‘Burning cities to the ground’: US election scenario that will end in chaos

As the results of the US election slowly trickle in, Americans are bracing for chaos amid fears the vote will end in brutal violence.

The stage has been set.

Today, the United States is engaged in “Liberation Day”. Or “a day of choice”.

It depends on who you listen to the most.

Presidential hopeful Donald Trump says it is the day the United States rises against “the enemy within”.

“We’re running against something far bigger than Joe [Biden] or Kamala and far more powerful than them, which is a massive, vicious, crooked, radical-left machine that runs today’s Democrat Party. They’re just vessels,” he said.

Fellow presidential hopeful Kamala Harris was equally grim and resolute.

“This election is more than just a choice between two parties and two different candidates. It is a choice about whether we have a country rooted in freedom for every American or ruled by chaos and division,” she said.

But, ultimately, what happened on election day is just the precursor of what is likely to be three months of political, legal and public confrontation.

A New York Times poll conducted last week found 76 per cent of US voters believe their democracy is “under threat”. And some 60 per cent blame that on a growing gap between the haves and have-nots.

Is the cause economic? Social? Political?

It depends on who you listen to.

As the nation went to the polls, Mr Trump insisted he would “launch the largest deportation program in American history” against an “army of migrant gangs who are waging a campaign of violence and terror against our citizens”.

“For the past nine years, we have been fighting against the most sinister and corrupt forces on Earth. With your vote in this election, you can show them once and for all that this nation does not belong to them. This nation belongs to you. It belongs to you,” Mr Trump added.

Ms Harris has expressed a similar determination to “fight”.

January 6, 2021 was a national day of shame. Picture: Roberto Schmidt/AFP

“Our democracy is only as strong as our willingness to fight for it – and we stand prepared to do just that,” she insisted in a June social media post.

Will fighting words turn to action?

“The main concern right now is the potential of civil unrest because of the election,” Oath Keeper militia commander Jim Arroyo told Wired at the weekend.

“Whoever wins, one side’s going to be p*ssed off, and the other side, the radical-left side, is going to be more p*ssed, and they’re more known for burning cities to the ground when they don’t get their way. The right-wing conservative party in this country is not known for doing any of that type of thing.”

The Oath Keeper militia played a central role in the January 6, 2021 insurrection attempt at Capitol Hill. Dozens, including founder Stewart Rhodes, were arrested.

Is the scene set for more of the same?

The day of violence in the heart of Washington, DC has been seared into the national memory.

The staunch political rhetoric of the 2024 campaign has closely tracked the incitement that led up to that national day of shame.

Supporters of US President Donald Trump, including member of the QAnon conspiracy group, entered the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. Picture: Saul Loeb/AFP

“Many Americans are afraid of what the aftermath of the 2024 US presidential election could bring,” say Professor of Political Science Enna Bednar and former Justice of the California Supreme Court Mariano-Florentino Cuellar in an essay in the journal Foreign Affairs.

“Alongside familiar concerns about their country’s priorities, reflected in the candidates’ differing policy prescriptions, they worry that one of the candidates may refuse to accept the results as legitimate.”

Democracies count votes to determine a new leader.

That process must be transparent enough to be trusted.

“Heightening these concerns is the likelihood that the election will be decided by a comparatively tiny number of votes in a few swing states – raising the possibility that state-level challenges could throw the integrity of the election into doubt,” the essay argues.

It already is.

Some 50 million Americans say they believe the 2020 presidential election that saw Joe Biden beat Mr Trump was “stolen”. About 30 million believe a secret cabal of “Satan-worshipping pedophiles” is behind the current Democrat Government.

“Given the uptake of these sorts of conspiracy theories, is it any wonder that political violence is supported by determined minorities on both the right and the left – and at disturbingly high and stable levels?” asks Foreign Policy deputy editor Amelia Lester.

A nation holds its breath

US authorities have reported an upsurge in social media disinformation as the presidential campaign vote count grinds through millions of ballot papers. And that follows false bomb threats, reportedly out of Russia.

Intelligence agencies warn that things will get even more intense as January 6, 2025 gets closer.

That’s when Congress officially counts – and validates – the electoral college votes submitted by each of the 50 United States.

The head of the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, Jen Easterly, issued a memo noting that there had been “low-level” attempts to disrupt the voting process. But there was “no evidence of activity that has the potential to materially impact the outcome of the presidential election”.

Millions of Americans believe the last elections was ‘stolen’. Picture: Brendan Smialowski/AFP

Instead, Easterly warned that deliberate disinformation levels were “at a greater level than ever before”.

In particular, the next few months would see “foreign actors” attempting to “foment or contribute to violent protests”.

It adds that the point of vulnerability being targeted the most were electoral officials in crucial swing states.

Just as they were in 2020-21.

“These state and local officials are democracy’s backbone,” write Bednar and Cuellar.

“Even so, in light of preparations that have already been made in some quarters to challenge the outcome of the current election, it is fair to ask whether these officials would be enough to withstand a more concerted anti-democratic attack.”

It’s supposed to be a feature – not a bug – of the US Constitution to empower a state to prevent the autocratic takeover of the federal government by having separate and diverse Electoral College voting procedures.

But obscure interpretations of the Constitution are turning that power against itself.

“Because of the decentralised electoral system, an individual state does have the power to delay or subvert the process of appointing electors – perhaps by alleging voting irregularities – even in the event of a clear popular-vote victory for a certain candidate in that state,” the Foreign Affairs essay notes.

Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris. Picture: AP Photo/Matt Rourke

“It is possible that committed partisans in a given state could find a way to frustrate the appointment of duly elected slates of electors from that state.

“In the event that such a reckless effort were poised to reverse the outcome of the presidential race, the resulting crisis could spur the remaining states to take extraordinary measures to protect the democratic order.”

Flashpoint

Two assassination attempts on Mr Trump have earned international attention.

But other events, including an October attack on a Democrat campaign office in Arizona, have largely gone unnoticed.

In that instance, the accused assailant was found to have a grenade launcher, body armour, 120 guns and 250,000 rounds of ammunition at the ready.

It’s just one example of a surge in partisan-political motivated terrorism, says Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) analyst Riley McCabe.

As a result, electoral count buildings across the United States have been fortified.

“There is a serious risk that extreme polarisation and the spread of conspiracy theories about election integrity will motivate political extremists to take violent action,” McCabe warns.

“The record is damning. From January 2016 to April 2024, there were a total of 21 domestic terrorist attacks and plots against government targets motivated by partisan political beliefs, compared to a total of just two such incidents in the more than two preceding decades,” McCabe writes for the Lawfare publication.

A CSIS study found 49 per cent of all plots and attacks reported during 2021 were initiated by anti-government militias, white supremacists and far-right extremists. Some 40 per cent were by anarchists, anti-fascists and far-left extremists.

And official US data reveals it to be a growing trend. The FBI says incidents of domestic terrorism increased by 357 per cent between 2013 and 2021.

“Large fractions of Americans see the nation’s politics as broken and are deeply distrustful of the value of elections to solve problems,” says University of Chicago political scientist Professor Robert Pape.

“They see the leading political candidates for the presidency as dangers to democracy and believe political conspiracy theories about the malicious and corrupt behaviour of the federal government.

“In other words, support for political violence is now squarely in the mainstream of Americans’ thinking and a normalised tool to achieve political goals when peaceful means fail.”

Jamie Seidel is a freelance writer | @JamieSeidel