NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!
After conservative activist Charlie Kirk was murdered in Utah last week, leftist and contrarian figures across the country reacted with open celebration, prompting widespread public condemnation.
Fox News Digital spoke this week to several experts who analyzed whether the trend remains a fringe occurrence or if celebrations of political opponents’ deaths and injuries are becoming mainstream.
Paul Sracic is a former politics professor at Youngstown State University and is currently an adjunct fellow at the domestic policy-focused Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C. He said the answer depends on one’s definition of “fringe.”
CHARLIE KIRK’S MURDER THE LATEST IN INCREASING POLITICAL VIOLENCE NATIONWIDE, FROM PA GOVERNOR TO SCOTUS
Charlie Kirk debates with students at The Cambridge Union on May 19, 2025 in Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, England. (Nordin Catic/Getty Images)
Sracic said recent surveys showed as many as one-fifth of self-identified liberals agreed that political violence is sometimes justified.
“Presumably, most of these very liberal and liberal voters support Democrats. This should horrify Democratic leaders, but it’s arguably the inevitable outcome of Democrats either adopting or at most failing to push back against notions that words themselves can be a form of violence and therefore can make people feel “unsafe” if they are exposed to a political argument with which they disagree,” Sracic said.
Democratic leaders, however they might personally think, also know that these more-energized voters must be attracted to the polls in the midterms, no matter the political environment, in order for the party to have a shot at winning back part of the federal government, he said.
Rep. Andy Barr, R-Ky., who is also running for Sen. Mitch McConnell’s to-be-open Senate seat, offered another perspective – focusing on the increasing trend of political violence from the left against the right.
He cited Rep. Steve…
