A governor’s house was set ablaze. A senator and her husband were killed in their own home. A man was shot in the neck, right in front of his wife and children. This is a phenomenon of a recent string of political violence that has been linked to America. Our country has quickly headed towards a culture of “violent populism,” which will only continue to be stoked as we simply become more and more divided.
In the afternoon of Wednesday, September 10th, 2025, Charlie Kirk, an influential right-wing activist, was assassinated while speaking at a college campus in Utah. Tyler Robinson, the alleged assassin, was a 22-year-old college dropout who was entangled in an internet subculture of furries and radicalization. The bullets were engraved with Robinson’s signature, which varied from phrases that were a mix of typical Gen Z cynicism and irony, but also radical left ideology. His action on that day not only exemplified the recent surge of political violence within the country but also revealed the rapidly growing frustration and collective anger of the American people, which has now culminated in these violent acts of disorder.
New York City Police are investigating Anti-Muslim threats against the recent mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani. A Jewish lawmaker in Ohio reporting that he had been “run off the road” by a man who waved a Palestinian flag at him. All of these events had only occurred this year, and that’s not even mentioning the long stretch of political violence that had occurred since President Trump had first taken office back in 2017, including the January 6th Capital Riots. The country is at a historical high period of American political violence, on the likes that we haven’t seen in almost half a century. The atmosphere in our country’s current era has reached a political boiling point that is nearly identical to that of the Civil Rights and Vietnam War eras, in which similar acts of political violence, such as the assassinations of RFK and MLK.
During the 2024 election cycle alone, almost half of all states in the country reported various threats against election workers, which included social media death threats, intimidation, and doxing. And in the first half of 2025, when Trump first took office, University of Maryland researchers found that out of all of the violent events they were tracking in the country, 35% of these events specifically targeted U.S. government personnel or facilities, which was more than twice the rate in 2024. You can only imagine how it has managed to grow over the second half of the year; these events have become a terrifying norm in our country.
Professor Clionadh Raleigh is the chief executive of Armed Conflict Location & Event Data, a conflict data organization that collects, analyzes, and maps data on political violence and demonstrations globally. Their data focuses on specific events of political violence, such as armed riots, political assassinations, and civil disturbances. She notes that these events of political violence, particularly those within the country, have become a phenomenon that is uniquely “American”.
“Despite politics in the US being strongly partisan and polarised, US political violence does not
display any partisan inclination,” Raleigh stated in a Sky News report, which looked at the recent acts of American political violence. “The ‘politics’ behind this violence is rarely driven by an agenda, and is often incoherent and individualized.”
I, however, believe that there is so much more behind the reasons for political violence than simply the actions of a lone individual acting upon their impulsive whims. A collective anger has been growing within our country. It is a frustration that has gone beyond any reasonable limit and has only been perpetuated by online platforms and our own politicians.
The left versus the right. The ‘us versus them’ mentality that so many Americans seem to carry now. Political polarization is another phenomenon that Professor Raleigh would also claim is unmistakable in modern American culture. In 2022, political scientists Lillana Mason and Nathan Kelmoe published “Radical American Partisanship: Mapping Violent Hostility, Its Causes, and the Consequences for Democracy”. It was a book that analyzed how extreme political hostility influenced democratic instability. In one particular section of the book, Mason and Kelmoe discussed how the rapidly growing concept of “partisan identity strength,” how much being a Democrat or Republican is part of who they are, was one of the most important factors in inciting political violence. Americans were once not tied to a single social identity but instead belonged to multiple identity groups; it seems that many of them are now bogged down by a “strong partisan” identity.
“I think a lot of people are slowly moving towards those [far edges of the political spectrum],” senior Ethan Lee said.“People on the right are starting to move farther right, while people on the left are starting to move farther left. And it’s started to cause a lot more violence, and we’ve started to normalize it.”
These shifts towards the far ends of the political spectrum have placed many Americans into one of the two “strong partisan” identities: far-left democrats or far-right republicans. Still, neither of these associations can ever meet in the middle. This idea of a polarized political identity has only been emphasized by a multitude of academic studies over recent years, as people’s social identity have slowly become intertwined with their political identities. This intersection between these two separate identities has slowly caused more noticeable differences between people of different political affiliations in “leisure activities, consumption, aesthetic taste, and personal morality,” as Pennsylvania State University Sociology and Social Data Analysis Associate Professor Daniel DellaPosta states in his collaborative 2015 paper, “Why Do Liberals Drink Lattes?”
“People seem a lot less racist or sexist, and tend to be more [stricter on political views],” Lee continued. “A lot of people don’t care whether or not you’re a guy or a girl anymore, but now, it’s Are you left, or are you right?”
Partisan division has undoubtedly caused a sense of “tribe mentality.” Rachel Kleinfield is a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, in its Democracy, Conflict, and Governance program. In her 2021 Journal of Democracy essay, “The Rise of Political Violence in the United States,” she discusses how “greater homogeneity within groups” with little to no intersecting ties allows people to form “clear in-and out-groups, priming them for conflict.” These potential conflicts are often the result of unnecessary emotional and personal factors in American politics. Since many people’s identities are directly tied to their political affiliations, belittling any aspect of those affiliations can cause anger and humiliation.
“People side with their side so much, the plot is kinda lost,” junior Hailey Tuner explained. “They’re not actually aligning with their values. They are aligning with a party member, or they’re aligning with a party just for the fact of aligning with a party. It’s not as meaningful, it’s not as it should be. Like, more idealization than belief systems.”
This idealization can be attributed to the influence of our politicians, which continues to emphasize a sense of cultish mentality between the two major parties. We cannot deny the fact that there has been a rise of “ideologically-driven” leaders within our country who have been exploiting our natural fears of a group different from ourselves, whether that is racially, ethnically, or religiously, etc., to push their policies forward blindly. These politicians are ensuring that instead of American citizens being governed by rationality, we are being controlled by our own emotions, making us vulnerable to their manipulation.
“A lot of these people are ignoring things that these political figures are saying, just for the sake of supporting them [instead of being politically literate],” Turner continued. “They’re [blindly following people] and not doing any actual research.”
That might be one of the biggest answers to the rise of political extremism in the United States. Political literacy is simply on the decline, and is slowly being replaced with a political culture of hateful and polarized rhetoric, which is being spread by our own politicians as a way for them to divide us, which has led to the rise of political violence that we see today.
Alongside our own politicians, social media is another contributor to our country’s situation of polarization, and as an extension, political violence. Respondents in a global survey conducted in the second quarter of 2025 have revealed that 34.5% of social media users utilize those online platforms as a way to obtain news information from any credible news source, meaning that a large portion of our population is gaining a lot of their knowledge not from any credible news sources, but instead, from social media. This can entail major consequences for the way that people’s political opinions are actively influenced, as a lot of the information that you see on social media is tailored to your specific preferences, which means that the algorithm will only expose you to like-minded media, even if that source has credibility. Furthermore, in the political journalist and author Mike Fisher’s book, “The Chaos Machine,” Fisher examines the relationship between social media and polarization, and explains how social media operates on this algorithm, which only prioritizes content with the highest engagement bait, and then “posts strong traction when they reinforce in-group identity by criticizing out-groups.” Results of this high-engagement content often include very negative and controversial topics, and only lead to high political polarization between various sides online. This social media-derived political polarization can then manifest itself in some drastic cases, such as political violence.
“Algorithms put you in an echo chamber. You’re not exposed to new ideas that you get while sitting down and having a conversation with someone. You’re hearing more of the same thing and [not any ideas that might challenge yours],” junior Luke Perkins said. “That’s [not how you grow as a person] and form better opinions. You [have to take] the best of what’s good and disregard the worst and the bad.”
The most blatant example of the connection between social media and the incitement of political violence are the Capitol Riots on Jan. 6th, 2021. We cannot deny the effect that social media had on Trump’s supporters to mobilize against Congress. On online far-right platforms such as Gab, Parler, and Truth Social, his supporters circulated within online discussions and groups to scheme with and advise each other on how to take the Capitol building. That doesn’t even mention all of the tweets Trump made to incite violent reactions from his already-polarized fan base. Trump’s weaponization of social media to spread disinformation, as well as the role of far-right social media platforms, both serve as prime examples of echo chambers, whose only purpose is to incite violent reactions out of like-minded individuals within a dangerous, polarized political climate.
Let’s take a look back at Charlie Kirk’s alleged killer, Tyler Robinson, for instance. It seems that Robinson is the poster child of the dangerous path of polarization that social media can send you on. But that’s not really the case. Although many Republicans have claimed that they know that Tyler Robinson subscribed to a “Leftist ideology,” we still have no idea of any of his actual political affiliations. He was not registered as a republican or a democrat. He was an LGBTQ+ supporter, but he was also an advocate of gun rights. It appears that Robinson may have just been a left-leaning moderate, but may have been pushed into political violence by the radical online forums with which he had engaged with.
Tyler Robinson had initially disagreed with Charlie Kirk’s ideology. It seemed like he wasn’t a person who was capable of such a violent act. But his abrupt change into planning out and then subsequently executing his assassination perfectly depicts our nation’s newly found political culture, which is toxic at best and deadly at worst. But what really intensifies this culture is the modern digital age that we’re living in, especially in much of our nation’s younger generations.
Online platforms such as Twitter and Instagram have significantly impacted the majority of Gen Zers. With much of today’s youth culture revolving around social media, many people would agree that America’s younger generations are “chronically online.” However, the interconnectedness of social media, a niche that traditional media could never provide before, has allowed young people to have more of an active role in becoming politically engaged and involved.
Social media can easily influence and warp the minds of the youth and send them down a political rabbit hole. But it also has the capacity to give many Americans the ability to become more politically active in both the online space and in real life. Although not having the correct education and information can begin to sow problems within distinct communities, it only causes further polarization due to misinformation. And alongside a closed-off perspective towards any opinions that are not your own can only lead to a hostile political climate. Especially in multifaceted communities.
Charlie Kirk also served as the founder and head of Turning Point USA. It is a non-profit organization that advocates expanding conservative politics among youth. It now has a chapter at our school, which has come under a lot of controversy. Their posters around the school have been vandalized or ripped down, and some of their members have even been threatened.
“I have not got any personal threats to myself, but I know people in the group that have, and it’s pretty horrible [that people would do this], and to a club that’s just trying to express their beliefs,” senior Zach Brown said, a member of the club. “I think a lot of people have a misconception of what our group is, and a lot of people think that we’re against certain people, just based on us identifying with the Republican Party and the conservative party. It’s not just a conservative club. We want people to come and talk about what they believe in, because it’s ultimately like a free environment.”
The majority of the people in the chapter at the school have good intentions. They want to have civil discussions over a variety of topics, and they are open to listening to any political viewpoint that is not their own. But that is not really emblematic of the actual intentions of the overall Turning Point organization in the United States. What they are spreading is a message of hate, not love of any kind. But we should still learn how to have respect for one another. Maybe not love, but at least respect.
There was recently a short debate about a very disputed topic in one of my classes, which, in this day and age, doesn’t necessarily mean much, as everything now really seems to be controversial. But it was some of the language that a person in that discussion used that had shocked me. He had dehumanized them. And that’s exactly what I’m talking about.
The United States is divided. There’s no doubt about that. Americans have lost that sense of unity with each other and have instead fallen victim to the tribe mentality. That’s why there is so much political violence today. And it will only continue to rise as we find even more things to divide us and endlessly disagree on.
“I think we should focus more on up and down, instead of left or right,” Perkins said.
That’s what we, as our country, should be doing. Our enemies are not external in any way; they are internal. They are our personal biases, insecurities, and fears that are blinding us from seeing the bigger picture. We are letting our emotions, rather than our rationale, control us, as
frustration turns into anger, anger transforms into hate, and hate becomes unbridled violence.
We need to learn how to separate ourselves from politics and see each other as people. We should not be divided, but instead, united.
