The killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk in Utah last Wednesday sent shockwaves across the United States and is already having rippling consequences amid a historically divisive period. Utah Gov. Spencer Cox on Friday said Kirk’s killing was a “watershed in American history” that could mark “the end of a dark chapter in our history or the beginning of a darker chapter.”
In the wake of Kirk’s killing, experts on political violence warn that the United States has entered a dangerous new era akin to what the country experienced in the 1960s—a decade in which a number of U.S. political leaders were assassinated—and they’re urging political and community leaders to take steps to reduce tensions.
Robert Pape, a political scientist and the founding director of the Chicago Project on Security and Threats (CPOST), told Foreign Policy that he’s concerned about “rising support for political violence across the political spectrum” in the United States.
Pape, who has studied political violence for decades, wrote a New York Times op-ed in June, following the assassination and attempted assassination of two Minnesota state lawmakers, in which he warned that the country “may be on the brink of an extremely violent era in American politics.”
“That warning has now become a reality,” Pape said. The country is “now in the grip” of what Pape calls “the era of violent populism,” which is “characterized by rising political violence on both the right and the left.”
Kirk’s killing came on the heels of a series of high-profile acts of political violence in the United States in recent years that targeted both Republicans and Democrats, including the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol; a 2022 assassination attempt on Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh; the 2022 attempted kidnapping of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that resulted in an assault on her husband by a hammer-wielding man at their home in San Francisco; and at least two apparent assassination attempts on Trump that included a shooting at one of his rallies that grazed Trump’s ear and killed one spectator.
The killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York City in December 2024 has also been viewed through a political lens. Some on the left have since treated the alleged shooter, Luigi Mangione, as a folk hero.
With several months still left, 2025 is already on track to be a historically violent year in the United States. There were roughly 150 politically motivated attacks in the country in the first half of the year, according to a University of Maryland terrorism database—nearly double the figure from the same period the year prior.
In April, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and his family were forced to flee the governor’s mansion after a man threw Molotov cocktails into the residence. According to arrest warrants, the suspect, who has since been charged with arson and attempted homicide, said he targeted the governor’s home in part because of Shapiro’s views on the war in Gaza. Two Israeli Embassy staff members were fatally shot in Washington in May. Prosecutors have alleged that the suspect was motivated by a hatred for Israel.
In June, a gunman fatally shot Minnesota state Rep. Melissa Hortman, a Democrat, and her husband. Police said the same gunman shot and wounded Democratic state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife.
“The only other time that we’ve had such a heightened period of political violence, if you think about all the things that have happened from [January] 2021 through now, is in the 1960s,” said Dana Fisher, the director of the Center for Environment, Community & Equity at American University. Fisher also said this year was comparable to 1968, when Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy were both assassinated.
Kirk was a close ally of U.S. President Donald Trump and a prominent figure on the right, with a particularly strong following among younger conservatives. Cox claimed the suspect in Kirk’s killing had a “leftist ideology,” but a motive hasn’t been established as investigators continue to gather evidence.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration has responded to Kirk’s killing by blaming the “radical left” and has vowed to go after leftist groups—prompting Democratic lawmakers to raise the alarm about crackdowns on dissent and threats to free speech at a time when there are already concerns that the United States is descending into authoritarianism. As the White House portrays political violence as a problem emanating predominantly from the left, critics have also emphasized that Trump has a well-documented history of violent rhetoric.
Vice President J.D. Vance, who was close with Kirk, has been particularly outspoken on the topic in recent days. “While our side of the aisle certainly has its crazies, it is a statistical fact that most of the lunatics in American politics today are proud members of the far left,” Vance said on Monday while appearing as a guest host on Kirk’s podcast.
But Vance’s characterization of political violence in the United States is not backed up by evidence, and the reality is far more complicated. No group or faction has a monopoly on support for or involvement in political violence in the country.
Eighty-one people have been killed by politically motivated violence in the United States since 2020, according to the Cato Institute: “Right-wing terrorists account for over half of those murders, Islamists for 21 percent, left-wingers for 22 percent, and 1 percent had unknown or other motivations.” Data such as this helps explain why conversations on political violence in the country in recent years have often been centered on the far right and white supremacist groups. The involvement of far-right groups in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol accelerated such discussions and concerns among law enforcement.
That said, the United States has a long and convoluted legacy of political violence, and the motivations and ideologies of those involved in such activities have shifted over time. Along those lines, experts caution against binary thinking on the issue, particularly as political violence morphs into a more pervasive problem in the present day.
“We are in a historically high period of political violence, and it is targeting both the right and the left in serious ways,” Pape said.
Polling consistently shows that the vast majority of Americans oppose political violence and view it as a major threat. But researchers have still been alarmed by emerging trends they’ve encountered in recent years regarding levels of public support for political violence—including among left-leaning Americans.
“Historically, when we look at the research, it’s the ideological right that is almost exclusively representing this increasing shift in political support for political violence—and we’ve seen that over the past eight years-plus,” Fisher said. But Fisher wondered if there would be a shift on the left regarding views on political violence in the face of a second Trump administration and amid rising distrust in institutions.
This year, Fisher and her team surveyed participants at multiple large-scale protests, including the Stand up for Science, Hands Off, and No Kings rallies. Her team found “growing support for political violence on the left.”
More than one-third of participants at the Stand Up for Science rally in Washington (35 percent) in March, for example, said they believed that “because things have gotten so far off track, Americans may have to resort to violence in order to save our country.” This marked a rise compared with past surveys. The number was even higher at the flagship No Kings Day rally in Philadelphia in June, where 40 percent of participants supported this claim.
“There is no question that there is a growing sentiment that the problems in our country are so systemic that democracy can’t save us and that political violence may be necessary, which is really alarming,” Fisher said.
For more than four years, CPOST has been conducting surveys on support for political violence among Americans. CPOST’s most recent survey from May found the highest levels of support for political violence to date on both the right and the left, Pape said.
“Our May survey showed that 39 percent of Democrats agreed that the use of force was justified to remove Donald Trump from the presidency,” Pape said, emphasizing that his center’s research has found that when people use the term “use of force” they are thinking of assassinations or deadly force 55 percent of the time. “That’s really quite a disturbing number,” he said.
CPOST also found that nearly a quarter (24 percent) of Republicans agreed that the use of the U.S. military was “justified to suppress Democratic protesters,” which Pape said is also “really quite disturbing because we’re talking about the U.S. military, which is the most lethal, potent force on the planet.”
Overall, Pape said these recent findings show “pretty extreme support for political violence on both the right and the left and represent tens of millions of Americans who support political violence,” which “is corresponding with what we are seeing as this rise in actual political violence.”
CPOST also conducted a study on threats to members of Congress from 2001 to 2024 that were prosecuted by the Justice Department and found that “there was a fivefold increase in the annual rate of threats to members of Congress” starting in 2017, Pape said. The findings showed that the targeting of Republican and Democratic members of Congress was fairly even, or around 50-50, during that period.
When asked about Vance’s comments on Kirk’s killing and political violence, Pape said he would be “delighted” to brief the vice president and his staff on CPOST’s research and data. Pape—who has advised every White House since 9/11, including Trump 1.0, on various issues regarding political violence—underscored the need for “fuller discussions” on political violence.
Pape is worried about what’s to come in the months ahead and expressed concern that the United States will see “the sorrow and the fear and the anger on one side” evolve into “more violence,” warning of the potential for copycat attacks.
“One of the big dangers we face now are spiral dynamics, where you’re going to get a spiraling of political violence on the right and the left that’s going to make this worse on both sides,” Pape said. “That’s why I’m trying very much to encourage all political and media leaders, figures on both sides, to take the temperature down.”
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