A divided America and its searing spiral of violence - the new normal?

It’s spiralling out of control. The assassination of MAGA activist Charlie Kirk was just the latest in a surge of politically motivated violence in the United States.

US President Donald Trump touched upon this in his video statement, but he only listed attacks against right-wing targets.

The problem reaches much deeper.

Since the two assassination attempts against Trump himself in the summer of 2024, we’ve seen the killing of a health care executive in New York; attacks on Democratic National Committee buildings in Arizona and the Republican Party headquarters in New Mexico.

There was the firebombing of the home of the Democratic governor of Pennsylvania; the killing of two Israeli Embassy staffers in Washington; the firebombing of a peace march for Israeli hostages in Colorado; and the shooting of two Democratic state legislators and their spouses in Minnesota.

All this happened just over the past 14 months.

Before that, there was the attempt on Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s life and the hammer attack against former House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband in 2022; the 6 January Capitol riot in 2021; the plot to kidnap Michigan’s governor in 2020; the shooting of Republican congressman Steve Calise in 2017 and the shooting of Democratic congresswoman Gabby Giffords in 2011.

All these acts were, of course, reminiscent of the assassination attempt of Ronald Reagan in 1981 and the killings of Martin Luther King, Jr., Robert Kennedy and John F. Kennedy in the 1960s.

In the wake of the Vietnam War, US political violence was perpetrated more often by radicals on the left and focused largely on destroying property, such as government buildings, according to Rachel Kleinfeld, who studies political conflict and extremism at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Washington think tank. “There were many, many bombings, but usually at night, or after called-in warnings,” she said.

“The goal was not to kill people; it was to affect decisions” by policymakers.

In contrast, much of today’s political violence is aimed at people.

The deadly danger of right-wing extremism

The trend in recent years has been for the great majority of extremist-related murders to be connected to some form of right-wing extremism, according to a 2024 study by the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism.

In 2024, white supremacists were the perpetrators in the majority of the killings (62%), whereas anti-government extremism in its various forms was behind 38% of the murders.

The long-term trends resemble those of the short term, in that far-right extremists have committed the bulk of extremist-related murders: 328 of the 429 killings (76%) over the past decade.

Domestic Islamist extremists were responsible for 79 killings (18%) over that same span, while murders from other sources made up the small remainder, the authors of the ADL study write.

It may not seem plausible that Charlie Kirk, who was a right-wing influencer, was killed by someone with the same ideological background, yet Donald Trump’s would-be assassin was a registered Republican.

Explanations for today’s violence vary, ranging from widespread economic stress to unease at America’s changing racial and ethnic demographics and a coarsening of political rhetoric in the Trump era.

Traditional divisions, typically rooted in policy differences between right and left, have given way to a perception that members of the opposing political party are an evil force bent on destroying America’s social and cultural fabric, recent polls show.

Typical “culture war" issues evolve around immigration, abortion, gender and LGBTQ+ rights, vaccinations and gun control.

Should violence be acceptable?

In a Reuters/Ipsos poll of nearly 4,500 registered voters in May, roughly 20% of both Democratic and Republican respondents called violence “acceptable” if committed “to achieve my idea of a better society.”

But that sentiment alarms most Americans: about 65% of respondents in a separate Reuters/Ipsos poll in March and April expressed concern about “acts of violence committed against people in your community because of their political beliefs.”

The nature of domestic political violence in the US has changed over the years.

Once dominated by right-wing extremist groups such as the Aryan Knights, the Ku Klux Klan, the Michigan Militia and the Proud Boys, political violence today is rather perpetrated by people who self-radicalise via online engagement.

According to the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), most political violence in the US is committed by people who do not belong to any formal organisation.

Instead, ideas that were once confined to fringe groups now appear in the mainstream media.

White-supremacist ideology, militia fashion, and conspiracy theories spread via social media, YouTube channels, and blogs, while a crude language of memes, slang and jokes blurs the line between posturing and provoking violence, normalising radical ideologies and activities.

“This organisational pattern makes stopping political violence more difficult, and also more crucial, than ever before,” said Rachel Kleinfeld.