One week after the horrific assassination of the American conservative and nationalist figure Charlie Kirk in the United States, the damage is clear to see. Rather than prompting a reckoning with the threat that extreme political polarization poses for the country, the killing – an act that is impossible to justify – has only driven the US further into a civil war atmosphere, pitting two irreconcilable camps against each other.
The complex profile of the alleged assassin, Tyler Robinson, a 22-year-old with no known political affiliations, who hails from a Republican family in Utah, a state with a reputation for conservatism, should have led observers to exercise caution. But the MAGA base, devastated by the conservative youth figure's live-streamed assassination that was instantly shared across social media platforms, rapidly turned its grief into an insatiable desire for vengeance.
The example was set by President Donald Trump himself, who chose to use the moment to stigmatize an internal enemy he accused of having guided the alleged killer's hand, and called for the death penalty in accordance with Utah law, rather than issuing an appeal for the necessary unity as his office demands. He was joined in this by Vice President JD Vance, one of Kirk's close associates, creating a toxic atmosphere: a witch hunt verging on McCarthyism.
Pam Bondi, the president's former lawyer and now the US attorney general, also stepped outside of her official duties when she claimed to distinguish between "free speech," which is protected by the First Amendment, and "hate speech," even though the Constitution does not allow for such a distinction precisely because it could open the door to highly dangerous political manipulation. Bondi also stood out by asserting, in a highly personal and widely disputed interpretation of the law, that business leaders were obliged to report employees who made negative comments about the slain young influencer.
No one can dispute that Kirk's strident, and even "incendiary," as described by the usually restrained conservative governor of Utah, Spencer Cox, positions had made him the object of intense hatred among part of the American left. Yet nothing in Robinson's solitary drift, based on the information released from the investigation into him so far, supports accusations against the "radical left" – a bogeyman as vague as "woke" ideology, which Trump's administration has declared an existential threat.
This rhetoric also conceals responsibility for the escalation that had already claimed the lives of a Democratic lawmaker from Minnesota and her husband in June. Trump was the first US president to delegitimize his political opponents by labeling them "enemies of the people." His revisionist effort to recast the rioters responsible for the January 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol – which sought to prevent Joe Biden, a Democrat, from assuming the presidency – as heroes, is nothing less than a justification of political violence issued by the highest levels of government.
Translation of an original article published in French on lemonde.fr; the publisher may only be liable for the French version.