In dialogue: A rising tide of political violenceIn the wake of Charlie Kirk’s murder, Substackers consider the illiberal rise of violence, and where we go from here
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Alexis Coe: Yesterday in Utah, Charlie Kirk began to answer a question on gun violence when he was silenced by it. A single round cut short a public debate and turned it into a political assassination.
Sean Spicer: I could talk about the insanity that this was allowed to happen; that it’s taken over 24 hours to find the culprit; the disgraceful coverage by the media; the despicable comments making the rounds on social media. But the sad truth is that none of that will bring him back.
Andrew Egger: The summer of 2025 had already been a season of alarming political violence—the May killing of two young employees of Israel’s D.C. embassy, the June shooting of two Minnesota state lawmakers and their families, the firebombing of a pro-Israel march in Colorado, the August shooting at the Centers for Disease Control.
Ross Barkan: I do have a suspicion, yet to be confirmed, that we are exiting the mass shooting era and returning to the kinds of high-profile, individuated assassinations that defined so much of the last century. There have been so many mass shootings, especially at schools, that a killer can’t find much notoriety anymore. We collectively remember Adam Lanza, Elliot Rodger, and James Holmes, or maybe the Columbine kids, but Salvador Ramos, who murdered nineteen students and two teachers at Uvalde, draws a blank. Luigi Mangione, of course, is now globally famous, and he only needed to kill one person who was not famous at all.
Prospect Magazine: [P]olitical violence is hardly new (particularly in America), but a distinctive variety has emerged: “stochastic” violence, defined by the “general and vague encouragement” of violence via social media and other networks. Individuals who were radicalised online were responsible for the killings of political figures including Jo Cox and Minnesota politician Melissa Hortman.
Andrew Egger: The reactions [to Kirk’s murder] played out online much as you’d expect. Horrified leaders of both parties issued statements condemning political violence and issuing condolences to Kirk’s family. Below that seethed the eternal, inescapable culture war, each side excoriating the other. It barely mattered how representative of their broader political cohorts these posters were; every American’s social-media algorithms made sure they got to see whichever ones would make them maddest.
Noah Smith: On anonymous platforms like X and Bluesky, the marginal cost of calling anyone and everyone a Nazi is zero, so everyone calls everyone a Nazi. And malignant trolls get attention and status by whipping up fear and extremism. Of course, rightists do this too. The result is a constant toxic mix of alarmism and extremism, no matter where you sit on the political spectrum.
Andrew Egger: The same fight, too, could be seen on cable news.
Aaron Everitt: When debate is silenced, it does something unnatural to the human experience. When that debate is silenced because of violence, it feels even more disjointed from the human experience.
Alexis Coe: Already, Americans speak casually of “civil war,” march in armed rallies, and wink at political violence as if it were just another tactic.
Noah Smith: I still think the probability of an actual American civil war is relatively low, but if it does happen, it won’t be rifle battles in an empty field like last time—it’ll be more like the Spanish Civil War, with neighbors fighting neighbors, rampant atrocities on both sides, and the nation impoverished for many years.
Alexis Coe: Political violence, [George Washington] warned, does not start with mobs or bayonets. It begins with citizens who come to see those with different views as enemies—encouraged by parties who mistake retribution as rule. In his “Farewell Address,” Washington warned, “The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension. . .is itself a frightful despotism.”
Dan Pfeiffer: Democracy cannot function if people can’t participate in the political process without fear of violence. Political violence begets more violence, as more and more people seek retribution. This is when the system collapses and people begin to lose their rights and freedoms.
Jeff Maurer: [A]nyone who values the hard-earned progress that humanity has made separating political power from physical power should view this as a tragedy on a human and a societal level.
Matthew Continetti: The fact that Kirk was killed on a college campus is grimly symbolic.
Angel Eduardo: The data is grim. More college students than ever believe that, at least in some rare circumstances, it can be acceptable for their peers to engage in violence to stop speech they don’t like. This is extremely troubling, because violence in response to speech is how our culture of free expression—and the civil society it creates—begins to crumble completely. When it comes to violence, even “rarely” is too often.
Jeff Maurer: Kirk was prominent because large numbers of people wanted to hear what he had to say, but he’s been removed by someone who feels that they should have the power to dictate the content of our national dialogue. And, sadly, they do have that power—the shooter just used violence to make a decision that we all now have to live with. We’re subject to the whims of someone willing to use violence to achieve their goals, just like when brigands were stealing our sad little peasant pot and shoe.
Andrew Egger: I don’t know what we can do to avoid this fate. All I know is what I can do. And what I can do starts with the acknowledgment that, while Charlie Kirk may have been an ideological opponent, he wasn’t my enemy. My enemy—an enemy I share with many who would call themselves my enemy—is the person who shot him, and anyone else who would reach for violence as a means to a political end.
Jeremiah Johnson (quoted by Andrew Egger): As much as you can, resist the hysteria. Refuse to participate in it, refuse to make the polarization worse. The purpose of liberalism is to allow us to disagree with someone without discriminating against them, without harassing them, without killing them. It’s a precious thing, perhaps the most precious thing our civilization has achieved. Every time you break bread in peace with an outsider, every time a Catholic and Protestant shake hands, it’s a miracle. Don’t take it for granted.
Helen Pluckrose: The task before us is simple, but not easy. We must be both angry and saddened at the taking of a man’s life without making him a token. We must reject political violence consistently without resorting to tribalism. We must defend, without compromise, the principle that every human being has the right to speak without fear of death. If we can do this—on the left, on the right, and in the centre—we affirm both the freedoms and the humanity of those with whom we disagree and of those with whom we agree and the liberty that must endure for us all.
Newt Gingrich: Democrats and Republicans must engage in common dialogue. We should emulate Kirk’s passion for reaching out to people with different viewpoints to talk about ideas. Whenever possible, Democrats and Republicans should launch debates and dialogues built around real issues and values disagreements.
Matthew Continetti: The murder of Charlie Kirk could yet serve as a turning point. It could be an occasion for Americans to step away from the abyss and recover the moral clarity and habits of heart that sustain a republic. But if we fail—if the moment passes, if the tit for tat escalates, if we retreat from the public square into our private redoubts—then the abyss won’t recede. It will widen. And America will be one step closer to the edge. |
