Both the Left and the Right are Targeted by Political Violence. Who Perpetrates It?

A man holds an American flag at a vigil for Charlie Kirk, the CEO and co-founder of Turning Point USA, who was shot and killed on September 10 in Orem, Utah. Lindsey Wasson/AP

Conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s gruesome killing last week was both a striking visual of our nation’s intensifying polarization and, by some counts, a catalyst for it to intensify more. Even before a suspect had been identified, there was a knee-jerk reaction among some Republicans^[2] to blame the Democratic Party for his death. Some even called for retribution^[3].

Importantly, we do not yet—and may never—know the motive, or constellation of motivations, that drove Kirk’s alleged shooter, who has been identified as 22-year-old Tyler Robinson. But we do know that targets of political violence exist across the political spectrum.

Consider some of the recent events of political violence:

• Just three months ago, Democratic Minnesota state representative Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark were assassinated^[4] in their home. Another member of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party and his wife were also repeatedly^[5] shot and wounded; the suspect apprehended for these crimes had a list of dozens of potential targets, including other Democrats and abortion rights advocates.

• In August, a law enforcement officer died amid a shooting^[6] that was directed at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; the shooter had blamed^[7] his depression on the Covid vaccine.

• In May, two staffers of the Israeli Embassy in Washington, DC, were fatally shot;^[8] the suspect in that case previously expressed strong opposition to Israel’s aggression in Palestine.
• In April, the residence of Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro was set on fire^[9] in what prosecutors are calling an attempted murder. The fire took place a few hours after Shapiro, a Jewish Democrat, celebrated Passover.

In the slightly more distant past, other intended targets of political violence include Republican President Donald Trump in 2024,^[10] conservative Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh^[11] and then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in 2022, as well as those from both parties who were threatened in the weeks leading up to and following the 2020 election: Democratic Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer^[12], Trump’s then-Vice President Mike Pence,^[13] and staff from both the RNC and the DNC^[14] headquarters.

But why does political violence happen at all? Who does it collectively harm? And to what extent do extremists who identify with both the political left and right support it? I was most curious to talk to an expert about who perpetrates these horrific acts. So I reached out to Sean Westwood, government professor at Dartmouth College and director of the Polarization Research Lab.^[15]

The following conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Could you start by simply defining what political violence is?

That’s a very tricky question. It’s not settled in the academy, just to preface. There are some individuals who would argue that political violence is a very large kind of catch-all category that would encapsulate violence motivated by race, violence motivated by religion, etc. And within that framework, violence is everywhere. But perhaps a more constructive definition would just look at violence motivated entirely by partisan affiliation: individuals attacking others because of their political affiliation, versus a continuation of the unfortunate racial and religious violence that’s plagued our country since its inception.

Given Charlie Kirk’s very recognizable ideology, can we presume that his killing was an act of political violence?

It’s undeniable that Charlie Kirk is a strong figure on the political right, and we know that the assailant in this case had messaging on some of his bullet casings, but it is often the case that the individuals who commit political violence in this country have incoherent ideological backgrounds. They don’t have clear manifestos, nor do they come from a background that signals attachment to one party or the other.

What really connects these folks is not a coherent ideology; it’s mental illness. It’s a sense of alienation. It’s a sense of despondence with the country. And that’s good in one sense, in that it suggests there’s not an organized movement towards political violence. But what makes countering this threat very hard is that we’re not trying to infiltrate a hierarchy. We’re not trying to stop a group of tendrils spread across the country. We’re trying to intervene in very hard-to-reach situations.

You’ve said publicly that there is not a mass movement of political violence. But do you think it’s fair to say that recently there has been a spike in political violence?

I think it’s certainly fair to say that there’s been an increase in high-publicity incidents in this country. Though it’s important to contextualize that by saying that this is not something that’s being demanded by the electorate. This is something that’s being imposed upon us by the darkest parts of our society. So we’ve certainly seen an uptick. But that is not an indication of a shift in public support or a shift in the public appetite for violence.

What is the public’s appetite for violence?

There are a variety of measures of support for “political violence,” including some that look at the willingness of a citizen to say negative things online or to disparage someone of the other party. There, we see pretty substantial numbers. When you narrow it down to explicit partisan murder, public support drops to below 2 percent. It’s vanishingly small, and it’s remained at that level for the last three years that I’ve collected data. We would be very, very wrong to assume that there’s a substantial portion of the public that supports political violence of the kind that we saw in Utah.

In the 1960s, there were several infamous acts of political violence: President John F. Kennedy, his assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, Martin Luther King Jr., Robert F. Kennedy, and the list goes on. Is there a historical parallel between that era and today?

Objectively, this is not the worst we’ve seen. In the 1960s there were organized groups committing bombings and assassinations through the Weather Underground and the Black Panthers, and other coordinated movements. The distinction today is that this is all immediately [viewable] on social media. Many Americans, unfortunately, saw the bullet enter Charlie Kirk’s neck live on social media. That’s fundamentally changed the dynamic from a setup where there’s time to mourn and reflect, to a world where anger, confusion, and sadness are all [instantly] happening in the public sphere.

As unsubstantiated finger-pointing and calls for retribution continue to spread on social media, how can elected leaders and public figures lower the temperature after an act of political violence?

After the Trump assassination attempt, we saw our political leaders—both Democrats and Republicans—condemn violence and say that this is not how American democracy functions. That didn’t happen this time. Instead of demands for collective grief, we’ve had prominent individuals label the entirety of the Democratic Party as murderers, demanding retribution and investigation, even punishment, of the Democratic Party. We’ve seen Trump label Kirk a martyr. Our elected officials have done everything they can to increase the temperature.

That’s not uniform. We’ve also seen incredibly thoughtful and careful messaging coming from some politicians. But unfortunately, those careful and rational messages are being swamped by the most incendiary commentary.

I’ve seen a lot of concerning rhetoric on social media where people are saying that the left is always responsible for political violence. Is that true?

This is not a situation where one party is always the victim and one party is always the perpetrator. If you look at the last five years, it’s easy to find examples of individuals attacked because they were Republicans, attacked because they were Democrats, attacked because they were Jewish, or attacked merely because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. The motivation for these acts of violence is really often just completely incoherent. Ideology does not appear to be consistently driving the political violence trends that we’re observing.

You mentioned mental illness as being a driver of extreme episodes of political violence against public figures. What is the solution to that?

It’s a real challenge. A lot of the data that we have on these folks suggests that they’re very anti-social and disconnected from traditional society. When that’s the case, it’s not really clear how you would intervene if you don’t have access to provide mental health services or more rational rhetoric. There’s no way to systematically predict who’s going to commit an act of political violence; it’s so rare and so individuated that it’s hard to imagine a systematic way of preventing it.

What should people do when they see inflammatory responses or misinformation about political violence on social media?

The most important thing to remember is that Twitter, Truth Social, and BlueSky are not a microcosm of the American public. They are a select group of individuals who want to engage in discussion. So what you see online does not reflect the attitudes of the American public writ large. And as a consequence, I think that also suggests that you shouldn’t assume that what you’re seeing online is even coming from the American public. There’s a lot of evidence to suggest that foreign actors, bots, and trolls are manipulating our social media in a way that could not only misrepresent the attitudes of the American public, but could push otherwise rational Americans to adopt more paranoid or more polarized positions.

What about when it’s people you know posting the hot takes?

People, for some reason, feel as if they can say things on social media that they would never do face-to-face. We’ve lost the filter that stopped what you might call rhetorical terrorism. It’s hard to imagine how you would fix that. I think the best advice is, if you feel as if you’re seeing content that makes you feel uncomfortable, step away. The best thing you can do is just step away.