inc. War Room” said in a statement that the DOJ must be “confronted & destroyed.”

Over on Fox News, Mark Levin declared, “This is war!” in response to the indictment.

Right-wing media figure Wayne Allen Root called the indictment a “Declaration of War.”

Stephen Miller said on Fox that Friday “was the day that we ceased to be a democratic republic.”

For the past 2 days, most Fox News hosts & guests have been frenzied as they told their audience that this would be the end of US democracy.

On The Donald, two separate posts called for the assassination of AG Merrick Garland. Both posts featured his picture with a caption saying ‘this is what the 2nd Amendment is for.’

One post called on people to “buy a gun or help organize your local militia.”

The other said “Get ready for war.”

To reiterate: They’re trying to get the US Attorney General assassinated.

Trump, meanwhile, used Truth Social to call on his supporters to show up when he’ll be at the Miami courthouse on Tuesday. He also targeted special counsel Jack Smith repeatedly, posting his picture calling him a “deranged … Trump Hater”, and suggesting he was bribed or pressured into charging him. Trump also reposted (“re-truthed”) conspiratorial content and election disinformation to further incite people.

Oh, and he’s using his indictment to fundraise for his campaign.

As I was analyzing Truth Social, the sponsored ad on Trump’s Truth Social page — placed immediately below a meme declaring “THIS IS NOT A GAME. THIS IS WAR.” — was an ad for a gun. The ad had pictures of hands holding a gun, and flashed through three words:

“Lock. Load. Fire.”

The calls for civil war were striking, and in many ways it really does seem like American right-wingers believe the war has begun. And maybe it has.

If/when civil war happens here — or maybe it’s already happening! — it won’t look like the types of war we have seen. It won’t be two sides fighting continuously in a delineated geographic area. It won’t even have a clear start or end. It’ll be a type of warfare that most Americans haven’t ever experienced — making it hard to recognize.

Civil war in America today would look like many different groups, with shifting alliances, carrying out “isolated” (but connected/coordinated) acts of violence like mass shootings & terrorist attacks targeting people, power stations, supply chains, government buildings, etc. It would combine cyber/infrastructure attacks with violent attacks on the population. There’d be few rules, and little/no distinction between civilians & combatants.

ie, it would be irregular warfare.

Given our unfamiliarity with this unstructured form of war, how will we recognize it if it happens? Perhaps by looking for signs of coordination between cyber & physical attacks; extremist groups merging to form new alliances; shortages of things like medications; large, frequent, or unusually damaging power outages; more frequent mass shootings or violent attacks.

As you might’ve noticed, some of those are already happening. Now.

But this war won’t be declared — that’s the whole point.