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Republican political activist Charlie Kirk was killed as he spoke at a Utah Valley University event on September 10. Just three months earlier, Minnesotan House Democrat Melissa Hortman and her husband were shot and killed by a masked gunman.

According to a thinktank, the Institute of Strategic and International Studies, violence against those in US political life in the four years to 2024 was nearly triple the number of incidents in the previous 25 years combined.

Historically the killings of significant political figures has sometimes been the precursor to dramatic repression or further violence. The killing of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914 led precipitously to the beginning of the first world war. The murder of German diplomat Ernst vom Rath by a Jewish refugee was used as a pretext for the slaying of Jews in Berlin and the justification for unleashing a wave of violence and destruction across Nazi Germany in what became known as Kristallnacht.

There are, of course, alternative lessons from historic moments. When British MP Jo Cox was slain on the streets of Birstall, near Leeds, in 2016, politicians from across the divide condemned it. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and Conservative prime minister David Cameron visited the town where Cox was murdered together: a symbol of political unity against violence.

Political violence is defined by the United Nations as that which is intended to achieve political goals or intimidate opponents through the use of physical force or threats to influence a political outcome or silence dissent. Katie Pruszynski, who researches political violence at the University of Sheffield, finds that the use of polarising and extreme language in debate has stoked up something she calls “hyperpartisanship”, where opponents have become “enemies” and those with different worldviews have become “traitors”. This tension stokes distrust and radicalisation, she warns. So then, this fits within the framework of the US president’s immediate reaction. In a video published on X, Trump vowed to root out “the radical left” whose rhetoric is “directly responsible” for Kirk’s killing.

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