The assassination of far-right political influencer Charlie Kirk has consumed political discourse in the United States and sharpened contradictions along the lines of race, political party, and more. There are multiple important conversations to be had on the topic, such as the harmful repercussions of militant adventurism and the Trump administration’s weaponization of the event to expand state repression of political adversaries further. This article will examine the concept of political violence itself in the US context. 

The murder of Kirk has led to much political discourse surrounding “political violence,” with many asserting that it is antithetical to the American way of life, and some praising the killer for supposedly bringing justice to a monster. It is no surprise that the assassination of a prominent political figure would come to the forefront of societal discourse. Acts like these have a storied history of shaking our country to its core. When an individual with significant influence on the political discourse and movements of the country is murdered, it simultaneously signifies a greater threat of violence against those who align with their ideas, and generally, that other influential figures could be next. In a country that prides itself on liberal ideals such as free speech, these signals reverberate across the nation. This effect is amplified by the digital age, where people can watch a video of the killing online. With all that being said, assassinations are but one of many forms of political violence, which vary significantly in mode and method.

Some would argue that there is a fundamental difference between direct acts of violence between individuals and from systems that have violent outcomes ingrained in their existence. While this is true to a certain extent, treating the former as the definition of violence and the latter as something else entirely is incorrect. It’s important to recognize both the unique characteristics of different types of political violence and their connection through politics and violence. One reason political violence is often understood through a limited lens is the perception of legality. Members of a society are conditioned to view the law simply as the government's attempt to maintain order. It is easy to forget that the legal authorization of any operation is the assertion of a political entity guided by various interests. Whether a person is killed by a criminal with a gun or by lethal injection in a penitentiary, the result is the taking of a human life. Another reason violent systems often evade being labeled as such is the need for violence to be direct. It is much easier to accept the violence of execution than of imprisonment, but that violence is only more subtle. A prisoner has their freedoms and space of living shrunk, and valuable time lost to living in captivity. Prisons are dangerous and unsanitary, and the threat of a prolonged sentence or psychological torture (solitary confinement) looms to prevent disobedience. There are processes far more subtle in their violence, but political systems are not neutral bodies, and when they cause physical harm, the fact of violence should be acknowledged.

The United States of America has existed as a product of violence from its inception. Whether we’re talking about the genocide of the Native Americans creating US territory, the role of the trans-Atlantic slave trade in powering the American project, or the Revolutionary War allowing for the United States to become an autonomous political entity, it is safe to say that the country we live in exists as an explicit result of incalculable violence. It is also evident that this violence is political; when violence is enacted for political reasons, that violence should be understood in the context of politics. 

While we could spend innumerable hours tracing the history of political violence from the establishment of the British American colonies to the nation we call home today, let us shift our view to the present. The US has enacted astronomical violence abroad throughout its existence, but the emphasis here will be on the domestic sphere. It is abundantly clear that our society continues to operate based on state political violence. For example, the US is considered to be the only highly developed capitalist country without socialized healthcare. To protect themselves from the potential of financial ruin from a medical emergency, Americans must rely on private healthcare companies to insure their physical health. These corporations are obviously run for profit, and roughly 20% of health insurance claims in the US are denied each year, forcing them to fend for themselves. Every individual whose life is destroyed as a result of this system is a victim of political violence. 

While the US is home to less than five percent of the global population, we incarcerate over twenty percent of the worldwide prison population. These prisoners are victims of a notoriously unjust criminal justice system. Whether a person is imprisoned for a crime they did not commit or is locked up when guilty of a heinous act of violence, incarceration is another example of political violence. The crimes committed are irrelevant in this equation; it is a violent act to trap someone for years in a brutal and unsafe prison system where they are stripped of their rights, separated from their families, and face potential physical abuse and violence daily. 

It is also political violence when rights to bodily autonomy are stripped away, like the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022. Whether you believe a fetus is a human being or a clump of cells is irrelevant in this equation. When a woman resides in a place that forces her to carry a pregnancy and give birth against her will, that is political violence. There are extreme cases of maternal death, but pregnancy always causes physical harm to the human body. Therefore, it is violent for the state to remove one’s right to choose.

Our following case is Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which has recently been militarized to a level never seen before in the US after two decades of neoliberal presidents gradually building up its enforcement apparatus. Now, we routinely see human beings being kidnapped in unmarked vans, separated from their families, taken to a prison camp, and/or deported to either their country of origin or even to a country they have never set foot in. This is often done without providing fundamental due process rights. Deportation is an inherently violent practice, and it is undeniably political in nature. 

Lastly, the United States has been supporting the state of Israel’s campaign of genocide since Truman’s recognition of Israel after the forced expulsion of 760,000 Palestinians in 1948. Over the last two years, the US has funded the mass extermination campaign against the entire population of the Gaza Strip. Proof of this fact grows every day, as it becomes increasingly impossible for skeptics to deny its truth. When a state provides another state with the weaponry needed to commit such acts, then staunchly and robustly protects that state from geopolitical repercussions, that is an objectively enormous act of political violence.

These are only a few examples of American systemic political violence.

The US has always had political violence built into its structure as an inalienable systemic feature. Why, you may ask, is the American public so selective as to when to talk about political violence? People are victims of political violence every day; does it only matter when it threatens the realm of free speech? While the particularity of assassinations certainly plays a role, there is another answer. Most of the examples of political violence I have provided above flow in one direction: from the ruling class to the working class, from the state to the citizen, from the colonizer to the colonized. This is the status quo, and it is almost unanimously supported by the ruling class and elected politicians (regardless of political party). Sometimes, though, political violence is committed in the other direction. Protesters throw rocks at ICE agents in hopes of protecting their undocumented neighbors, colonized people band together and kill their colonizers, or the CEO of a healthcare company with one of the highest rates of claim denial is shot dead on the street in New York City. While a chronically online college dropout from Utah putting a bullet in a fascist’s neck is not as clear an example of violence from oppressed to oppressor, the idea still applies when Kirk’s role as an extension of the Trump administration is accepted. By the time of his death, Kirk was not an independent commentator but a propaganda piece working in coordination with the President.

My point is not that one direction of political violence is bad and the other is good (and I predict that this murder will serve to intensify further the violence flowing from the top down), but that one is broadly received with fierce condemnation while the other is often not even spoken of as being political violence. For that reason, next time you hear your friend or your favorite politician talking about how “political violence has no place in the United States,” call bullshit. It is our very foundation.

Cover artwork by Caroline Acker.