Trump has been signaling for a decade or so that political violence committed by his supporters is acceptable and might even be rewarded. Those he pardoned for their participation in the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the US Capitol included many convicted of violent crimes. But Trump and many of his acolytes frame such conduct not as violence, but as legitimate, even patriotic, self-defense. Like other right-wing populists, they portray themselves as perpetual victims.

There have been some deeply distasteful postings about Kirk’s killing by apparent leftists on social media, pointing out with schadenfreude that Kirk had claimed that gun deaths were an acceptable price to pay for the right to bear arms. But, on the whole, liberal commentators have gone out of their way not just to condemn violence but to recognize Kirk as a good-faith debater with a “taste for disagreement.” On the right, by contrast, prominent voices have called for repression, invoking the illegal practices of FBI founder J. Edgar Hoover as a model, if not outright “war.”

More worrying still, Trump himself seems to relish the occasion as a pretext to attack civil-society organizations not to his liking. Members of his administration had already declared the Democratic Party itself to be a “domestic terror organization.” Given that Trump has shown absolutely no restraint in unleashing the powers of the federal government on any individual or organization, the implied threat of prosecuting the opposition should set off alarm bells for any democrat (not just Democrats).

Beyond abusing the law, Trump has consistently encouraged, or at least clearly tolerated, political violence: from imagining himself shooting someone on Fifth Avenue, to encouraging his supporters to rough up people, to describing violent racists marching in Charlottesville, Virginia, as “fine people,” to his apparent willingness to see his first vice president, Mike Pence, be lynched on January 6, 2021 so that he could remain in power.

Democracies like Brazil have been able to sanction a president prepared to stage a coup, as the trial and conviction of former President Jair Bolsonaro demonstrates. The US, by contrast, not only failed to demonstrate after January 6 that actions have consequences, it allowed Trump to return to power, which he has used to send the clearest possible message that those engaged in pro-Trump violence can expect impunity. They might even be glorified and be honored with a military funeral. Mike Johnson, the Republican speaker of the House, has effectively refused to install a plaque for the police defenders of the Capitol, as mandated in a bipartisan bill.

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While Trump’s first term featured ostentatious displays of cruelty, his administration is now devoting significant resources to creating a cult of violence. The killing of 11 people at sea off the coast of Venezuela, without any apparent legal justification, is gleefully shared on social media. The Department of Homeland Security routinely uses social media to celebrate the pain of families whose loved ones are brutally taken away. One post goes so far as to show masked ICE personnel with Nazi Wehrmacht helmets.

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