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

Sheffield: 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.

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.