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The USA Has Moved a Small Step Closer to Civil War

After the assassination of right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk, Trump and his supporters are inciting hatred against their opponents. Many now fear a wave of violence and repression

Eric Frey
September 13, 2025, 06:00
1738 Comments

Whatever one might think of Charlie Kirk and his reactionary, often racist and homophobic views, one thing had to be granted to him: The charismatic ultra-right influencer never called for violence against political opponents. And unlike other demagogues of the MAGA movement, he was always ready for open debate with dissenters and critics, indeed making this his trademark.

An improvised memorial site for Charlie Kirk is decorated with the iconic image of the failed assassination attempt on Donald Trump in Butler. A new myth is emerging here for America’s right.

REUTERS/Cheney Orr

Kirk’s appearance at Utah Valley University, where an assassin’s bullets cost him his life on Wednesday, was dedicated precisely to this purpose. He wanted to debate with students, many of whom hold liberal-left views, and convince them with great eloquence of their misguided ways. All the more tragic would it be if the murder of the 31-year-old now triggered a wave of violence, as numerous observers of American politics fear.

The first 48 hours after the bloodshed were marked by the frantic search for the assassin, led by the federal police FBI, which is going through severe turmoil under Donald Trump’s presidency and whose director Kash Patel is being massively criticized for prematurely and falsely announcing the perpetrator’s arrest via the messaging platform X. That the true murderer could apparently be captured on Friday was more a lucky coincidence than the result of careful police work.

The “Left” Is to Blame

Simultaneously, a wave of anger and verbal aggression broke out on X and other social media from Trump’s MAGA camp, which blamed the “left” for Kirk’s death and openly called for war against the president’s political opponents. Even in Congress, some ultra-right representatives, such as Republican Anna Paulina Luna from Florida, made the Democrats and their allegedly radical rhetoric directly responsible for the assassination. “They caused it,” she said.

This could, it is feared, motivate lone wolves to further acts of violence against elected Democratic representatives or progressive activists as a form of retaliation. The number of politically motivated crimes has increased significantly in the USA this year, including such prominent cases as the murder of a Democratic state representative from Minnesota and her husband, and an arson attack on the house of Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro. The two failed assassination attempts on Trump during the 2024 campaign are also ever-present.

More than 7,000 tips and hints about Charlie Kirk’s murderer came in, police offered a reward of $100,000.

REUTERS/Jim Urquhart

Reminiscent of the 1960s

“We are experiencing an era of violent populism,” Robert Pope, an expert on political threats at the University of Chicago, is quoted in the Washington Post. The extent of political violence is higher than in the past 20 years and reminiscent of the 1960s, when the Kennedy brothers and Martin Luther King Jr. were murdered. According to a survey by a group of political scientists called Bright Line Watch, only very few Democrats and Republicans support political violence in general. But around one-tenth of the population considers it appropriate when representatives of the respective opposition are responsible for “harmful or exploitative measures.”

The term “civil war” was used hundreds of thousands of times on the messaging platform X in recent days, mostly by right-wing publicists and podcasters. Some spoke of a cultural war, but others openly called for violence against their enemies. And these are not empty threats in today’s America.

Weapons Freely Available

Besides the growing polarization and increasing aggressiveness in political discourse, it is the widespread availability of firearms that promotes violent acts. Virtually anyone in the USA can acquire powerful weapons, such as the high-performance repeating rifle with which Kirk was shot from a great distance; it is intended for military snipers. That Kirk himself was a radical advocate for the right to bear arms and described the many victims of gun violence as a necessary price for this right is a particular irony of this tragic story.

In the America of 2025, another factor is added that has the potential to fuel political violence: the president’s rhetoric. In his initial reactions, Trump used the opportunity to threaten his political opponents. He described the “radical left” as accomplices, by which he always means everyone who is critical of his presidency, whether elected politicians, professors, or journalists. Their rhetoric is “directly responsible for the terrorism we see in our country today, and this must end,” he said in a speech. “My administration will find everyone who contributed to this atrocity or other political acts of violence, including the organizations that finance and support it, and also those who attack our judges, executive officials, and all persons who bring order to our country.”

While people mourn the murdered MAGA activist Kirk, US President Donald Trump said in an interview with Fox News that he hopes the perpetrator gets the death penalty.

REUTERS/Caitlin O’Hara

With the latter, Trump likely means the members of the immigration police ICE, which under his aegis is being expanded with a billion-dollar budget into a kind of shadow army that hunts masked people they suspect of not having legal residence permits. When protests broke out against ICE raids in Los Angeles, Trump deployed the National Guard to the city.

Call to Beat Up

While Trump called on his supporters on Thursday to renounce violence, he simultaneously announced that he would severely beat up the “crazy left-wing radicals” (“Beat the hell out of them”). The president left open what concrete measures he would take, but concern is growing that he will use the assassination as an occasion to accelerate the previously gradual repression against political opponents. After all, one is already in the “authoritarian consolidation phase of this presidency,” wrote prominent commentator Ezra Klein a few days before the attack.

Some historical comparisons suggest themselves. Ultra-right publicist Matt Forney speaks of Kirk’s murder as the “American Reichstag Fire” that will initiate the authoritarian transformation of the country. The Berlin Reichstag fire of February 1933 gave Adolf Hitler the pretext to completely eliminate democracy through the Enabling Act. In the Soviet Union, the murder of Stalin’s follower Sergei Kirov in December 1934 was the prelude to the great terror with its show trials, which cost tens of thousands their lives in the following years. And in Turkey, the failed coup attempt of 2016 against Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government began a wave of repression against political rivals that continues unabated to this day.

Economic Weakness

From the perspective of a wannabe dictator, the timing for a crackdown would be just right. The American economy is increasingly suffering from the consequences of Trump’s erratic tariff policy; the job market is weakening while inflation is gradually rising. Trump promised his electorate a great upswing with low prices. While his approval ratings have been stable at a low level for months, they could soon collapse if the population begins to personally feel the economic problems.

Trump is also facing increasingly strong headwinds from federal courts; so far the Supreme Court has given him free rein in most cases, but this could become increasingly difficult for him in several important cases concerning tariffs and the independence of the Federal Reserve.

A message reading “Make America Great Again” – the MAGA slogan on a makeshift monument for Kirk.

REUTERS/Cheney Orr

Trump could now quite deliberately seek confrontation with democratically governed federal states by, for example, sending soldiers to major cities like Chicago, Baltimore, or Philadelphia to combat allegedly rampant crime. While he was authorized to do so in the federal capital Washington, it would be a clear interference with states’ rights and military abuse elsewhere in the country. Especially in California and Illinois, massive resistance would be expected from the confident governors there, Gavin Newsom and J.B. Pritzker. In extreme cases, this could escalate into violent clashes between armed local and national units – a first step toward civil war.