The murder of Charlie Kirk is part of a terrible new era of political violence

The assassination of Charlie Kirk, the 31 -year -old right -wing activist who directed Turning Point USA in Utah on Wednesday, was horrible and upsetting. Kirk was fatally killed in the neck while he was speaking at the University of Utah Valley. His death was confirmed a few hours later by President Donald Trump and others. He was the father of two young children.

However, as shocking as the kirk murder was, the fact that there was this kind of assassination is unfortunately not so unexpected. After all, America is flooded with violence, politics or other, every day of the year.

Responding to the first reports of the shooting, representative Jaime Raskin wrote: “To order another act of absolutely shameful armed violence.” The word “another” captures the disturbing truth of the news: armed violence, whether in the form of school fire or political violence, is out of control in the United States. This violence is the product of a political system which refuses to implement the control of firearms even when the social fabric collapses.

We have known it for a long time. To write The New York Times In June, the political scientist at the University of Chicago, Robert Pape, argued that “since the start of President Trump’s second term in January, acts of political violence in the United States have occurred at an alarming rate.”

Pope quoted the assassination of the Minnesota legislative, Melissa Hortman, and the attempted assassination of one of her colleagues; the criminal fire at the home of the Governor of Pennsylvania Josh Shapiro; and the murder of staff members of the Israeli Embassy in Washington, DC. He also noted that this increase in violence, which dates back to the polarization that started with Trump’s candidacy in 2016, also appeared in the January 6 insurrection, the attack on the husband of Nancy Pelosi and the assassination attempts against Trump, among other cases.

Pope painted a lamentable image of society where political violence becomes much more common and socially accepted:

Today’s political violence occurs through the political spectrum – and there is a corresponding increase in public support on the right and the left. Since 2021, the Chicago Project on security and threats, which I direct, has carried out national surveys on a quarterly basis on the support of political violence among the Americans. These surveys are revealing because, as other research has shown, the more public support for political violence, the more common it is.

Our May investigation was the most worrying to date. About 40% of Democrats supported the use of force to withdraw Mr. Trump from the presidency, and around 25% of Republicans supported the use of soldiers to stop the demonstrations against Mr. Trump’s agenda.

As an alternative to this bloody cycle, Pope urged the creation of a united front of Bipartisan against political violence:

My research suggests that to defuse the political environment and reduce the risk of violence, American political leaders must cross their political divisions and make joint declarations (and ideally joint appearances) which denounce all political violence, host all peaceful manifestations and call to respect the rules, processes and results of free and fair elections in the country. [California Governor Gavin] Newsom and Mr. Trump, for example, should make such a joint declaration.

This proposal seems extremely utopian in the current moment. Trump is not a man to seek calm. In terms of political violence, he is an incendiary, not a firefighter. He made fun of the assault against Paul Pelosi and joked on the “people of the second amendment” by going after Hillary Clinton. He praised the rioters of January 6 as heroes. It helps fuel violence in conflicts around the world, especially in the Middle East. And he leads a government which frequently bask in a violent rhetoric against his enemies. There is all the reasons to think that, as he did during recent deployments of the National Guard in Los Angeles and Washington, DC, Trump will use the Kirk Killing to justify an authoritarian repression.

During previous decades, political violence could stimulate productive unity and seek solutions. After Ronald Reagan’s assassination attempt in 1981, he appeared a bipartite coalition to support Brady Bill in 1993, a firearm control measure appointed according to Reagan press secretary James Brady, who was paralyzed during the shooting. But Ronald Reagan and James Brady’s republican party was of different orientation.

If, as expected, the Kirk shooting is used as a pretext for more repression, Trump’s political opponents must hold the line. The murder of Kirk was an atrocity which should be sentenced without reservation. But democrats must be ready to resist any attack on civil freedoms, especially because a repression will only increase the probability of violence much worse.