The alarm­ing rise of US polit­ical viol­ence

Charlie Kirk’s murder is a moment for all sides to seek to lower the tem­per­at­ure

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The hor­rific shoot­ing of Charlie Kirk is a pro­found shock for Amer­ic­ans. Many will have dis­agreed with the firebrand con­ser­vat­ive act­iv­ist but few, par­tic­u­larly among the young, will not have heard of him. As of Thursday after­noon police were still hunt­ing an unnamed sus­pect said to be of col­lege age; the pos­sible motive was unknown. But the killing is yet more evid­ence of the intensi­fy­ing men­ace of viol­ence that cuts across Amer­ica’s polit­ical spec­trum.

Kirk, a 31-year-old father of two, was cred­ited by Don­ald Trump with deliv­er­ing the youth vote and trans­form­ing the demo­graphy of the US pres­id­ent’s base. He used his huge social media pres­ence to propag­ate the Maga world­view to a new gen­er­a­tion of Amer­ic­ans. Yet he was happy to engage in tra­di­tional forms of polit­ical dis­pu­ta­tion. He toured uni­versit­ies across the US, chal­len­ging often hos­tile stu­dent audi­ences to debate him on issues ran­ging from gun rights to abor­tion and LGBT+ rights. He pro­pounded often chau­vin­istic and xeno­phobic ideas. Noth­ing, however, excuses viol­ence even against views people find abhor­rent.

US his­tory has, sadly, been marked by polit­ical viol­ence for gen­er­a­tions; Amer­ica has no mono­poly on such occur­rences, though its cul­ture of gun own­er­ship can worsen the con­sequences. The coun­try has lived through upsurges in assas­sin­a­tions before, not­ably in the 1960s. But the tempo has quickened alarm­ingly dur­ing this dec­ade. Pres­id­ent Trump him­self sur­vived an assas­sin­a­tion attempt last year, with another gun­man later arres­ted close to where he was play­ing golf. A Demo­cratic state law­maker in Min­nesota and her hus­band were killed in their home in June. In April, the home of Pennsylvania’s Demo­cratic gov­ernor Josh Sha­piro was set alight while he and his fam­ily slept inside.

Such assaults have intens­i­fied in tan­dem with the coarsen­ing and polar­isa­tion of the polit­ical dis­course, in Amer­ica more than in any large demo­cracy. It has become com­mon not merely to express reasoned dis­agree­ment but to denounce oppon­ents as enemies intent on harm. The rise of social media has pro­pelled many Amer­ic­ans towards more extreme and entrenched pos­i­tions — and exposed mil­lions to graphic clips of Kirk’s shoot­ing.

The response of the US polit­ical class will determ­ine the path the coun­try now goes down. Pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tions viewed it as incum­bent on them in such cases to bring the coun­try together, and not launch polit­ical witch-hunts. That spirit needs to be redis­covered today. Some lead­ing fig­ures from both sides of the par­tisan divide hit the right notes in warn­ing that viol­ence had no place in Amer­ican pub­lic life. Yet in the House of Rep­res­ent­at­ives, ten­sions over how to show respect to Kirk des­cen­ded into a shout­ing match.

The imper­at­ive to respond respons­ibly extends to a pres­id­ent who has both rid­den and amp­li­fied the wave of polit­ical polar­isa­tion. Trump called on Amer­ic­ans to recog­nise that “viol­ence and murder are the tra­gic con­sequence of demon­ising those with whom you dis­agree”. But in a four-minute video he blamed Kirk’s death on the “rad­ical left”, and vowed that his admin­is­tra­tion would root out polit­ical viol­ence against fel­low con­ser­vat­ives. The pres­id­ent’s erstwhile backer Elon Musk pos­ted to mil­lions on his X net­work that the “Left is the party of murder”.

For all the pain and out­rage sur­round­ing Kirk’s death, attempts to use such lan­guage to frame him as a par­tisan mar­tyr are dan­ger­ously incen­di­ary. For the sake of US demo­cracy and social sta­bil­ity, those in roles of influ­ence should be united in urging de-escal­a­tion and con­demning viol­ence against any­body — espe­cially their polit­ical oppon­ents.