Blame game after acts of political violence can lead to further attacks,
experts warn
[September 15, 2025]
By NICHOLAS RICCARDI
DENVER (AP) — From the moment conservative activist and icon Charlie
Kirk was felled by an assassin’s bullet, partisans began fighting over
which side was to blame. President Donald Trump became the most
prominent to do so, tying the attack to “the radical left” before a
suspect was even identified.
It was part of a new, grim tradition in a polarized country — trying to
pin immediate responsibility for an act of public violence on one of two
political sides. As the nation reels from a wave of physical attacks
against both Republicans and Democrats, experts warn that the rush to
blame sometimes ambiguous and irrational acts on political movements
could lead to more conflict.
“What you’re seeing now is exactly how the spiral of violence occurs,”
said Robert Pape, a political scientist and director of the Chicago
Project on Security and Threats at the University of Chicago.
On Friday, authorities announced they had arrested 22-year-old Tyler
Robinson of Washington, Utah, in the shooting. While a registered voter,
he was not affiliated with any party and had not voted in the last two
general elections. Even so, officials said Robinson had recently grown
more political and expressed negative views about Kirk.
There was other initial evidence of Robinson's potential influences.
According to court papers, he carved taunting phrases into his
ammunition — including one bullet casing marked with “Hey, fascist!
Catch!” — and others from the irony-laden world of memes and online
video games.
Nihilistic Violent Extremism is a new FBI category
Experts say political assassins don’t always fall into neatly sorted
partisan categories. In some cases, like that of Thomas Mathew Crooks,
who shot Trump at a Pennsylvania campaign rally last year, there is
little record of any political stances whatsoever. The FBI has said
Crooks also had researched then-President Joe Biden as a possible attack
target.
Bruce Hoffman, who studies terrorism at Georgetown University, noted
that the FBI has created a new category, Nihilistic Violent Extremism,
to track the increasing number of attacks that seem to have no clear
political motivation.
“Extremism is becoming a salad bowl of ideologies where you can pick
whatever you want,” Hoffman said, adding that the increasing number of
lone wolf attacks means violence is increasingly unmoored from
organizations with clear political goals.
What’s more important than the attackers’ state of mind, experts
stressed, is the broader political environment. The more heated the
atmosphere, the more likely it’ll lead unstable people to commit
violence.
“What they all share is a political ecosystem that’s very permissive
about violence towards political rivals,” Arie Perlinger, a professor of
security studies at the University of Massachusetts-Lowell, said of
recent perpetrators of political violence. “Because politicians are
incentivized to use extreme rhetoric and extreme language, that leads to
demonization of political rivals.”
Pete Buttigieg, a former Democratic presidential candidate who engages
frequently with the right on Fox News and other forums, sees social
media as a fever swamp driving the demonization and danger.
“Many people around America, normal people, not dangerous people, were
at a moment when we all should have still been praying for the victim
and his family,” he said Sunday on NBC's “Meet the Press." Instead they
were “busy online praying for some shred of evidence that the shooter
would turn out to be from the other political team. That is not
healthy.”
Some call for calm, others for ‘war’
That certainly happened after the Kirk killing. The 31-year-old father
of two young children was an icon on the new, populist right, especially
among young conservatives, and a key ally of Trump. While some
conservatives called for calm, others, such as conspiracy theorist Alex
Jones and podcaster and former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, called for
“war.”
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The casket containing the body of Charlie Kirk, the CEO and
co-founder of Turning Point USA who was shot and killed on Wednesday
is removed from Air Force Two at Phoenix Sky Harbor International
Airport, Thursday, Sept. 11, 2025, in Phoenix. (AP Photo/Ross D.
Franklin)
In a speech on the House floor on Thursday, Rep. Mary Miller, an
Illinois Republican, said Kirk’s “death was not an isolated tragedy.
It is part of a disturbing trend in political violence in our
country, encouraged by the radical left and amplified by a corrupt
media that has gone from being fake to totally evil.”
Many prominent Democrats issued statements urging calm on both
sides. Among them were California Gov. Gavin Newsom and former House
Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whose husband was gravely injured by a
hammer-wielding attacker who broke into their house in 2022 in an
assault that Trump, among other Republicans, mocked.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican, also called for lowering
the temperature across the board.
Trump declares radical leftists ‘the problem’
Still, the most prominent practitioner of polarized attacks remains
Trump. Friday morning, shortly after announcing the arrest on Fox
News, he said “the radicals on the right oftentimes are radical
because they don’t want to see crime. ... The radicals on the left
are the problem.”
The Anti-Defamation League found that from 2022 through 2024, all of
the 61 political killings in the U.S. were committed by right-wing
extremists. That changed on the first day of 2025, when a Texas man
flying the flag of the Islamic State group killed 14 people by
driving his truck through a crowded New Orleans street before being
fatally shot by police.
Hoffman said that in modern history, the right has been responsible
for more political attacks on people than the left. He said that’s
because left-wing radicals are more likely to target property rather
than people, and because the extreme right boasts organizations such
as militias.
He added that after Trump pardoned more than 1,500 people convicted
of crimes during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol to
overturn his election loss, “there’s a belief in certain quarters
that, if you engage in violence, the slate can be wiped clean.”
There’s no question there’s also been political violence from the
left. In 2017, a 66-year-old man who had supported leftist causes
opened fire at a congressional Republican baseball practice,
critically wounding Rep. Steve Scalise, who eventually recovered.
In 2022, an armed man angry over a leaked ruling from an coming case
that would limit abortion rights tried to enter the home of Supreme
Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. The man backed off when he saw U.S.
Marshals guarding the justice’s house, called his sister, and was
persuaded to call 911 and surrender to police.
What can take people ‘over the edge’
Pape, of the University of Chicago, said those who engage in
political violence are often not the same as the partisans who stoke
debates online. He said about 40% of those who perpetrate political
violence have a mental illness.
“When there is strong support in the public for political violence,
that nudges people over the edge because they think they’re acting
in community interest,” he said.
He said he worried about Trump’s one-sided condemnation of left-wing
violence, saying it will only inflame the conflict. He compared it
to when some liberals condemn all Trump voters as racists.
“The constituents of whoever is doing this, it emboldens them,” Pape
said. As for the group being tarnished as uniquely violent, “it
creates a bigger sense of defiance,” he added. “What we need to do
is convince Trump to do more restraining of his side because we’re
really in a tinderbox moment.”
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