The horrendous killing of the far-right activist Charlie Kirk has been met with calming, statesman-like responses on both sides of the political aisle. But it has also demonstrated yet again the fundamental asymmetry of contemporary American politics. Many prominent figures on the right, all the way up to President Donald Trump, have called for nothing less than retribution against the “radical left” – all in the absence of information about the killer and his motivation.
Trump has been signaling for a decade or so that political violence committed by his supporters is acceptable and might even be rewarded. Those he pardoned for their participation in the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the US Capitol included many convicted of violent crimes. But Trump and many of his acolytes frame such conduct not as violence, but as legitimate, even patriotic, self-defense; like other right-wing populists, they portray themselves as perpetual victims.
There have been some deeply distasteful postings about Kirk’s killing by apparent leftists on social media, pointing out with schadenfreude that Kirk had claimed that gun deaths were an acceptable price to pay for the right to bear arms. But, on the whole, liberal commentators have gone out of their way not just to condemn violence but to recognize Kirk as a good-faith debater with a “taste for disagreement.” On the right, by contrast, prominent voices have called for repression – invoking the illegal practices of FBI founder J. Edgar Hoover as a model – if not outright “war.”
More worrying still, Trump himself seems to relish the occasion as a pretext to attack civil-society organizations not to his liking. Members of his administration had already declared the Democratic Party itself to be a “domestic terror organization.” Given that Trump has shown absolutely no restraint in unleashing the powers of the federal government on any individual or organization, the implied threat of prosecuting the opposition should set off alarm bells for any democrat (not just Democrats).
Beyond abusing the law, Trump has consistently encouraged, or at least clearly tolerated, political violence: from imagining himself shooting someone on Fifth Avenue, to encouraging his supporters to rough up people, to describing violent racists marching in Charlottesville, Virginia, as “fine people,” to his apparent willingness to see his first vice president, Mike Pence, be lynched on January 6, 2021, so that he could remain in power.
Democracies like Brazil have been able to sanction a president prepared to stage a coup, as the trial and conviction of former President Jair Bolsonaro demonstrates. The US, by contrast, not only failed to demonstrate after January 6 that actions have consequences; it allowed Trump to return to power, which he has used to send the clearest possible message that those engaged in pro-Trump violence can expect impunity. They might even be glorified and be honored with a military funeral. Mike Johnson, the Republican speaker of the House, has effectively refused to install a plaque for the police defenders of the Capitol, as mandated in a bipartisan bill.
While Trump’s first term featured ostentatious displays of cruelty, his administration is now devoting significant resources to creating a cult of violence. The killing of 11 people at sea off the coast of Venezuela – without any apparent legal justification – is gleefully shared on social media. The Department of Homeland Security routinely uses social media to celebrate the pain of families whose loved ones are brutally taken away. One post goes so far as to show masked ICE personnel with Nazi Wehrmacht helmets.
Of course, Trump has always relished a spectacle and relied on props to convince people that he was doing something important (recall the big folders displayed on TV to prove the existence of his nonexistent health-care plan). Except now it is images of actual suffering that are used to delight his supporters and prop up his increasingly unpopular presidency.
Some will say that such displays of suffering are necessary deterrents. But we do not show prisoners being tortured because we believe that will bring down crime – although, come to think of it, Kirk once demanded public executions, broadcast live on television and ideally “sponsored by Coca-Cola.”
Trump may well lift all restraints on his followers – after all, he himself has felt completely unconstrained in his second term, not even pretending to stick to legality, let alone norms about how to treat political adversaries in a democracy. He probably believes his undemocratic conduct is justified because the other side supposedly weaponized the Justice Department to put him in prison; so it is only fair that he seeks to punish them now with charges like “mortgage fraud.”
Once again, Trump is not the perpetrator but the victim. And he has an entire grievance-industrial complex on his side. From Fox News to talk radio, his propagandists tell their audiences that they are right to feel resentful. Victimhood can be turned into a justification for violence.
This does not mean that the US is sliding toward civil war. Some appear to be itching for it and might feel well-prepared. But surveys show that an overwhelming majority oppose political violence; and, as the political scientist Brendan Nyhan has reminded us, support for such violence declined after the attempt on Trump’s life in July 2024.
While hope springs eternal that Trump will become presidential and seek unity, there is every reason to believe that his behavior the night of Kirk’s killing will continue: polarization has always been his political business model. Unfortunately, at a time when his administration is nurturing not so much a “taste for disagreement” as a taste for cruelty, some Americans might take their cues from him.
Jan-Werner Müller is Professor of Politics at Princeton University.
