A new era of political violence

What are the biggest, most glaring warning signs that democracy is failing?

Near the top of this list, one that's currently flashing bright red in the U.S., is political violence.

By ballot or by bullet

It wasn't supposed to be this way. The promise of democracy is that it's a vehicle for people to resolve our differences peacefully. When we disagree, we all get to speak, we try to persuade each other, and then we vote on what should be done. The democratic bargain says that we all respect the result of a fair election.

That's supposed to be what makes democracy better than authoritarian systems, like dictatorship or monarchy, where the leader's will is supreme and the only option for the dissatisfied is to revolt. Democracy gives people an outlet for dissatisfaction, so they can put their energy into campaigning rather than fighting. When one side loses an election, they have the consolation that there will always be another one, so they won't be out of power forever.

As I said, this is how it's supposed to work. But democracy can fail to deliver on its promises.

It might be that ordinary people are drowned out by wealthy donors, so anyone who isn't rich can't make their voice heard. It might be that those in power have contrived to rig elections in their favor with gerrymandering, voter suppression, and other dirty tricks. It might be that there are too many veto points, so legislation with popular support can never pass.

Whatever the cause, the result is that people grow bitter, angry and desperate. Inevitably, some will be tipped over the edge into committing violence: bombings, shootings, assassinations. When this happens, it's a sign that democracy isn't working, that popular anger is rising to a boiling point, and that the system needs to be reformed before it disintegrates.

Now obviously, this is a sweeping generalization, and it needs some nuance.

A democratic society of hundreds of millions of people isn't invalidated by one act of violence—or even a few. There will always be disturbed, unstable people in any large group.

Nor should we assume that people turn to terrorism because they have a legitimate complaint, or that the proper response is to give them what they want. There are cults, extremist groups and fundamentalist sects whose only grievance is that they're not allowed to rule over the rest of us. These wannabe dictators need to be defeated, not appeased.

Also, to be very clear, this isn't a defense of violence as a means of change. Democracy, for all its frustrations and flaws, is the best system humans have devised for governing ourselves. No one should want to scrap it in favor of a system where the biggest mob with the most guns gets its way, and where transitions of power are accompanied by bloodshed. Ballots are always better than bullets.

However, without sympathizing with political violence, we should seek to understand it. We should want to know what motivates it, what inflames it, what pushes people over the edge. We can't stop it from happening again unless we do.

With that in mind, let's talk about the death of Charlie Kirk.

A savagely ironic death

Kirk was a right-wing propagandist and provocateur. He posed as a free speech champion (mostly debating unprepared college students), but his actual modus operandi was to espouse the most extreme, inflammatory ideas he could think of.

He called the Civil Rights Act "a huge mistake" and said that Black women didn't have "the brain processing power to be taken seriously" and can only succeed by "steal[ing] a white person's slot". He said that if his ten-year-old daughter was raped and became pregnant, he'd force her to give birth. He said that we should halt immigration and deport as many foreign-born residents as possible.

Most infamously, he waved off school shootings by saying that the steady toll of gun murders is a worthwhile price to pay for the Second Amendment:

"I think it's worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights. That is a prudent deal. It is rational."

Those words proved savagely ironic. In September 2025, Kirk was speaking at Utah Valley University when, in mid-sentence, he was shot by a sniper. A bullet ripped through his neck, inflicting a fatal injury. Graphic footage captured from several angles shows spectators screaming and fleeing in terror.

In the wake of Kirk's death, it seemed obvious to a lot of conservatives that a progressive must be to blame. After all, who else would have wanted him dead?

But within a few days, a suspect was identified, and he wasn't a hardcore leftist.

The alleged shooter, Tyler Robinson, comes from a white, conservative, gun-loving Mormon family. What's more, the bizarre messages allegedly inscribed on his bullets showed he wasn't just any conservative. Together with other evidence from social media, they suggest that he was a Groyper.

The Groypers are a faction of alienated, socially isolated young men who've given up on participating on the system. Their ideology is cryptic and confusing, by design. Their argot is a mishmash of memes, obscure pop-culture references, purposely bigoted "edgy" humor, and hateful slurs.

They don't have a single political goal, but they can best be described as a nihilistic faction of the right. Their only aspiration is to watch the world burn. They exult in chaos—both observing it, and sometimes, causing it themselves.

This adds yet another layer of irony to the situation. If true, it would imply that Kirk was killed by a fellow right-winger for not being right-wing enough.

(On the other hand, newly leaked messages attributed to Robinson's Discord server suggest he was largely apolitical, neither orthodox right nor orthodox left. This muddies the water about the cause of the Kirk killing, but if it bears out, it would suggest that people's real views are rarely straightforward.)

Endless violence

Kirk's murder is the latest in a wave of political violence that's gripped the U.S. in recent weeks, months, and years.

There was the January 6 Capitol insurrection staged by conservatives to overturn an election they lost. (Kirk bragged about sending buses full of protesters to DC.)

There was the assassination attempt on Donald Trump and the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Bryan Thompson. There was the right-winger who assaulted Nancy Pelosi's husband Paul in a home invasion. (Kirk said at the time that anyone who bailed out the attacker would be a "hero".)

There was the assassination of Melissa Hortman, former speaker of the Minnesota House of Representatives, and her husband. The killer was a right-wing evangelical Christian who also shot and seriously wounded another Democratic state senator and his wife.

There was the Trump fan who tried to bomb the NYC subway with improvised explosive devices.

There was the man who tried to burn down Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro's official residence while he was in it.

There was the militia plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer.

That's not even to mention the near-daily toll of school shootings and other gun violence, which America has given up trying to do anything about.

What's remarkable is that so much violence is committed by right-wingers—even though conservatives, at the moment, control all three branches of the U.S. government.

They're seemingly getting everything they've always wanted: savage cuts to the safety net, mass deportations of immigrants both legal and not, mass firings of federal employees, curtailing DEI policies, outlawing abortion, rolling back LGBTQ rights, more guns with fewer restrictions. You'd think they'd be happy. And yet, seemingly, the more of their agenda they achieve, the more furious they become.

What this implies is that politico-religious conservatism is a self-defeating philosophy. Whether they realize it or not, conservatives are voting for policies that make their lives worse. They're getting angrier not despite their success, but because of it. That's why levels of violence in America keep on rising.

This, too, is a way that democracy can fail. It can happen when voters make poor choices.

In America's case, conservative voters have swallowed the big lie that some minority group is responsible for their problems. Whether it's Black people, or atheists, or gay and lesbian people, or transgender people, or immigrants—the boogeyman of the week changes, but the basic tactic of distraction never does.

They've been persuaded to look away from the real cause of their problems to fix the blame on a scapegoat. In the meantime, the rich accumulate more wealth, inequality increases, opportunity declines, health care and housing and education costs spiral out of control, and the safety net is cut away—all of which makes average Americans worse off. And the worse their lives become, the angrier they get.

Like a gauge at redline, these outbreaks of violence are the sign of a society creaking under pressure. America's democratic institutions are failing us; our laws and institutions are unable to resolve our problems peacefully or to make people's lives better. Our collective rage is building, and when it finds no other outlet, it explodes. As long as conservatives hold power, these trends are only going to accelerate.

What this means for the rest of us is that we should brace for more chaos. Our country might stagger on, persisting through an era of turbulence, as it has in the past. Or, this time, it might be too much and the nation might come apart at the seams. Either way, the years ahead are likely to be more even violent.