A new burst of political violence

Factors shaping this moment are like those in past eras, experts say

- BY KEVIN RECTOR

AN INQUIRY continues at Utah Valley University on Thursday amid a manhunt for Charlie Kirk's killer.

Two assassination attempts on President Trump.

The assassination of a Minnesota state lawmaker and her husband and the wounding of others. The shooting death of a top healthcare executive. The killing of two Israeli Embassy employees in Washington. The storming of the U.S. Capitol by a violent mob intent on forcing the nation's political leaders to their will.

And, on Wednesday, the fatal shooting of one of the nation's most prominent conservative political activists — close Trump ally Charlie Kirk — as he spoke at a public event on a university campus.

If it wasn't already clear from all those other incidents, Kirk's killing put it in sharp relief: The U.S. is in a new era of political violence, one that is starker and more visceral than any other in decades — perhaps, experts said, since the fraught days of 1968, when two of the most prominent figures in the civil rights movement, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, were both assassinated in a matter of months.

"We're very clearly in a moment where the temperature of our political discourse is extremely high," said Ruth Braunstein, an associate professor of sociology at Johns Hopkins University who has studied religion and the far right in modern politics. "Part of what we see when that happens are these outbursts of political violence — where people come to believe that violence is the only solution."

Although the exact motives of the person who shot Kirk are still unknown, Braunstein and other experts on political violence said the factors shaping the current moment are clear - and similar to those that shaped past periods of political violence.