Another civil war on the horizon in the US?

In an America shaken by the murder of Charlie Kirk and riven by extreme political polarization, Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene has put an incendiary idea back on the table: a “national divorce”.

The murder of Charlie Kirk, a conservative media figure, has caused a veritable earthquake in American politics.

This tragedy, perpetrated at a university rally, has reinforced the already yawning political divisions between Republicans and Democrats.

There’s nothing left to discuss with the left… To be honest, I want a peaceful national divorce.

-Marjorie Taylor Greene

It’s in this climate of grief and anger, where polarization is reaching a critical point, that controversial Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene sees only one way out: a national divorce.

By advocating a split between red states and blue states, Marjorie Taylor Greene reactivates the specter of a national fracture.

Her words, considered provocative and dangerous by many elected representatives, resonate with a section of the conservative base, galvanized by a climate of unprecedented tension following the assassination of one of its heroes.

The MP takes up her idea

It was against this backdrop that Georgia Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene revived a concept she has been hammering home for several years. She presents this breakup as the only way out of a cohabitation that she believes has become impossible between Republican and Democratic states.

Back in 2023, Greene wrote:

“We need a national divorce. We need to separate the Republican states from the Democratic states and shrink the federal government. Everyone I talk to says so.”

Today, these words find a particular resonance in the emotion aroused by Kirk’s death and in the anger of part of the American right.

A peaceful national divorce?

Straightforwardly, she declared:

“There’s nothing left to discuss with the left… To be honest, I want a peaceful national divorce.”

Referring to the case of Charlie Kirk, she wanted to demonstrate that, in her opinion, this approach is the only conceivable solution:

“They murdered our nice boy who was talking to them peacefully and debating ideas.”

Political reactions

While Taylor Greene claims that “Everyone I talk to says that”, the reality is different: most Republican officials refuse to endorse the idea of a “national divorce”.

The rare endorsements come mostly from conservative influencers and commentators, with no real institutional translation.

Nonetheless, his statement prompted a wave of criticism. Moderate Republicans like Mitt Romney, Liz Cheney and even Utah Governor Spencer Cox, who back in 2023 had blasted Taylor Greene’s “destructive” and dangerous rhetoric:

“This rhetoric is destructive, wrong and, frankly, evil. We don’t need a divorce, we need couples therapy.”

After the murder of Charlie Kirk in Utah, Governor Spencer Cox renewed his call for unity, inviting Americans to take “another path” to overcome political hatred, to find a “way out” of growing hostility, and denounced the toxic role of social networks, which he called “the cancer of our society”.

Another solution

“We need to find another solution. We have to find a way out of this growing hostility,” said Cox in his many speeches since Kirk’s assassination, also emphasizing the devastating effect of social networks in spreading hatred:

“Social networks have become, in many ways, a cancer on our society.”

The murder of Charlie Kirk accentuates the image of an America locked in a never-ending culture war.

In this climate, where the right is radicalizing its discourse and the left is denouncing cynical instrumentalization, Marjorie Taylor Greene’s proposal for a “national divorce” appears to be the extreme extension of these fractures, fed by an atmosphere of mourning, anger and generalized mistrust.