‘Happy that his voice was silenced’: Why more college kids are embracing political violence

Take a walk across a college campus these days, and you’re likely to hear some young Americans accepting and justifying, if not fully condoning, political violence.

At the University of Maryland, some students say extreme measures are sometimes appropriate to shut down political speech they don’t like.

Sophia, a 19-year-old sophomore studying biology, said some of her friends were celebrating the death of conservative icon Charlie Kirk because they disagreed with his political views and considered him a threat.

“A lot of my friends that day were like, ‘Well, I feel like I’m happy that Charlie Kirk is dead, but then I also feel guilty that I feel that way,’” she said. “I think a lot of it is just he was spreading so much hate, misinformation, encouraging violence, and so I think that in this scenario, a lot of people were not necessarily happy that he died but happy that his voice was silenced.”

Sophia of Connecticut, who declined to give her last name, said she doesn’t support extreme measures such as assassination but does want to stamp out political speech with which she disagrees.

“Would it have been better if his voice was silenced not through death? Yeah, it would have,” she said. “So I think a lot of people are really conflicted because of that.”

The cold-blooded reaction to Kirk’s assassination underscored the growing approval of political violence among young and liberal Americans.

Although nearly three-quarters of Americans across the political spectrum flat out oppose political violence, 19% of voters ages 18 to 29 are likely to say political violence is justified, according to a recent YouGov survey.

The question is not theoretical. Young Americans witnessed an uptick in political violence before the Kirk assassination:

• Minnesota state House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, were assassinated in June in their home.

• Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and his family had to flee the governor’s mansion in April when someone threw a fire bomb through a window, badly damaging the house.

• President Trump last year survived two attempts on his life, including a bullet wound to the ear when a sniper fired at him at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania.

• A man was arrested in June 2022 near the Maryland home of Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh and charged with plotting to kill the justice.

• In October 2022, a man broke into the San Francisco home of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. When she was found not to be home, the intruder struck her husband, Paul, in the head with a hammer.

On the college campus, sophomore Ella La Fiandra, who is studying kinesiology, offered what she considered a good explanation for her generation’s growing acceptance of political violence.

“Young people have been exposed to it for a majority of their lives. [That’s why] they’re so quick to normalize it,” the 19-year-old Marylander said.

After the assassination of Kirk this month, graphic videos of the shooting and clips of Kirk from past interviews and events flooded the internet.

People were quick to either condemn the shooting and hail the 31-year-old conservative activist as a martyr or bring up the political views he expressed in public as a way to justify his death.

Dason Miller, a 21-year-old senior majoring in public health and biology, said it was a “little bit of surprise, just that anything of that magnitude would happen.”

However, when he started looking at Kirk’s statements, the assassination of the rising conservative star seemed “ironic.”

One interview from 2023 in particular got a lot of attention on the college campus. In the interview, Kirk said, “It’s worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights.”

Mr. Miller, who is from Maryland, said the quote didn’t justify Kirk’s assassination, though there was a “but.”

“Not to say that he deserved it, because I don’t think anyone, you know, deserves a murderous end of their life or anything, but he kind of did eat his own words, like he was the product of his own quote in that sense,” he said.

Kirk co-founded Turning Point USA, an organization for high school and college-age conservatives. He had a popular podcast and toured college campuses to share his opinions, explain conservative ideas and debate those who disagreed.

He was known for going to college campuses and sitting at a “Prove Me Wrong” table that invited people to debate political topics such as transgender issues, abortion and family values. Clips would go viral on social media, with attention from people across the political spectrum.

Kirk was killed at Utah Valley University on Sept. 10 as he debated students in front of a crowd of about 3,000 on the campus green.

Ms. La Fiandra said resorting to violence, such as the shooting of Kirk, is “attention seeking.”

“It was very disappointing to see,” she said. “I don’t think anyone should resort to violence for a political goal. Whether or not you agreed with him, I would never justify that.”

Kinesiology major Eshely Valer, 21, blamed the rash of political violence on “both sides.”

“There’s so much hate in the world on both sides,” the Maryland native said. “There’s so much hate that they just resort to violence because violence gets the most attention from the media and others.”

The YouGov poll found that 77% of Americans said it was unacceptable to be happy about public figures’ deaths. Among younger Americans, 12% of those ages 18 to 29 said it is acceptable to be happy about such deaths.

Ms. Valer said those who say they are happy are “just happy that there aren’t more people like that in the world.”

“I genuinely don’t know what would cause somebody to want to take another person’s life, even if it’s a terrible person, but to take his life, the way that he did, especially in front of his family and stuff, is really, really sad,” Ms. Valer said.