Political violence in the US: Why Charlie Kirk’s murder was shocking but not unexpected

THE 1960s: The 1960s were an especially turbulent decade. Civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was shot dead in 1968. Malcolm X, the Black nationalist leader, was killed in 1965. Both killings underlined the violent resistance to attempts at political and social change in the US.

THE 1970s: By the 1970s, violence often came from organised groups on the far left, like the Weather Underground, a Marxist militant organisation that was founded on the Ann Arbor campus of the University of Michigan, and which mostly attacked property.

THE 1980s & 1990s: From the 1980s onward, there were instances of white supremacists, militias, and anti-abortion extremists targeting a range of people from doctors to government agents.

In 1993, Dr David Gunn, an abortion provider in Florida, was shot and killed by an anti-abortion activist, the first such murder in the US. In 1995, anti-government extremist Timothy McVeigh carried out the Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people.

Violence has hit both major parties

In his condolence video for Kirk, President Trump blamed rhetoric from the “radical left” for instigating the attack. He mentioned various attacks that he claimed were the result of the liberal criticism of conservatives, including the attempt on his own life, the attacks on ICE agents, the murder of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, and even the 2017 attempt on the life of the Louisiana Republican Steve Scalise, now the House Majority Leader.

But the fact is both Republicans and Democrats have been targeted in acts of political violence in the US.

DEMOCRATS TARGETED

*In 2011, Congresswoman Gabby Giffords was shot in the head at a public event in Arizona. Giffords survived with severe brain injury; six others were killed.

*In 2022, an intruder broke into then Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s home and bludgeoned her husband with a hammer. The attacker, driven by conspiracy theories, had planned to kidnap Pelosi.

*In 2025, Minnesota State Representative Melissa Hortman, a Democrat, was assassinated by a right-wing extremist disguised as a police officer, who had a hit list of 45 Democratic officials.

*Federal Judge Esther Salas’s family was attacked in 2020 by an anti-feminist gunman who killed her son and injured her husband.

REPUBLICANS TARGETED

* In 2017, a left-wing gunman opened fire on Republicans practising for a charity baseball game. House GOP Whip Scalise was injured.

*During the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot, mobs threatened to hang Republican Vice President Mike Pence and harm Democratic Speaker Pelosi.

*In 2022, a man armed with a gun and zip ties was arrested outside Conservative Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s home. He admitted that he intended to assassinate the judge.

* Trump survived two assassination attempts in 2024 — a sniper’s bullet grazed him at a rally, and an armed man was intercepted at a golf course that he was visiting.

Political violence in the US today

POLARISATION: The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace highlights “affective polarization”, which is the deep dislike and distrust of the other party. Essentially, Americans no longer just disagree; they actively hate the other side, which lowers the bar for justifying violence.

Still, Carnegie cautions polarisation alone is not enough to explain today’s violence. While emotional polarisation is high on both the left and the right, most of the actual attacks are carried out by actors of the far right.

CONSPIRACIES & MISINFORMATION: The Journal of Democracy notes that fringe beliefs have moved into the mainstream via talk radio, cable news, and social media.

The false claim that the 2020 election was “stolen” convinced millions that democracy had failed in the US. Surveys cited by the journal found that in 2020, the majority of Republicans agreed that “we may have to use force to save the American way of life”.

ONLINE RADICALISATION: The National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) has found that most recent attackers were not members of militias or extremist groups; instead, they were radicalized alone, online — by watching videos, swapping memes, and spiralling into extremist echo chambers.

FEEDBACK LOOPS: Rachel Kleinfield, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, notes that politicians and media figures often deliberately portray opponents as existential threats. This, she argues, creates a “dangerous feedback loop”: leaders inflame fears, followers feel freer to lash out, and violence becomes more thinkable.

Polls by the Pew Research Center think tank have found that seven in 10 Americans cutting across party lines believe that the use of heated language by leaders carries the risk of sparking violence. When officials use militaristic slogans or fail to condemn attacks, extremists interpret this as a green light, experts say.

ANXIETY DUE TO CHANGE: Polls carried out by the Public Religion Research Institute show that 55% of Americans believe the country’s culture and way of life have “changed for the worse” since the 1950s. This nostalgia and anxiety is the strongest among older, conservative Americans.

The “Great Replacement” conspiracy, which believes that the American elites are replacing white Christians with immigrants, is seen to directly inspire mass shootings.

MENTAL HEALTH ISSUES: Poor mental health does not directly cause violence, but it can make individuals more vulnerable to misinformation, conspiracy theories, and extremist recruitment.

Political scientist Lilliana Mason notes in a report on political violence prepared by SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University and the nonprofit Protect Democracy that “violence often comes in waves”, and that stressors such as fear, insecurity, and personal instability can magnify susceptibility to extremist narratives.

Alarming spikes: what the numbers show

Numbers in the US show that political violence is rising, becoming more partisan, and more focused on elected officials.

* The Global Terrorism Database (GTD) run by the University of Maryland, which has tracked more than 200,000 terrorist incidents worldwide since 1970, notes that far-right violence has dominated in the US in recent years.

* A 2024 study by the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS), which looked at 725 US terror cases since the 1990s, noted that attacks on politicians and government staff have skyrocketed since 2016. Nearly half of these attacks were driven by partisan hate, compared to just 29% by generic anti-government anger.

*A 2023 Government Accountability Office (GAO) review found domestic terrorism incidents in the US rose 357% from 2013 to 2021.

*The US Capitol Police say threats against members of Congress have hit record highs since 2017.

*The ACLED Crisis Monitor logged nearly 23,000 protest or unrest events in 2020 alone — most were peaceful, but many included intimidation by armed militias or plots against officials.