YMMV / It Could Happen Here

• Anvilicious:
  • Numerous listeners have noted that while a large chunk of the podcast's runtime is devoted to covering various far-right groups and their ideologies in detail, far-left groups barely get a passing mention, to the point where none besides (arguably) Antifa are even named. This bias is most apparent when Evans states the second episode will cover far-left groups at the end of the first... only to turn around and devote the second episode to further cover rural far-right militias.
  • Evans' anarchist leanings are also quite obvious, with the US government’s response to the crisis seeming to consist entirely of stomping on civil rights and committing various atrocities up to and including bombing American cities to oblivion. Events like these could happen, yet he also ignores the “carrot” side of state power such as the extensive emergency management protocols (establishing green zones, humanitarian aid camps, etc.) that FEMA, the National Guard and state governments have in place in the event of a nationwide crisis.
    • He also states many US urban areas will likely remain peaceful when the government retreats, citing the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. This ignores the fact that Katrina was a natural disaster hitting a single city in an otherwise peaceful and stable nation, rather than a nationwide collapse in the midst of the smartphone/social media era where (mis)information and panic can rapidly spread across continents. His Katrina example also flies in the face of more recent and applicable events such as the US's 2020-present civil unrest, the Arab Spring and nearly every other armed revolution and civil war within at least the past hundred years, where cities became hotbeds of sectarian violence.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: One of the main scenarios outlined for kicking off the Second Civil War was the potential impeachment of President Donald Trump. It was theorized this would cause a number of Right-Wing Militia Fanatic groups to take up arms against the state in defense of the President against the "deep state". A number of audio clips are played from such groups saying that even the act of impeachment would unleash anarchy and violence from their followers.^note For those outside the United States, this is like saying "I will kill people if that person is charged with a crime, even if he's not convicted." Cut to late 2019/early 2020, the President was impeached and... nothing happened. No violence, no murder, no bloody insurgencies. Granted, he was only impeached, and it never went all the way through. Had the Senate upheld it...we might have had a different story. And those groups still ended up attacking the US Capitol in an attempt to cancel or delay Biden being officially elected President when Trump lost.

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