The term “assassination culture” isn’t thrown around at cocktail parties or mentioned on TV news programs, but it does pop up several times in a 16-page study released on April 7 by the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI). In association with the Rutgers University Social Perception Lab, NCRI surveyed 1,264 American citizens to gauge their attitudes toward political violence. Shockingly – or perhaps not so much – 41% of Democrats said they believed killing a “powerful political leader” is “at least somewhat justified.” But when a less generic question was asked, one that mentioned two very prominent political figures by name, the numbers went even higher.
According to this detailed and data-rich study, 31% of respondents said murdering Elon Musk would be at least somewhat justified, and 38% said the same for President Trump. But among only those who identified as being somewhere left of center on the political spectrum, those numbers rose to 48% and 55%, respectively.
Political Violence and Left-Wing Authoritarianism
The study highlights the growth – or maybe the resurgence, to be more accurate – of left-wing authoritarianism. This appears to have been fueled by social media, particularly the BlueSky platform. BlueSky is rife with posts normalizing political violence against President Trump, his supporters, conservatives and Republicans in general, Christians, and, basically, anyone who believes in individual liberty and who reveres the Constitution.
There was also a significant correlation between those who felt they could justify the murders of Trump and Musk and those who approved of the assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson by Luigi Mangione. The study notes, referring specifically to BlueSky, “Users are increasingly associating the memeification of Luigi Mangione with calls for political violence against Musk, Trump, and others, reflecting the growing cyber-social presence of assassination culture.”
Reddit is also a chief culprit. Efforts to moderate the extremism (predominantly from the left because conservatives are generally unwelcome) are thus far proving unsuccessful. One example included in the NCRI study is a screenshot of an exchange between two Reddit users. One posted the comment, “Rumor is muck [Musk] always has his kid on his shoulders to deter grassy knoll enthusiasts.” Another redditor responds, “If you ask me 1 potential future Musk is a worthy sacrifice for the betterment of the world.”
No one should be shrugging off this kind of thinking. It is worth remembering that, for every 100 or so basement-dwelling tough guy wannabes discussing on social media acts of violence they are neither willing nor able to carry out, there’s one unstable enough to act. Mangione was one. He had etched “deny, defend, depose” – a mantra of the extreme left – on the casing of the round that killed Brian Thompson. Ryan Routh and Thomas Crooks, the two leftists who attempted to assassinate Trump, were also examples of that one unstable enough individual.
This Is Not a Drill
The normalization, and even glorification, of political violence isn’t a mere fad confined to an extremist minority on the left. Rather, it has come to be accepted by a large percentage of left-wingers. As the study observes:
“The data reveal a structured endorsement of political violence targeting figures like Donald Trump and Elon Musk. These attitudes are not fringe — they reflect an emergent assassination culture, grounded in far-left authoritarianism and increasingly normalized in digital discourse.”
Is the penchant for political violence found only on the left? That’s a question not easily answered. Few serious acts of violence motivated purely by political ideology have been carried out by right-wingers in the US in at least the last two decades. The January 6 riot on Capitol Hill that saw calls for then-Vice President Mike Pence to be hanged, was a rare and notable exception.
Still, this study found that 29% of respondents who identified as Republican agreed that killing a “powerful political leader” was at least somewhat justified. By contrast, 70.89% of Republicans and 58.84% of Democrats felt it was “not at all justified.”
The NCRI study concludes with an ominous warning about political violence, which the powerbrokers, influencers, pundits, political operators, and activists on both sides of the divide should heed: “Unless political and cultural leadership explicitly confronts and condemns this trend, NCRI assesses a growing probability of real-world escalation. Given the current economic volatility and institutional distrust, the online normalization of political violence may increasingly translate into offline action.”
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