Charlie Kirk shooting: Another grim milestone in America’s long and increasingly dangerous story of political violence

By Katie Pruszynski for The Conversation

Sheffield (UK): Charlie Kirk, figurehead of the American far right, took a question at a 2023 event in Salt Lake City about the second amendment to the US constitution and gun-related deaths. He answered: “I think it’s worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year, so that we can have the second amendment to protect our other God-given rights.” Two years later, once again in Utah, Kirk was killed with a gun. His death comes against a backdrop of increased political violence in the US, driven by a new set of political, societal and technological factors, and its future trajectory will determine the health of American democracy.

Political violence is differentiated from other crimes and it is helpful to have clarity about its particular meaning. It is defined specifically as acts intended to achieve political goals or intimidate opponents through the use of physical force or threats to influence a political outcome or silence dissent.

While most of these incidents come from the far right, violence is used by extremists on both sides.

Over the past decade there has been a dangerous escalation in political violence driven by rage and resentment without clearly defined goals by self-radicalised individuals rather than organised extremist groups.

High profile incidents have dominated headlines.

These include the insurrection of January 6 2021, the shooting at a baseball practice session of Republican members of Congress in 2018, the plot to kidnap Michigan governor, Gretchen Whitmer in 2020, the vicious attack on Paul Pelosi – the husband of the speaker of the House of Representatives – in 2022, the torching of Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro’s family home in April this year.

And, of course, the assassination attempts on Donald Trump on the campaign trail in 2024.

But the threat has spread beyond the very visible faces of US democracy to targets such as judges, election officials, journalists and even private citizens based upon their perceived political affiliation.

It is shocking yet unsurprising, given the new factors fuelling rage in an already deeply divided society. These can be broadly summarised by three characteristics.

Hyper-partisanship at boiling point

The way politics is discussed today shows that division can’t be seen in merely partisan terms. Opponents have become enemies and those with different worldviews have become traitors.

In many examples, pundits, politicians and their mouthpieces indulge in dehumanising rhetoric. Research has consistently found that dehumanisation contributes to a more ready justification of violence.

Indeed, Trump and other high-profile figures have incited violence, even when not actually issuing direct calls to action. This was most notably evident on January 6 2021, when Trump goaded supporters in Washington to march on the Capitol, telling them: “And we fight. We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”

Digital echo chambers

These pressure cooker arguments play out on social media and online forums that help spread conspiracy theories, disinformation and violent content. Highly influential creators are able to conjure up “bespoke realities” for their followers, generating huge personal wealth from the fomenting of rage and hate. Citizens are consuming deeply flawed, incendiary political content in isolation. This fuels self-radicalisation when people become detached from reality of the world outside their bubble.

Indeed, immediately following the Kirk shooting, social media was already awash with disinformation about liberals celebrating his death and the motivations of the killer before the shooter had been found.

Erosion of trust in democracy When faith in government, the justice system, and the electoral process erodes, citizens may come to believe that the established systems are rigged, unresponsive, or illegitimate. This makes traditional avenues for change seem futile.

In this environment, violence can be rationalised as the only effective means to “correct” the broken system. The American right has long railed against a corrupt and malevolent “deep state” convincing some citizens that democratic norms no longer apply.

What next? There are three possible scenarios. The worst case is an escalation of violence in both its frequency and its organisation.

The far right has been pushing for strict limits on civil liberties, and the most extreme members may use Kirk’s assassination as an excuse for violent retaliation. Widespread civil unrest is a persistent threat, particularly approaching the 2026 midterm elections.

Many fear that if Trump’s allies sense they can use escalating disorder to declare an emergency suspension of democratic processes, they will push him to do so.

More likely, but no less unsettling, is a stagnation in which political violence becomes a normalised feature of American political life without escalating to an existential crisis. This has potentially far-reaching consequences as more moderate politicians on both sides perceive the risks of being in public life to be too high and vacate their offices.

This paves the way for more extreme candidates to fill the gaps. With the more moderate voices gone, it’s less likely the conversation will cool down.

But things could improve. It will require bipartisan condemnation of political violence and a reconnecting of politicians to their constituents. Both sides need to work together to drag a bigger portion of the political debate back into the real world. Meanwhile social media platforms and the legacy media alike must be held accountable for the tenor and veracity of the content they feed to the public.

And efforts must be made by political elites, the media and the public to rebuild civic trust. As the foundation stone of a healthy democracy, citizens’ trust in their government and in each other must be carefully pieced back together.

America does not need to accept violence as the norm, in fact, it must collectively and consistently reject it. The future of its democracy may depend on it.

Katie Pruszynski is a PhD Candidate, Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Sheffield