From Charlie Kirk to Supreme Court backlash, Civil War historians see modern parallels

Some Civil War historians see echoes of the past in recent political violence and growing disillusionment with the Supreme Court.

“It was paranoia, the perception that this violence was unstoppable, that really sent the nation spiraling toward Civil War,” said one scholar.

Professor Kevin Waite had just finished a seminar on the run-up to the American Civil War on Friday morning when a student cautiously raised her hand.

“Can I ask about the Charlie Kirk situation?” she said in Waite’s classroom at the University of Texas at Dallas.

The student, he said, wondered whether recent events carried any echoes of the past. Hyperbolic comparisons between modern political conflict and the horrific bloodshed of past centuries have previously been the stuff of doomsday prepper threads on Reddit,