An oft-used metaphor for civil conflict is to consider tinder and powder kegs lit by a spark which leads to chaos and social rupture. The assassination of Charlie Kirk is not a spark in this sense – it is not the event that will spark civil unrest in our country. Rather, Kirk’s death is like a flashlight that reveals we are in a room filled with tinder and powder kegs, with a shorting electrical line threatening to set the explosion in motion. Worse still, the reactions to Kirk’s murder seem to indicate that the door to the room is locked, and that we are out of time for avoiding some measure of disaster and loss.
In one sense, Kirk’s death seems no different from the “usual evil” with which Americans have become accustomed in the past few decades. We have a litany of such events only in the recent past: the murder of Brian Thompson, the shooting of Israeli embassy staff members in Washington, D.C., and the Annunciation Catholic Church shooting which targeted school children in Minnesota. Kirk’s death joins these as evidence of a grave social illness that has swept the modern West.
Yet Kirk’s death stands out. It does so because unlike these other tragedies, we have seen acts like this before, albeit rarely in the modern West. The assassination of Charlie Kirk is a rather classic instance of the kind of conflicts that beleaguered Latin America in the 1960s and 70s or Ireland during “The Troubles.” In short, Kirk’s death is indicative of a society that is already in the throes of social rupture and unrest, a society that experiences endemic political violence that it cannot resolve through normal political means.
This suggests a chilling reality: that although the United States is not a nation that is in a state of civil war, it is home to the violence that is indicative of such conflict. This leaves two basic interpretative options. First, we might understand this violence as initial spasms of something dark and dangerous which might follow, but which we may yet still head off through effort, good will, and sober-minded governance. Or, we might understand such violence as the birth-pangs of a chaotic and debilitating condition that has already set in, the effects of which can only now be minimized, not wholly avoided.
The popular reactions to Kirk’s assassination suggest the latter is sadly the case. The gleeful reveling in Kirk’s death by his political opponents – most of whom are normal, everyday people – is an indicator of how far the disease has progressed. Perhaps surprisingly to some, this is not simply because the responses suggest a growing acceptance of political violence (though this is true). Neither is it because the murder itself and the TikTok medium or responses point to a crisis-level of detachment that the internet and social media has proliferated (though this dehumanizing process is notable and a cause for concern).
The real concern we should note in the reactions to Kirk’s murder is that these reactions indicate the presence of what civil war scholar David Betz calls “polar factionalism.” In this sort of factionalism, Betz warns, a society is not divided based upon issues, but rather based upon “what is perceived to be the consensus view within their tribe.” In other words, polar factionalism is a kind of ideological tribalism wherein the good of a given matter is subsumed into a framework of tribal belonging.
It is difficult to see the responses of those who celebrated Kirk’s death, and even those who mourned it, as something short of signs of polar factionalism in our society. Indeed, the standard response to Kirk’s death by progressives, even if they decry the act itself, has been to add the pregnant “but,” and paint Kirk as a “racist,” “homophobe,” “xenophobe,” “misogynist,” or some other pejorative. Today, terms like “racist” and “fascist” have in fact ceased to function as descriptions of any ideology, and really function as pylons demarcating acceptable beliefs within a tribe. In other words, they are tools of polar factionalism that both indicate and intensify the factionalism as it is taking root.
There is something ironic in the fact that Kirk’s opponents now call him “racist” in light of his critiques of DEI and its refashioning of American life. If one wanted to engineer a social movement designed to bring about polar factionalism, it is perhaps impossible to find one better fit to the task than promoting DEI. For the past decade – even longer in academia – the mechanisms of polar factionalism and tribal identitarianism have become the social orthodoxy of our political and cultural life. We are, quite simply, a society trained with the habits of polar factionalism that precipitates severe social rupture, which we are now seeing on display.
Indeed, we should note that one particularly troubling aspect of the response to Kirk’s death is how clearly this has revealed the deep rot of polar factionalism. Kirk was murdered on a college campus, and many college employees across the nation authored some of the more striking and vicious responses to his death. If one hoped that the university – even the Catholic university – would help resolve problems of polar factionalism before the situation becomes too dire, the fallout of Kirk’s death suggests this is a pipe dream. Even the Christian church, in its Protestant and Catholic iterations, has exhibited the symptoms of polar factionalism in the wake of Kirk’s assassination. Hence, the very institutions we might otherwise depend on to help develop resources to find a better future have seemingly succumbed to the same illness as our political life.
I do not write all this in joy, but with an appeal to “be wise as serpents and shrewd as doves.” My own view is that Kirk’s murder and the reactions to it reveal that we are past the tipping point of civil conflict. The powder is not yet aflame, but I fear we cannot make it out of the room in time. If we begin now to reforge the West, perhaps we can succeed in limiting the disaster that looms ahead. Nevertheless, it is almost certain that we will need the virtues of fortitude, friendship, and charity if we as a people are to survive the coming tumult. We ought to still pray, of course, as God will raise up a judge as of old to save us from the calamity. But at the least, we ought to be vigilant, and prepare our hearts to carry the Cross of the West, so that we may unite whatever suffering will come with He who has defeated even death itself.
