How Civil Wars Start: And How to Stop Them

by Barbara F. Walter

Some in the group found Charlottesville—and the subsequent arrests, deplatforming, and bad press—to be disheartening, proof that Mason had been right all along: They would not be successful if they stayed within the bounds of the law. As one former AWD member later told investigative journalist A. C. Thompson (who made the ProPublica documentary), Charlottesville sparked the group’s shift toward violence, because members felt their efforts had been ineffectual. “Huge rallies don’t work,” he explained. “All that happens is people get arrested, people lose jobs, and you get put on some FBI watch list.” The answer, he continued, was to go underground, and to pursue a form of cell-style terrorism known as “leaderless resistance.”