Here is the United States Army, defining low intensity civil war, in their field manual on the subject, U.S. Army Field Manual 100-20: Military Operations in Low Intensity Conflict:
Low intensity conflict is a political-military confrontation between contending … groups below conventional war and above the routine, peaceful competition among states. It frequently involves protracted struggles of competing principles and ideologies. Low intensity conflict ranges from subversion to the use of armed force. It is waged by a combination of means, employing political, economic, informational, and military instruments. Low intensity conflicts are often localized, generally in the Third World, but contain regional and global security implications.
This description of low intensity civil war matches the current situation in the United States, to a tee.
In a low intensity civil war, the anti-government side makes sporadic violent attacks against the government.
Are anti-government forces going to be attacking government forces like the FBI?
Of course they are.
A group of Trump supporters in Michigan hatched a plot to kidnap the governor. Trump had repeatedly attacked her. Trump had incited the plot.
Trump supporters have made threats of violence against other governors. Against vice presidents. Against presidents.
Trump supporters have made threats against senators, and against house members. Against judges. Against attorney generals. Against mayors.
Against local election officials.
Supporters of Donald Trump have made specific threats of violence against school board members, flight attendants, and librarians.
This is all effective intimidation.
I assure you they won’t be facing me, or my wife, or our kids, or our friends, in the street. Hell no! We will be home, watching it on TV, like I expect most people with a brain will be doing
This is how low intensity civil war works. Most of us can go about our daily lives without fear. We hear about the war from the TV, and from the newspapers, and from social media.
There are librarians, though, who cannot go to their jobs without some fear. They cannot leave their homes, and they cannot stay in them, without awareness of the violent threats made against them, and made against their family.
There are flight attendants, school board members, local election officials, and office workers at the National Archives and Records Administration, who are in the same situation.
Some Trump supporters continually talk war. They continually talk civil war.
Here is Rachel Kleinfeld on how rhetoric about war works:
If political aggression is set in the context of a war, she suggested, ordinary people with no prior history of violence are more likely to accept it. Political violence can also be made more palatable by couching it as defensive action against a belligerent enemy.
Donald Trump works every day, to incite and ramp up the civil war. He couches his incitement to violence as defensive action against an enemy.
Today, on Truth Social, Donald Trump told his followers that Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and Nancy Pelosi are their enemies.
He does not mean this as bluster.
He wants to incite someone to kill them.
I do not know why I should have to belabour all this.
Except that there is a very well-liked blog post on the rec list now, saying that the threat from supporters of Donald Trump is ha ha, and LOL.
It is not.