Sam Francis on Prophesying War

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Talk of civil war has been increasing lately, both on the Right and the Left. The topic seems to trend on X every few weeks and Netflix released a movie called Civil War earlier this year. More recently, a debate on Tim Pool’s Culture War podcast between Scott Greer and Rudyard Lynch focused on the subject. Lynch, a well-spoken 23-year-old who has recently begun to appear on various Dissident Right podcasts, claims that there will be “thousands of deaths” related to political violence in the United States by April of 2025. Pool accepted this view though Greer noted that such conflict was unlikely. It should be pointed out that Lynch is hardly the only person who believes civil war is imminent.

John Carter on X: “Worth keeping in mind, in the midst of the euphoria, that shortly after Trump takes power it is entirely possible that a stock market collapse, hyperinflation, WWIII, and Civil War 2 could well all pop off more or less simultaneously.”

Counter-Currents has already published a good analysis by Christian Secor that shows why such talk of civil war is far-fetched. But the whole debate brings back memories from nearly 30 years ago. Back then, almost every publication (hard copy newsletters in those days) of what today might be called the Dissident Right ran ads for a book called Civil War II: The Coming Breakup of America (1996) by Thomas Chittum.

While ignored by the mainstream, the book apparently reached a decent sized audience. Chittum fought in the Vietnam War as an artillery expert and was a mercenary in Rhodesia (for the good guys) so he knew what he was talking about militarily. He argued that shifting racial demographics brought about by mass immigration – as well as a soft ruling elite – would spur a civil war that splits the US along racial lines.

Civil War II was respectfully reviewed by Sam Francis in the June 1998 issue of Chronicles. In this review, Sam pointed out why the US was not about to dissolve into another civil war. His skepticism rested on two main elements. The character of those who were supposed to do the fighting and the response of our rulers if they did try to start such a conflict.

Sam believed that racial loyalties were not yet as solid as Chittum asserted in his book. Ethnic gangs – particularly in Los Angeles – were quite strong at the time, but they had not tried to take over that or any other city. He explained why:

Urban street gangs haven’t made a bid to take over entire cities yet, despite the large funds from drug trafficking and the availability of sophisticated weaponry, precisely because they are criminals, not soldiers or empire-builders, and because they provide a certain sense of community and group bonding to other wise socially crippled adolescents. It’s more likely that the gangs will insist on pushing crack and running girls than attacking military bases…

What about our guys, or what passed for our guys at the time? Sam was not impressed and he displayed his characteristic humor in explaining why:

As for the militias, strange religious cults, white separatists, and similar underground movements, I’ve seen and read nothing about any of them that would convince me they’re a serious danger to anybody. Most of their burned-out members seem to spend more time smoking dope and reading pornography than they do plotting guerrilla warfare. The fact is that, apart from criminals and a few lunatics, Americans in general today are couch cabbages whose closest approach to guerrilla warfare is the weekly argument over who holds the remote during Melrose Place.

But Sam’s main argument for why a second civil war was unlikely is that the regime would simply not allow it. And they wouldn’t even have to use much force to prevent it.

What Mr. Chittum doesn’t entirely grasp is that the ruling class, as I have argued before, rules mainly through manipulation, not through force or intimidation. Ruby Ridge and Waco, which he sees as signs of impending reliance on force, are more likely signs of the incompetence of the ruling class at using force. Ruling classes that do rely on force (like the Nazis or the Communists) would have gobbled Randy Weaver and David Koresh at a single bite and not spent weeks pondering how to get them to come out peacefully. It’s quite true that there is an emerging federal police state, but our incumbent ruling class, Republican or Democrat, simply isn’t constructed to rely on it as its primary mode of power. Instead, it relies on manipulation, the deliberate inculcation of an apparently spontaneous and voluntary desire to obey, and soap operas, game shows, and professional sports are far more useful instruments of control for its purposes than BATF goon squads.

Instead of civil war, Sam offered an alternate view of what would likely define the near future. Readers can draw their own conclusions about whether Sam or Thomas Chittum were more prescient three decades hence:

The real future, perhaps less exciting than that of Civil War II, is what various writers have called “Brazilianization,” the disintegration of traditional community, class, and nation at the base of American society and the domination of a technically skilled, affluent (if not luxurious) overclass that is no less multiethnic in its composition but is bound together by its control of wealth, status, and political and cultural power. That is why American society becomes more “diverse” through immigration but more homogeneous through the uniform discipline exerted by the federal leviathan in conjunction with the mass consumer economy and mass instruments of culture and communication.

While he was skeptical of whites rising up in civil war anytime soon, Sam Francis spent much of his life trying to offer a solution for us to restore our nation. Rudyard Lynch will likely be proven wrong on May 1, 2025, but he is at least thinking in terms that Sam would have approved of. The following is from his Chronicles column a year prior to the review of Civil War II:

The transformation of the American Right from a conservative force intent on preserving the present system into one that at least espouses sympathy for the imagery of revolution shows that the Right has at last begun to grasp the truth that it no longer exercises control of the country. That is an anomalous situation for many who conceive themselves to be on the Right, and much of the lack of preparation they exhibit derives from the anomaly and the discomfort those of the Right experience when the techniques and tactics of revolution are seriously discussed. It may be premature to talk very much about “revolution from the Right” today, but it is not idle to do so, and the sooner the Right completes its understanding that it no longer has any business being “conservative,” the sooner its revolutionary impulses will quicken in the womb.

Hopefully, young Mr. Lynch finds his way over to Counter-Currents and continues to study anti-liberal thinkers such as Sam Francis who can show him – and us – a more reliable path forward.