We are alarmed by the racist demonstrations, with overtly racist slogans, chants and salutes by white nationalists, neo-Nazis, and the Ku Klux Klan, promoting white supremacy and inciting racial discrimination and hatred

In a decision issued under its ‘early warning and urgent action’ procedure, the Committee, which monitors implementation of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, stated “there should be no place in the world for racist white supremacist ideas or any similar ideologies that reject the core human rights principles of human dignity and equality.”

In addition to the criminal investigation of the individual who ploughed his car into a crowd of peaceful protestors killing a woman, the UN experts asked the US authorities to undertake concrete measures “to address the root causes of the proliferation of such racist manifestations.”

Not inconceivable? That’s a low bar. It’s certainly possible to imagine America returning to the violence of the 1960s and ’70s, and beneath the overwrought language, that’s what some – though not all – of these civil war prophets seem to have in mind. But a near-future war with two clear sides and Gettysburg-sized casualty counts is about as likely as a war with the moon.

These “new civil war” stories frequently take a bait-and-switch approach. They invoke the violence at demonstrations like the rally in Charlottesville, Va., last weekend, where a man reportedly sympathetic to Nazism drove his car into a crowd of counter-protesters, killing a woman. In the same breath, they discuss the broad divisions separating “red” America from “blue” America. If you flip quickly between small violent clashes and big political disagreements, those big disagreements will look bloodier.