Generational Dynamics Forum - New Site

Toxic rhetoric, including calls for 'civil war' and retribution from the right, proliferates after Charlie Kirk killing

Kirk was known for sharing extreme and provocative positions online and in frequent on-campus appearances. His killing has sparked messages threatening violence.

Sept. 12, 2025, 5:22 PM CDT
By David Ingram

A stew of hypertoxic rhetoric has surged through social media and American discourse after the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, inflaming a political environment that was already deeply polarized.

The most concerning messages, experts told NBC News, are proclamations from far-right activists, Republican politicians and conservative influencers about a coming civil war and the need for retribution or payback against the left for Kirk’s killing. The phrase “civil war” has spiked on social media and in Google searches.

“The Left is the party of murder,” Elon Musk posted on X to his 226 million followers, shortly after the shooting and before the gunman’s identity was known. He separately posted, “If they won’t leave us in peace, then our choice is fight or die,” without saying who “they” were.

While there had not been any known acts of violence connected to the Kirk killing as of Friday afternoon, the shooting sent a wave of fear across much of the U.S. political landscape. Many politicians are adding security in response to an uptick in death threats, and some canceled events and said they would be holding off on public appearances. The Democratic National Committee headquarters received bomb threats on Thursday and Friday, which authorities said turned out not to be credible.

On Friday, authorities said they arrested Tyler Robinson, a 22-year-old Utah resident, in connection with Kirk’s killing. Authorities also said he left behind bullet casings engraved with messages that included “Hey fascist! Catch! ↑→↓↓↓” in an apparent reference to a video game, among other references to obscure internet memes.

Hours after Robinson’s arrest, with his motive still unclear, former Trump adviser and right-wing podcaster Steve Bannon called for mass arrests and for taking a “blowtorch” to colleges and universities.

A spokesperson for Bannon responded to NBC News’ request for comment with an expletive. Musk did not respond to a request for comment.

The inflammatory language took off on Wednesday, immediately after the shooting. On social media platforms such as X, Truth Social and TikTok, as well as on Fox News, some personalities called for national law enforcement to target Democrats. Others compared Democrats to animals, demanded National Guard troops in more cities, declared themselves to have been “radicalized,” called for other forms of vengeance and repeatedly invoked the language of war as they reacted to Kirk’s killing.

Charlie Kirk's beloved wife, Mrs. Erika Kirk addresses the Nation.

Turning Point USA

21:04
Already I have seen the worldwide outpouring of love for my husband.
21:10
I've heard the testimonies from people my husband inspired to get married, to start families,
21:16
to seek out a relationship with God. It's the most important most important one of all.
21:26
The evildoers responsible for my husband's assassination
21:33
have no idea what they have done.
21:39
They killed Charlie because he preached a message of patriotism,
21:44
faith, and of God's merciful love. But they should all know this.
21:52
If you thought that my husband's mission was powerful before,
21:59
you have no idea. You have no idea what you just have
22:04
unleashed across this entire country. In this world, you have no idea.
22:12
You have no idea the fire that you have ignited within this wife.
22:20
The cries of this widow will echo around the world like a battlecry.
22:31
To everyone listening tonight across America, the movement my husband built will not die. It won't. I refuse to let
22:40
that happen. It will not die. All of us
22:46
will refuse to let that happen. No one will ever forget my husband's name. And
22:52
I will make sure of it. It will become stronger,
23:00
bolder, louder, and greater than ever. My husband's mission will not end, not
23:06
even for a moment. And one of Charlie's greatest talents
23:12
was his ability, this phenomenal ability to choose great people to follow him.
23:18
He could always find the ones who could handle any setback. And it's almost like
23:24
he knew. He just he could see it in you. Even when you couldn't see it in yourself, he just knew. He knew you
23:29
could handle it. You thought you only had 5% left. And he knew you had 15.
23:36
He knew you were ready to go that extra mile even when you didn't. He always challenged people around him
23:42
to work harder and to be better. He never gave up. And I love knowing that one of his one
23:50
of his mottos was never surrender. So I want to tell you that that we'll
23:58
never surrender. We never will. Ever. Ever.

Silencing Dissent: The Chilling Implications of Charlie Kirk’s Assassination
Victor Davis Hanson | September 12, 2025

I don’t think anybody in our generation—I’m speaking my generation—could have done what he did. Nobody in his generation could have done what he did.

So, what’s tragic is he’s lost at such an early age. He had two small children, a wife. And this is a turning point. In the United States, we don’t kill media people. They do it in Europe, they do it in Mexico, they do it in Latin America. They don’t take out political activists.

This is something new where somebody targets one of the most influential Americans and wants to eliminate them, and with them, that elimination, remove a force for good in which they would say bad.

So, it’s very scary, and it’s not occurring in a vacuum. I know that both sides have extremists, but when you look at the Rep. Steve Scalise shooting—where a former Sen. Bernie Sanders organizer who helped in the campaign tried to take out, deliberately tried to take out, the Republican leadership in the House as a political act. And then you look at two near-successful assassination attempts on President Donald Trump. And then you have these spinoff things.

Brian Thompson, a man of the middle class who worked up the chain of command to be the CEO of UnitedHealth, which offered health insurance that was needed by millions of people. And he’s what? Gunned down and assassinated by Luigi Mangione.

What I’m getting at is the reaction as well.

What was the reaction to Steve Scalise and the Republicans? Was there outrage from the Left? No.

What was the reaction to the near assassination attempts of Donald Trump? Yes, there were principled people on the Left that deplored that, but a couple of polling companies took surveys, and a third of Democrats wished that these assassination attempts had been successful.

What was the reaction to the murder of Brian Thompson by Luigi Mangione? He was the object of a puff piece by Taylor Lorenz, a former Washington Post reporter. He’s got an opera named after him. He is a folk hero among the Left. It reminds me of the Tsarnaev brother, who was a mass murderer of the Boston bombings. Rolling Stone put a photogenic picture of him on their cover.

So, what I’m getting at is, when you kill somebody who’s involved in politics, and now we’ve gone to the next level, politics and as a media influencer and as a journalist and as an opinion writer, and there is not widespread condemnation of that—and there was booing even in the House of Representatives just for a simple call for an a minute of prayer on behalf of Charlie—then something is wrong.

And what is that wrong? We are legitimizing political violence.

If you call someone day after day after day, “white, white, white, white”; “racist, racist, racist”; “fascist, fascist, fascist”; “Nazi, Nazi, Nazi”—we hear that from Joy Reid. We see it on “The View.” We see it on MSNBC. Even just seconds after Charlie died, we had Matthew Dowd go on and basically said that he got what he deserved because he was an extremist, etc., and he and you “live by the sword, die by the sword” sort of argument he used.

So, what we’re doing is we’re legitimizing violence and we’re contextualizing it. And when you use hyperbole and you call someone a fascist or an abject racist, what that sends a message to are people in the woodwork of America feel two things. They don’t see people getting punished for violent crimes.

And I can direct you to the violent killer, murderer, executioner of our Ukrainian immigrant on a light-rail car in Charlotte, North Carolina. He was let out 14 times. The murder of a young, retired—in my view, she’s young—retired, 57-year-old Auburn professor of veterinary medicine killed. The person who killed her: ex-felon out.

And so, when you combine this idea that if you commit a murder, if you commit violence, there might not be swift and immediate and extreme punishment with the idea that many people have celebrated killers in the past, like Mangione, or the people who tried to kill Donald Trump, then out in the woodwork of America creep out people who say, “I can get away with it, or I can at least not face the death penalty, I won’t face severe penalties. But more importantly, I will be enshrined in the pantheon of liberal heroes ’cause I took out a fascist, I took out a modern-day Hitler, I took out a transphobe,” all of that.

And so, when you look at what’s going on in America on the Left—whether it’s the racial Left, whether it is the extremist ideological Left, whether it’s the trans Left—what we’re seeing is that there is a contextualization, a normalization, an institutionalization, an excuse, an apology for the use of violence as a political means. Doesn’t mean that they are doing it themselves, but when they see it happen, they will find ways not to condemn it, and they will create an atmosphere of hatred in which some people will be encouraged by it.

And mark my words: I haven’t looked at social media as I’m speaking today, but within 48 hours, there will be people throughout the left-wing blogosphere who will be praising this horrific death of a great American and a great person, Charlie Kirk.

I think political violence has become more of a forefront in our discourse, in our generation’s discourse, more so than ever before. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I have recency bias. But I don’t remember any point in the past decade of my career where it was this transparent, it was this out there, it was celebrated to this degree.

And why do you think that is?

I mean, that one is easy. This is something that I talked about in the aftermath of Brian Thompson’s murder as well, allegedly at the hands of Luigi Mangione. It’s seen as a pressure valve for people. Democracy is supposed to be a pressure valve. So when the democratic institutions are not working to meet the demands of the overall population, there’s a lot of discontent. And then I think people find themselves in the throes of desperation, find themselves so angry that they can’t deal with it, that they end up engaging in adventurism, decentralized violence such as this. And I think that’s where these instances of political violence and instability come from.

You mentioned Luigi Mangione — do you think we’re going to see more of this kind of political violence in the future?

I think, if left unaddressed, a lot of these societal wounds are not going to heal. They’re only going to worsen. So unfortunately, the future does seem kind of bleak in that regard.

We need structural solutions to these systemic problems. It does feel like there’s this political football, this back-and-forth about culture war narratives, culture war issues, demonization of the political opposition, rather than seeking to address these problems. At first, it might come across as just simply unproductive. Or maybe productive, if your goal is to change the discourse away from seeking out constructive answers to the issues that people are facing, but unproductive in the long run. Because, like I said, if left unaddressed, people become increasingly more resentful. And in that volatility, they do dangerous things.

50 years prison time for Baltimore County woman found with bodies of two children inside of her car
By: Dominick Philippe-Auguste
Posted 6:56 PM, Feb 10, 2025 and last updated 7:03 PM, Feb 10, 2025

BALTIMORE COUNTY, Md. — An end to a gruesome story in Baltimore County.

Nicole Johnson, 36, was sentenced to 50 years in prison after the bodies of two children were found in her car.

The disturbing discovery was unveiled July 28, 2021.

It all began when officers assigned to the Essex precinct pulled over Johnson's vehicle on Eastern Boulevard near Wagner's Lane.

Officers found that the vehicle was uninsured, unregistered, and had a fake temporary West Virginia tag attached to it.

RELATED: Aunt charged after police discover bodies of two children during traffic stop in Essex

Initial plans were to tow the car and issue citations, but Johnson had made some disturbing comments when the officer told her of potential court dates.

"It don't matter, I won't be here in five days," Johnson reportedly told the officer. "Y'all going to see me on the news, y'all going to see on the news making my big debut."

Johnson was instructed to take anything she may need out of the car before it was towed.

That's when the officer reported he began to smell a strong odor, immediately believing something was dead in the car.

Johnson pulled out a plastic tote and trash bag from the trunk.

Police said the bag contained maggots and a suitcase. She tried explaining to officers that it was just dirty blankets from living out of her car, but they were not convinced and ordered her to open the suitcase.

READ MORE: Charging documents reveal heartbreaking story of two children whose bodies were found inside aunt's car

It was then the first discovery was made, the decomposing body of 7-year-old Joshlyn Marie James Johnson.

After the child was found, Johnson made an unsuccessful attempt to flee.

Once she was caught, officers made the second horrific discovery: The body of Joshlyn's 5-year-old brother, Larry O'Neill, who was found stuffed inside the plastic tote bag.

An autopsy of Joshlyn's body revealed that she had been extremely malnourished and weighed only 18 pounds, Larry only weighed 21 pounds.

WASHINGTON (TNND) — North Carolina Magistrate Judge Teresa Stokes granted the release of Decarlos Brown, a homeless man charged with the brutal stabbing death of Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zaruska, following his arrest in January based upon a "written promise" that Brown would return for his court hearing, a court document reviewed by the National News Desk revealed.

The mother of the man charged with the murder of Iryna Zarutska has spoken out against the decisions that allowed him to be released from jail.

The mother of Decarlos Brown Jr., who was charged with stabbing Zarutska to death in Charlotte, North Carolina, in August, said her son should not have been freed after he was arrested in January.

Brown's mother, who spoke anonymously with local news, said the system that released her son, despite his criminal record and history of aggressive behavior, was "broken" and "failed."