VIOLENCE AS POLICY

US president Donald Trump has been signaling for a decade or so that political violence committed by his supporters is acceptable and might even be rewarded

- Jan-Werner Mueller

The horrendous killing of the far-right activist Charlie Kirk has been met with calming, statesmanlike responses on both sides of the political aisle.

But it has also demonstrated yet again the fundamental asymmetry of contemporary American politics. Many prominent figures on the right, all the way up to President Donald Trump, have called for nothing less than retribution against the “radical left” — all in the absence of information about the killer and his motivation.

Trump has been signaling for a decade or so that political violence committed by his supporters is acceptable and might even be rewarded. Those he pardoned for their participation in the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the US Capitol included many convicted of violent crimes. But Trump and many of his acolytes frame such conduct not as violence, but as legitimate, even patriotic, self-defense; like other right-wing populists, they portray themselves as perpetual victims.

There have been some deeply distasteful postings about Kirk’s killing by apparent leftists on social media, pointing out with schadenfreude that Kirk had claimed that gun deaths were an acceptable price to pay for the right to bear arms. But, on the whole, liberal commentators have gone out of their way not just to condemn violence but to recognize Kirk as a good-faith debater with a “taste for disagreement.” On the right, by contrast, prominent voices have called for repression — invoking the illegal practices of FBI founder J Edgar Hoover as a model — if not outright “war.”