The story so far:
The killing of Charlie Kirk, a right-wing youth activist and an ally of MAGA nationalism and U.S. President Donald Trump, has terribly roiled American politics. Many observers note that the potential for political violence has now reached very dangerous levels. In the recent past, among Democrats, a state leader was killed and another shot at; a state governor was subject to arson attack (2025); the Speaker of the House of Representatives was attacked in which her husband suffered serious injuries (2022); and another state governor was the subject of a failed kidnapping plot (2020); among Republicans, Mr. Trump was the victim of two assassination attempts (2024) and the House majority whip was shot at (2017).
Is there ideological and political polarisation?
America has one of the highest income inequalities amongst high-income countries, which has only grown under both Democrats and Republicans in recent decades. Its racial composition has changed significantly in recent decades. In 1980, those who identified as white alone were 80% of the population. This had reduced to 58% in the 2020 census, while those who identify as Hispanic and Asian have increased from 8% to 25% (note: people do change how they identify their race, and there are also methodological changes in the census). The 2010s are the first decade in which the white population declined. There is also an increase in multi-racial families and babies.
There is a substantial change in political identification as well. Even before Mr. Trump, the political centre, with mixed liberal and conservative positions, had shrunk from 49% in 1994 to 39% in 2014, while Republicans shifted to the right, and Democrats shifted to the left, according to the Pew Survey 2014. If 16% Democrats and 17% Republicans had unfavourable views of each other in 1994, this increased to 38% and 43% respectively in 2014. There are serious ideological differences between the two partisans on issues such as immigration, gun rights, abortion and gay and transgender rights. While 76% of liberals think that it is important to have racial and ethnic diversity, only 20% conservatives think so.
At least 57% of conservatives want to live in a place with many co-religionists, whereas it is only 17% for liberals. The right-wing shows more ideological partisanship as well: 63% of strong conservatives have most of their close friends sharing political beliefs, while it is 49% for strong liberals; 50% on the right want to live where most people share their political beliefs, while it is 35% on the left. Republicans and Democrats differ vastly on gun control: 85% Democrats want a ban on assault-style weapons, 57% of Republicans oppose this.
While 74% of Republicans support teachers carrying guns, it is only 27% for the Democrats, according to the Pew Survey 2024.
Social media technologies have played a huge role in the rise of right-wing populist movements across the world, including America, generating outrage on contentious issues such as immigration, race, nationalism, etc. As scholars Berry and Sobieraj note, “outrage is virtually absent” from American newspapers in 1955 compared to the late 2000s. Powerful figures, such as Elon Musk, have weaponised polarisation through platforms like X. Addressing the recent right-wing “Unite the Kingdom” rally in Britain, he said, “Whether you choose violence or not, violence is coming to you. You either fight back, or you die.” Christopher Bail, a political scientist studying polarisation, argues that there is an increasing gap between social media and reality, with the former amplifying extreme views. His research shows that 73% of tweets about politics are generated by just 6% of X users.
What is the role of Donald Trump in polarisation?
American politics took a radically new turn with the rise of Mr. Trump, an anti-establishment figure, who became a vehicle to channel white Christian nationalism and further polarise an already polarised society. He has taken the Republican Party to the extreme right. During the first term, the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Index recorded American democracy as falling back to 1976 levels. In the short period of the second term itself, experts see the regime acquiring authoritarian characteristics with executive power strengthening at the expense of the Congress, abnegation of institutional autonomy, targeting of political opponents, universities, critical media and free speech, and the deployment of the army to quell protests. Mr. Trump, as President of the nation, instead of lowering the volatile emotional atmosphere following Kirk’s assassination, blamed the “radical left” even before a suspect was identified and listed only the attacks against himself and the Republican leaders. He ignored the violence suffered by Democratic politicians, or that of his supporters violently storming the Capitol after the 2020 elections (Mr. Trump had pardoned 1,500 of them).
Also, critically, the accused targeting Mr. Trump had mixed/confused political leanings, which included either being a registered Republican or actually voting for Mr. Trump. While Mr. Trump constantly demonises the radical left and anti-fascist groups as solely responsible for violence, his claims are unfounded. From 1994 to 2020, there was one fatality from anti-fascist attacks, and 21 killed in left-wing violence (2010 to 2020), while there were 329 victims from right-wing violence (Center for Strategic and International Studies). Democracy requires the abjuration of violence, whether it is by the left or the right. But by refusing to acknowledge racist anti-Black mass shootings like that in Buffalo and Charleston, and that white right-wing extremism is the biggest source of domestic terrorism, Mr. Trump dangerously whitewashes violence.
Is there an historical context to the present crisis?
It would be myopic to see the present moment solely as a result of the rise of Mr. Trump and MAGA. America, as a society built on the foundations of the genocide of the native population, as well as slavery, has a long history of white supremacy, racism, gender discrimination and vigilante violence. As the historian Steven Hahn has argued, illiberalism is not an aberration but as powerful a current as liberalism, and is sometimes mixed with it. Such illiberalism was the hallmark of even Democratic politicians like George C. Wallace, an influential governor (who failed to win the Presidential nomination) in the 1960s, who espoused racial hostility and segregation of races. And illiberal currents can be seen in aspects like racial inequalities in incarceration. America has an incarceration rate which is five to eight times higher than that of France, Canada and Germany in 2021 (The Sentencing Project 2023).
If racial justice and prison reform movements have led to the reduction of the prison population by 25% since 2009, it comes after a massive 700% increase since 1972, disproportionately affecting marginalised races. Even after a reduction of the Black prison population by 39% since 2002, Blacks were imprisoned at a rate five times that of whites in 2021. Worryingly, there has also been bipartisan Democratic and Republican consensus in rolling back some of the prison reforms. Beneath the liberal exceptionalist claims of the American polity lurks its violent face, exemplified by the right to keep and bear arms sanctified by the Constitution in 1791.
The staggering nature of gun violence in America is evident in the fact that the rate of gun deaths was 340 times that of the United Kingdom and 862 times that of Japan. In 2023, there were over 700 mass shooting victims alone, double that of 2018. Ironically, Kirk defended gun rights, and termed gun deaths as an unfortunate cost for protecting other “God-given rights.”
(Nissim Mannathukkaren is a professor with Dalhousie University, Canada, and he is on X @nmannathukkaren)
Published – September 17, 2025 08:30 am IST
