andsoitis
3 months ago
The London School of Economics is taking the risk of civil war seriously, with many observers and experts having expressed concern. https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/taking-warnings-of...
”Elon Musk’s comment about the inevitability of civil war in Britain might have been flippant. But similar concerns have been raised by journalists and academics within established democracies that over the possibility of civil conflict escalating to civil war”
graemep
3 months ago
If you parse that sentence a bit more carefully, and read the article at a whole it is arguing that other democracies, and the US in particular, have a conflict that could credibly escalate to a civil war.
It is an article by an individual academic not "The LSE" - the disclaimer at the top says "All articles posted on this blog give the views of the author(s), and not the position of LSE British Politics and Policy, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science."
It is not even clear whether the author is endorsing his views, or merely reporting those of former diplomat Barbara Woodword who has written a book on civil wars.
tim333
3 months ago
As a Brit I'm pretty confused as to how we should split into two teams in order to fight each other and what we are supposed to be fighting about. Perhaps Musk could give us better instructions at to what this war is supposed to be over and which side I'm on?
His views on the UK all seem oddly out of touch and I get the impression a lot of info comes from people on X/twitter who don't live in the UK.
graemep
3 months ago
> His views on the UK all seem oddly out of touch and I get the impression a lot of info comes from people on X/twitter who don't live in the UK.
Yes, he does, he gets his view of the UK from Americans who share his political leanings and engagement bait on social media.
That said British politicians are right here in the country and can be very out of touch too. If we ever have political violence that will be the underlying cause, whatever form it takes.
The most consistent trend in British politics has been people moving away from the long established big three (Conservatives, Labour, Libdems) to anyone who is not them (Scottish and Welsh Nationalists, Reform, Greens..).
tim333
3 months ago
Yeah, they could do better. I've been a bit disappointed with their performance over the last couple of decades.
tastyface
3 months ago
The subtext is obvious: white vs. nonwhite. Musk, DHH, Tommy Robinson and all their deranged ilk are itching for a race war.
tim333
3 months ago
It's a bit integrated here though. I mean our last prime minister was non white and London is a huge mix.
You can make arguments for restricting immigration and getting rid of illegals but that happens in all countries and is business as usual really, not war.
graemep
3 months ago
I think something that Americans, and some British people (usually racists or people who are performatively anti-racist) miss is that the vast majority of us (ethnic minority British people) are well integrated. its easy to focus on the people who are not integrated and take them as the norm.
We do not have the history that people such as black Americans do. Our ancestors came here voluntarily, never faced lynch mobs or segregation or bans on marrying someone of a different race.
It shows in a lot of things. For example, we usually speak the same dialect of English as people from the same background and region - it might be PR or Brummie, but there is nothing that corresponds to Africa American vernacular (some communities do speak an ancestral dialect, of course, but that is different tends to die out over a few generations). As you pointed out ,someone's race is less important in politics (having a non-white PM was nothing like as revolutionary here as having a non-white president in the US).
tim333
3 months ago
Yeah, I was thinking the one time in my life time we did have something like a civil war was the troubles in Northern Ireland and that was the aftermath of the British occupation of Ireland under Henry VIII and then the Irish War of Independence (1919-1921). These historical things rumble on.
graemep
3 months ago
They are not getting very far in the UK. The only thing that keeps them going is illegal immigration, and small boats in particular. IMO this suits the uniparty fine as it distracts attention from all their other failures.
The most successful of those figures (at least in the UK) has been Tommy Robinson with the EDL, but the EDL is a highly unstable coalition of people who hate each other (neo-Nazis, gays, Jews, some ethnic minorities/immigrant groups)
On the whole, the long term trend in the UK has been away from racism. Both my experience as a visible ethnic minority person who has lived in multiple places (London, Manchester, Midlands, Cheshire) over the years, and the data from surveys and studies confirm this.
tim333
3 months ago
I don't really follow Robinson but some of his complaints seem fairly legit - small boats, Rotherham and the like. I haven't heard them call for war.
mrtksn
3 months ago
You don't need to split into two equal sides to have a civil war. You can start having terrorist organizations that are able to obtain weapons with help from these billionaires to do acts that serve their agenda. They can fly people to private military companies for warfare training. Not necessarily everyone will be fighting everyone, you can end up having an organization doing very bad things and some of the population that has grievances(real or induced through information shaping) supporting it. At first the non-supporting side will demand to suspend some liberties to fix the security issues which very easily(the every bit of controversy or imperfection will do that) can deepen the divide and increase the support for the other side. The tenser it gets the more extreme politicians will raise and a feedback loop will be formed that will tear down the country.
For now they are just shaping the information landscape to convince people that certain very bad things are happening and that they need to take action but let's say they start providing the material and the training, who's going to stop them? They happen to be close allies of a much larger country's administration that built a reputation for disdain towards the rule of law. If a Billionaire finances the shipping a few thousand rifles and explosive to UK in drug induced rage night, will the UK politicians and law enforcement or the intelligence services be able to do anything about that?
So IMHO the premise isn't implausible at all. These things happen all over the world, all those civil war torn countries are fighting with real military grade weapons being shipped to them from Europe, Russia and USA. At this very time CIA is apparently trying to orchestrate something like that in Venezuela, it's not even secret, Trump recently authorized covert CIA operation in Venezuela and Trump's claim that Venezuela is doin something similar in USA isn't implausible either: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/15/us/politics/trump-covert-...
Once you have enough distrust in the society, others can do a lot of things to that society.
graemep
3 months ago
> You can start having terrorist organizations that are able to obtain weapons with help from these billionaires to do acts that serve their agenda.
I lived in Sri Lanka during part of its civil war. It started as a terrorism, The backing came not billionaires but ordinary people: rising ethnic tensions caused by terrorism increased the support the separatists had, and an overseas diaspora able to fund them was hugely expanded by people fleeing the civil war - and became more willing to do so in reaction to race riots and the like.
> If a Billionaire finances the shipping a few thousand rifles and explosive to UK in drug induced rage night, will the UK politicians and law enforcement or the intelligence services be able to do anything about that?
I think they would. its a crime, and its very hard to maintain secrecy at the scale needed to distribute large numbers of weapons.
The IRA had thousands of rifles and stocks of ammunition. Islamic terrorists have billionaire backers. Neither has been able to scale up beyond bombings and similar small scale attacks in mainland Britain. The IRA were able to in Northern Ireland, but that was with a large proportion of the population backing their cause (though not necessarily their use of violence).
tim333
3 months ago
>If a Billionaire finances the shipping a few thousand rifles and explosive to UK ... will the UK politicians and law enforcement or the intelligence services be able to do anything about that?
They would certainly have a go. I wouldn't recommend to Musk or similar to try that one.
mamonster
3 months ago
>On April 21 2021, in a letter also signed by a group of retired officers, a former officer in France’s Ground Force, Jean-Pierre Fabre-Bernadac, made a stark warning. Published in the magazine Valuers Actuelles it denounced the growing chaos of French life, and warned of ‘racial’ and ‘civil’ war if nothing is done to prevent it,.
Ah yes, 21st of April, date of the failed Algiers putsch against De Gaulle.
mytailorisrich
3 months ago
And interestingly, in France this is all a continuation of that period...
SideburnsOfDoom
3 months ago
> Elon Musk’s comment about the inevitability of civil war in Britain might have been flippant.
It is IMHO a mistake to view Elon Musk’s comment as merely "flippant". We should take the risk from "Elon Musk’s comments stoking civil war", and his personal platform to amplify radicalism and propagandise hatred, very seriously.
Even if the civil war that he fantasises about is currently a nonsense.
mytailorisrich
3 months ago
Sometimes what people predict is referred to as "nonsense" because they manage to infer things based on trends over a longer term than others who can only see what's right in front of them.
In this case, Musk (and many others) only extrapolate the trends at play for 50+ years to their logical conclusion, and actually I'd say that denying this it's becoming more and more a case of ostrich syndrome.
beardyw
3 months ago
> Sometimes what people predict is referred to as "nonsense" because they manage to infer things based on trends over a longer term than others
Or it's just wishful thinking. Musk's comments generally suggest he has no idea about the UK.
graemep
3 months ago
> Or it's just wishful thinking. Musk's comments generally suggest he has no idea about the UK.
Like a lot of Americans (and, unfortunately, quite a lot of British people) he assumes the UK is far more similar to the US than it really is.
alimw
3 months ago
What do you think Musk is trying to do here? His purpose is not coolly to assess the probability of a certain outcome (nobody asked him to do that!) but rather to make that outcome more probable.
cosmicgadget
3 months ago
Imho it is more likely that he is using it to consolidate a voting bloc. Much like how all the partisan propaganda in the US of civil war convinced right wingers to rally around Trump and left wingers to not take it seriously. If you think that they will try to overthrow your way of life, you'll simultaneously announce you are prepared to defend yourself and - more importantly - you'll vote for whatever resembles your way of life.
Elon doesn't profit from chaos, he is just using psychological manipulation to empower his allies.
alimw
3 months ago
In the UK at least, talk of civil war by right-wingers is intended not to put fear into their friends but to excite them. As they envisage, it's they who will be starting it.
Yes that will act to consolidate a voting bloc for Musk's allies. If it were additionally to cause chaos that would be a bonus. Right-wingers in the US love nothing more than to point to a situation in a foreign country as a warning of the perils of leftism. Usually they just make shit up but of course it's better not to have to.
tastyface
3 months ago
If they're so terrified of being "replaced," maybe white supremacists should try having more kids instead of inciting race wars.
SideburnsOfDoom
3 months ago
I'm not saying you're always wrong in the abstract "sometimes" that you pose. But I stand what I said about Mr Musk specifically in this case.
mytailorisrich
3 months ago
Well, you also qualify your "nonsense" claim by "currently". This is the point, IMHO. No-one claims that civil war is imminent but it does look inevitable if the trends at play keep their trajectories.
SideburnsOfDoom
3 months ago
> but it does look inevitable if the trends at play keep their trajectories.
I think this too is utter nonsense. Too much of the twitter brainrot.
But it does highlight the dangers that this poses, that people can easily fall into it as you have done. So, Mr Musk's incitement is a danger to you and others. Even if the "civil war" remains someone's fantasy.
mytailorisrich
3 months ago
[flagged]
SideburnsOfDoom
3 months ago
> cannot simply be dismissed as "utter nonsense" and "twitter brainrot".
I refer you to my earlier statement where I did just that.
> .... non-European immigration ... the rise of Islam ... you need to ask how this ends.
yep, standard-issue brainrot.
edit in case it's not clear, the burden of proof is on the person making the unsubstantiated lurid claims about "civil war".
mytailorisrich
3 months ago
HN is supposed to foster discussion and curiosity. I presented arguments to attempt to show that what Musk wrote is a least a plausible scenario (and the LSE link shows that this is taken seriously), whatever will actually happen (so "inevitable" is probably the interesting aspect to debate), whatever I think of Musk, and whatever I think of those issues in general. You keep being dangerously close to simply trolling...
SideburnsOfDoom
3 months ago
> I presented arguments to attempt to show
You were presenting talking points from the racist "great replacement" conspiracy theory and hoping that no-one notices. They did and it was flagged out. This is not coherent argument, it is inflammatory rhetoric.
> the rise of Islam ... riots caused by this instability.
Oh, the Muslims were rioting were they? Is that what you're saying?
Funny that you don't blame the riots on the people who were actually rioting. You make it sounds like it's inevitable and they had no choice. I reject that. You are using convoluted phrasing to obscure what is what.
> Musk made his comment during
Musk was not "making comment during", he was inciting further violence.
> You keep being dangerously close to simply trolling...
This is all very disingenuous, and so you do not deserve serious response. I am not obligated to debate civilly with extremists.
mytailorisrich
3 months ago
[flagged]
graemep
3 months ago
> n this case, Musk (and many others) only extrapolate the trends at play for 50+ years to their logical conclusion
What 50+ year trends? Less racism?