Tue, Sep 16, 2025 page7

• The killing of Kirk is a perilous moment

  • The Guardian Editorial
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  “Democracy is the way that we have diverse societies that don’t kill each other, largely,” Lilliana Mason, a leading academic of partisanship, said recently. She added: “As soon as we stop believing in it, it disappears.” Mason’s own research suggests that there is sharply rising tolerance of political violence. On Wednesday last week, it claimed one more victim.

  The shocking killing of Turning Point USA cofounder Charlie Kirk, an influential activist who rallied young people to US President Donald Trump’s cause and far-right ideology more broadly, has been widely and rightly condemned across the political spectrum. Leading Democrats and progressive activists made clear that such violence must not be tolerated.

  Before a perpetrator had even been identified, the president, like several other Republicans, blamed “radical left political violence,” claiming that liberal rhetoric against conservatives was “directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country.” Trump himself faced two attempts on his life last year.

  He cited other victims, but not the many Democrats who have been targeted, including Minnesota state representative Melissa Hortman, who was shot dead at her home alongside her husband in June. Meanwhile, some far-right commentators spoke of vengeance.

  Political violence is hardly a new phenomenon in a country that has seen a civil war, four presidential assassinations, and lynchings. It is rising again. Ordinary Americans are being radicalized. In such an environment, one thing unites the political poles; any prominent figure is vulnerable, although women and people of color are particularly targeted. Threats to members of the US Congress rocketed last year.

  “Demonizing those with whom you disagree” is indeed dangerous, but Trump himself has normalized vicious attacks on opponents. The tolerance of violent action — as with Trump’s blanket pardons for the Jan. 6, 2020, rioters — sends a message, too. The roots of violent acts are complex, but an environment conducive to political attacks might channel the propensities of potential perpetrators.

  Robert Pape, director of the Chicago Project on Security and Threats, has warned that US politics might be on the brink “of an extremely violent era... The more public support there is for political violence, the more common it is.” The US addiction to guns drastically increases the impact.

  Acts of political violence exact an appalling human toll in lives lost and families shattered; Kirk’s death leaves two small children fatherless. They also — by design — deter other people from political or other civic activity at all levels. The most extreme voices might persist and prevail.

  Research by Mason, a political science professor at Johns Hopkins University, and Nathan Kalmoe, executive administrative director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Center for Communication and Civic Renewal, found that one-fifth of respondents said that political violence could sometimes be justified, but three-fifths thought it could sometimes be justified if the other side committed violence first.

  Yet other research showed that people appear less willing to condone violence if misperceptions of the other side’s extremism or propensity for force are corrected. In this perilous moment, the response to such hateful crimes should be to coalesce to stress nonviolence and civic tolerance. To instead promote division would only increase the threat to politicians and activists of all stripes, and strike another blow to democracy itself.
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