What the Charlie Kirk incident reveals about escalating political violence in America

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The assassination of right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk marks a watershed moment in a surge of US political violence, say experts, who fear it will inflame an already-fractured country and inspire more unrest.

Kirk founded conservative advocacy group Turning Point USA and harnessed the power of social media to lure millions of young Americans into Trump’s MAGA base. This week, the 31-year-old was addressing an outdoor crowd of about 3,000 at a university in Utah when he was shot dead.

Dr Ron Levy, a political theorist at ANU’s college of law, governance and policy, told SBS News Kirk’s shooting suggests that political violence is being normalised in the US.

But while there has been a recent “resurgence”, political violence is not entirely new for the country, he adds.

Political Activist Charlie Kirk Shot Dead At Utah Valley University

Dr Ron Levy told SBS News Kirk’s shooting suggests that political violence is being normalised in the US. Credit: Trent Nelson

“Political violence has always been endemic in the American political system from before the Civil War, obviously during the Civil War, to the first terrorist acts over 100 years ago around issues of class difference and so on,” he said.

“So, it’s nothing new. Five American presidents have been assassinated after all.”

Trump himself was the subject of two assassination attempts last year.

Mike Jensen, a researcher at the University of Maryland, which has tracked political violence in a terrorism database since 1970, said in the first six months of the year, the US experienced about 150 politically-motivated attacks — nearly twice as many as over the same period last year.

“I think we are in a very, very dangerous spot right now that could quite easily escalate into more widespread civil unrest if we don’t get a hold of it,” he told Reuters.

“This could absolutely serve as a kind of flashpoint that inspires more of it.”

What is fuelling this political violence?

Levy said that when societies are incapable of “reasonable disagreement”, they can view violence as a more reasonable action.

“When you don’t have a sense of the fact that the other side might actually have something to say that is of value, when reasonable disagreement has no role in public discourse, then it might seem more reasonable to murder your opponents,” he said.

“But of course, that’s not a reasonable response. It’s just what a lack of information or a fired-up population thinks.”

Why is it more common in the US?

Dr Mark Rolfe, a lecturer in the school of social sciences at the University of NSW, told SBS News that politically motivated violence is “a sort of background hum of American politics and society”.

“You’ve got thousands of American deaths every year through gun violence, including kids.”

According to the most recent data compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 46,728 people died from gun violence in the US in 2023, the third-highest figure ever recorded.

Experts in domestic terrorism cite a convergence of factors for increased violence in the US: economic insecurity, anxiety over shifting racial and ethnic demographics, and the increasingly inflammatory tone of political discourse.

A man in a suit claps as he is greeted by another man in a suit

Kirk and the group he co-founded, Turning Point USA, played a key role in driving young voter support for Trump in November. Source: PA / CNP/ABACA

Traditional ideological divides — once centred on policy disagreements — have morphed into a deeper, more personal animosity. That anger is amplified by a mix of social media, conspiracy theories and personal grievances.

Levy said social and economic factors were underpinning political violence and its prevalence in the US.

He described poor education as causing division.

“You have extreme class disparities and people who are rather under-educated. Against that background, it’s easy for people to believe things about other groups that are hateful,” he said.

“That’s something that many politicians are trying to exploit. It serves their political purposes to have those disparities if it means that they can rile people up more and more for their political gain.”

Since returning to office, Trump has scaled back efforts to counter domestic extremism, redirecting resources toward immigration enforcement and citing the southern border as the top security threat.

Rolfe blames violence in part on “American exceptionalism heightening political conflict”.

“When you are the best country in the world, you’ve got very high standards to maintain and differing interpretations of those standards from different political quarters, which makes it a very fierce political arena.”

Nevertheless, research shows Americans overwhelmingly reject political violence.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted in October last year asked if Americans agreed with a statement that it was “acceptable for a member of my political party to threaten and/or intimidate others to achieve a political goal”. Just 6 per cent of respondents — a trivially small share in terms of an opinion survey — said they agreed.

Australia resists ‘deep polarisation’

Both Levy and Rolfe told SBS News that Australia wouldn’t see similar cases of political violence.

Levy explained that Australia’s political system and ideologies play a part in resisting what he described as “deep polarisation”.

“Australian politics, for various reasons, is much more centrist, and the extremes, the very right-wing or the very left-wing parties, tend to appeal to just a handful, maybe a quarter of Australian voters overall,” he said.

“And many of those voters are not really violent extremists, they’re just people who take their politics to a farther extreme.”

He also added that the rise of “very pragmatic” Independents could mean communities feel more in touch with and better represented by politicians, again reducing division.

Looking ahead, Levy said the way social media and artificial intelligence are regulated could play a role.

“Social media or AI can be a destabilising factor if we think that the media environment is important to whether we’re polarised or not,” he said.

“Do we allow social media to divide us and to make a profit out of ripping us apart?”

Rolfe said that Australia is culturally and politically very different from the US.

He pointed to the issue of gun control laws, which are a point of contention in the US, but were swiftly reformed in Australia after the Port Arthur mass shooting.

“This is something that the Americans can’t work out about us, that we have right-wingers like John Howard and others of his who pushed this through as well as left-wingers who were united on this issue of gun control,” he said.

Rolfe pointed to the issue of gun control laws, which are a point of contention in the US, but were swiftly reformed in Australia after the Port Arthur mass shooting. Source: AAP

“That kind of mass support doesn’t happen there on these sorts of issues.”

Rolfe said that the term polarised gets overused in Australian political commentating and argued that a more accurate description is “fragmented”.

“Our parliamentary system – and the compulsory and preferential and proportional systems involved – has been an aid to better representation of different opinions. I’m not saying perfect representation, no voting system is, but better representation and therefore variety and as I say, fragmentation.”

Over in the US, Jensen says the future appears grim.

“This is an administration that, whether you agree with it or not, has made profound changes to this country in the eight months it’s been in office,” he said.

“Some people love it, some people hate it. The people that hate it are starting to act out. People who love it are going to act out against those people that hate it, and it becomes a vicious spiral that could lead us into something really, really bad.”

— With additional reporting by the Reuters news agency.