In the hours immediately after the killing of Charlie Kirk, the corporate press and social media were filled with politicians and talking heads declaring things like, “This is not how we do things in the United States,” or, in a more chauvinistic framing, “This is the sort of thing that happens in Third World countries, not here.” Utah Gov. Spencer Cox even said he prayed the shooter would be a foreigner, because he didn’t want to believe a U.S. citizen could be responsible.
Condemning political terrorism is correct, but the denial about the prevalence of political violence in (and carried out abroad by) the United States—today and throughout its history—is staggering.
Some commentators have pointed to the upsurge of recent years. Beyond the assassination of Charlie Kirk, in June of this year, Minnesota State Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband were killed in a politically-motivated attack. State Sen. John Hoffman and his wife were wounded. The right-wing killer carried a list of more Democrats he planned to murder.
Earlier, in April, the Pennsylvania governor’s residence was firebombed in another act of political violence. And before that, in July of last year, a would-be assassin tried to kill then-presidential nominee Donald Trump at a campaign rally.
Yes, targeted killings may have spiked lately, but the U.S. is a country that has always experienced frequent political violence. Four sitting presidents have been assassinated, and at least three others have survived attempts. In 1865, President Abraham Lincoln was shot by a Confederate sympathizer who saw the leader who had just preserved the Union and helped end slavery as a tyrant. In 1950, a group with anti-colonial perspectives from Puerto Rico attempted to kill President Harry Truman in an effort to draw attention to Puerto Rico’s plight under U.S. rule.
Presidents are the most famous victims but far from the only ones. Members of Congress, including Sens. Robert F. Kennedy and Huey P. Long, were gunned down while in office. Leaders outside elected politics have been targeted, too: Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X, two of the most important voices of the Civil Rights movement, were both assassinated.
And political violence in the U.S. has never just been the work of lone actors. The government itself has long been the biggest perpetrator. From targeted assassinations to mass killings, U.S. authorities have used violence as a political tool whenever they saw fit.
In 1969, the FBI assassinated Fred Hampton, the young Chicago leader of the Black Panther Party. Drugged by an FBI informant, Hampton was shot in his bed during a pre-dawn raid in which police fired nearly 100 rounds. In 1985, Philadelphia police dropped a military-grade bomb on the rowhouse headquarters of the Black liberation group MOVE, killing 11 people—including five children. Police allowed the fire to burn, destroying more than 60 homes in the neighborhood.
State terror has always been used not only agaisnt radicals but against the working class itself. From the lynchings that terrorized Black communities and upheld Jim Crow’s cheap labor system to the Memorial Day Massacre of 1937, when Chicago police opened fire on striking steelworkers, to the Ludlow Massacre in 1914, when Rockefeller’s private guards and the National Guard slaughtered striking minders and their families, capital has always answered workers’ demands with violence. Violence is how the ruling class keeps wages low, movements weak, and its profits secure.
The U.S. government doesn’t just commit political violence at home; it also exports it abroad. The CIA has backed coups, assassinations, and terror campaigns around the globe, always in defense of corporate and imperial interests.
In 1961, the CIA orchestrated the overthrow and assassination of Patrice Lumumba, Congo’s first democratically-elected prime minister, for being “too friendly” with the Soviet Union. Congo has never recovered, condemned to decades of political instability and violence.
Between 1965 and 1966, the U.S. helped enable genocide in Indonesia. With CIA support, the Indonesian military and allied militias slaughtered between 500,000 and 1 million suspected communists, trade unionists, and leftists—wiping out one of the largest workers’ movements in the world.
In 1973, Washington aided Chilean generals in their coup against Salvador Allende, Chile’s elected socialist president, who died while trying to save democracy in his country. Allende’s overthrow ushered in a decades-long fascist dictatorship under Gen. Augusto Pinochet, leaving tens of thousands dead, tortured, or disappeared.
And at this very moment, the United States is supplying and supporting genocidal levels of political violence against the Palestinian people. Worse, it has declared that even questioning this support is itself “dangerous rhetoric” that is met with more state-sponsored political violence such as in the unlawful arrest of Mahmoud Khalil.
These are only a few examples of the United States’ long, bloody record of political violence. For contemporary politicians to react with surprise at the murder of Charlie Kirk—as if such acts are foreign to the U.S.—shows just how disconnected they are from reality.
Political violence is not “foreign” or an aberation. It is not simply “American culture.” It is the logic of capitalism itself, a system that relies on terror–at home and abroad– to defend the profits and power of the ruling class.
From the genocide of Indigenous nations to the slave patrols, to strikebreakers, to COINTELPRO, to coups and drone strikes, the ruling class has always relied on violence to protect its wealth and power. The U.S. ruling class carries out violence not because Americans are uniquely violent people, but because capitalism is built on bloodshed.
So, when U.S. politicians act shocked at the assassination of Kirk, they are not speaking truth. They are engaged in denial. They are trying to erase history and hide the bloody present. Political violence is not foreign, it is the language of capital. As long as capital rules, violence will remain its instrument of choice.
As with all op-eds published by People’s World, the views reflected here are those of the author.
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