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J.D. Tuccille: The American youth marinating in 'assassination culture'

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If you think American politics are violent now, just wait a few years. While not exactly daily occurrences, assassinations and attempted assassinations, arsons, and ideologically fuelled brawls have become sufficiently commonplace that many escape the public’s notice. Americans overall have become not just more tolerant, but even supportive of resolving political disputes with violence. But research shows that those most inclined towards violence are younger people marinating in an “assassination culture” that normalizes physical attacks to resolve disagreements. That bodes poorly for the future. 

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Citing exchanges with students at Sarah Lawrence College in New York, politics professor Samuel J. Abrams wrote this month about the young adults he encounters believing “that the system has failed, that ordinary politics moves too slowly in the face of what they see as a humanitarian emergency, that direct action is the only language power understands.” He added, “Today’s cohort increasingly accepts violence as an alternative to speech.” 

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Abrams doesn’t merely rely on anecdotes to make his case. He points to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression’s (FIRE) 2026 College Free Speech Rankings. Thirty-four per cent of the more than 68,000 students surveyed believe it is acceptable to use violence to stop a campus speech with which they disagree — up from 32 per cent in 2024, 27 per cent in 2023, and 20 per cent in 2022. 

Gallup pollsters agree, reporting in December 2025 that “Age is the strongest predictor of attitudes toward political violence, with young adults aged 18 to 29 more likely than other age groups to say that it is sometimes OK to use violence to achieve a political goal.” Thirty per cent of that cohort endorsed political violence, compared to 21 per cent of those 30-44, 13 per cent of those 45-59, and four per cent of Americans 60 and older. And while some impulse control has always come with age, Gallup added that “younger Americans aged 18 to 29 are more likely today than in the past to view political violence as a legitimate tool to effect change.” 

A year earlier, the Bipartisan Policy Center noted that “Consistently over multiple months of polling, Gen Z showed the highest levels of acceptance for violence against elected officials (56 per cent).” 

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The term “assassination culture” was coined by the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) and the Rutgers University Social Perception Lab to describe what researchers see as “widespread justification for lethal violence — including assassination — among younger, highly online, and ideologically left-aligned users.” Basically, people are egging each other on to ever greater extremism, including the embrace of violence as a means of achieving social change and political goals. As a joint NCRI and Eagleton Institute paper put it, “Social media platforms provide amplification, while psychologically susceptible individuals provide justification. Together they form an emergent system that normalizes violence.” 

We’ve seen that in the form of public applause from some quarters for the assassination of conservative figure Charlie Kirk, as well as the fan club that has developed around Luigi Mangione, the alleged murderer of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.  

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But no political movement has a lock on stupidity. Just as FIRE found in its 2026 rankings that “conservative students are increasingly joining their liberal peers in supporting censorship,” so NCRI reported in January that “support for political violence has not only persisted but increased across the political spectrum.” Specifically, note NCRI researchers, justification for murdering Donald Trump increased among left-of-centre respondents from 56 per cent in April 2025 to 67 per cent. But tolerance for violence has grown on the right as well, with 54 per cent of right-of-centre respondents justifying the hypothetical murder of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. 

Support for political violence strongly correlated in the NCRI study with belief that the United States is in decline. Across the political spectrum, people with a pessimistic view of the country’s future were most inclined to turn to violence to advance their agendas. NCRI points out that there’s a lot of research supporting the premise that people become increasingly aggressive when the gap grows between what they expect from society and what they receive. Unfortunately, pessimism is a defining characteristic of young Americans from finances to the stability of democratic institutions, with only 13 per cent saying the country is headed in the right direction in the latest Harvard Youth Poll. 

High social media use also corresponds strongly with stronger support for political violence — a link also found by Gallup pollsters. As we’ve discovered time and again, the denizens of online echo chambers are more than happy to cheer each other on to embrace deranged beliefs and evil actions. 

Surprisingly, and in contradiction to earlier studies, NCRI researchers found women taking the lead in approval of violence to achieve political goals (Gallup still finds men more prone to violence). “Female respondents were more likely than male respondents to tolerate some degree of justification for the murder of both Mamdani and Trump,” NCRI reported. “Specifically, females were approximately 20 per cent more likely to express some justification in the Mamdani case and approximately 14 per cent more likely in the Trump case.” 

The researchers at NCRI worry about the militancy they detect among women because, they say, women have historically played a stabilizing role in society. The end of that role would probably increase the likelihood of violent conflict. 

But even if NCRI is an outlier on new violent tendencies among women, its findings square with those of other pollsters and researchers about the growing acceptability of political violence among young Americans. Steeped in an “assassination culture” that justifies the use of force to achieve their goals, young Americans seem prepared to face off against their opponents and — inevitably — each other. 

“Once both sides abandon speech, there are no rules,” Professor Abrams warned his Sarah Lawrence students and their peers. “Politics becomes a contest of force.” Abrams believes the ultimate winner will almost certainly be the state, since it’s the most prepared to use force. But divided as America is, there’s no reason to assume that the instruments of the state would remain unified in the hands of any one faction in such a scenario. More likely they would split and fragment along lines of conflicting loyalties. 

Whether or however those splits occur, young Americans seem determined to force Americans even further down an already dark path. 

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