The assassination of political activist Charlie Kirk shook the presidency of the US and its inner circle “to its core”. That was how it was reported by Washington-based newspaper The Hill over the past weekend. The shock has rippled across US politics, and as they do those US ripples have spread across much of the world.
Will there be international repercussions? It is probably trite to repeat, but a worthy reminder anyway, that the US has played a central role in holding together the global political economy and global finance, the provider and underwriter of global public goods. It has also represented an ideal for many people, communities and societies around the world.
There has long been the belief that “it can’t happen in America”, captured in Sinclair Lewis’s cautionary tale about politics in the US, published in 1935. Between these two positions everyone who had a television set, and latterly access to the world wide web, has wanted to adopt or emulate and mimic “the American way”.
Ask the 123-million displaced people in the world and you might well still hear that everyone wants to get to the US. You may receive silent stares if you asked any of the respondents about the state of the US constitution, or about the deterioration of rights from the high point of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights of 1965 to Ronald Reagan’s budget cuts (to employment and training, food stamps and federal guaranteed loans for higher education).
They may be puzzled to learn that US social security and welfare networks are “racing towards insolvency,” according to an August report by the committee for a responsible federal budget. Notwithstanding all of these, the US remains, at least ideationally, the country to emulate among millions of people around the world.
Political violence has precedent
Contrary to the belief that “it can’t happen in America”, political assassinations have happened in the US with some consistency for most of the post-war period. But while Kirk’s assassination was not an aberration, the danger lies in the domestic response, the risk of a turn to authoritarianism, and Lewis’s cautionary tale and the global emulative effects.
— Those who expect that Kirk’s assassination will somehow only cause a slight disturbance until normal business is resumed are unlikely to be correct.
Those who expect that Kirk’s assassination will somehow only cause a slight disturbance until normal business is resumed are therefore unlikely to be correct.
We don’t have to go back as far as the assassination of Abraham Lincoln (1865), James Garfield (1881) or William McKinley (1901). A focus on the post-war period may start with the 1955 killing of the Rev George Lee by members of the White Citizens Council in 1955, John F Kennedy, Martin Luther King Junior and Malcolm X in the 1960s, the attempted assassinations of Gerald Ford in 1975, and of Ronald Reagan in 1981.
Recent attacks highlight risks
Much more recently Steve Scalise, the House of Representatives majority leader, was shot in 2017. Gabby Giffords, a congresswoman from Arizona, was shot in 2011. In June this year Melissa Hortman, a state representative from Minnesota, was assassinated. In April someone tried to kill Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro by setting his house on fire. In July 2024 Donald Trump was shot while campaigning for the presidency. And, some of the insurrectionists who broke into the US legislature on January 6 2021 made clear their intention to hang the speaker of the House and the vice-president.
The evidence suggests that political assassination attempts have been common in the US across the seven decades since 1955. Kirk’s assassination is therefore not out of the ordinary. The danger is that it could pave the way for a more brazen authoritarianism in the US, and given social media powers to influence and emulate could lead to mimicry across the globe. Herein lies the danger for people beyond US shores.
• Lagardien, an external examiner at the Nelson Mandela School of Public Governance, has worked in the office of the chief economist of the World Bank as well as the secretariat of the National Planning Commission.
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