The Chaos We Expect After the 2020 Election

Part #6 of a series on the 2020 U.S. election crisis

In the previous articles, I discussed Trump’s financial interests in maintaining the presidency, the foreign help he’s getting in the election, his attempt to delay or suppress the Biden vote while encouraging his supporters to vote early and often, and how a victor might be declared and what might happen during the transition period. In this article, I look at how the chaos may express itself violently.

This series of articles was first published on October 2 and was updated on October 17.

Chaos

There “is certain to be massive and possibly violent backlash,” Masha Gessen wrote in Surviving Autocracy, published in June 2020.

As one example of violent bluster, a member of “Boaters for Trump” claimed he’d personally be “heading to the White House with the militia” if Trump loses the election. The article did not state whether this particular man had anything resembling actual militia or whether he was just blowing off steam. Some men do, however, participate in militia groups or collect weapons and fancy themselves as vigilantes.

A key example here is that of 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse who drove twenty miles across state lines to the site of a protest, where, just before midnight on Tuesday, August 25, he used an AR-15-style rifle (which, under Wisconsin law, he was too young to be carrying) to kill two protesters and…