Unrest over shooting of Charlie Kirk could have ramifications for Ireland, academic warns

Recent threats against Simon Harris illustrate changing landscape of politics here, says Dr Clodagh Harrington

Charlie Kirk speaks moments before he is shot during Turning Point's visit to Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah.

The fatal shooting of MAGA political activist and gun rights advocate Charlie Kirk is likely to fuel further political division and unrest in the US with ramifications for Ireland, a politics academic warned.

Dr Clodagh Harrington, lecturer in American politics at University College Cork, said that people turn to their country’s leader at a time of collective shock.

But US President Donald Trump, rather than offering consolation and healing, has further ramped up violent rhetoric and polarisation, blaming the media and the left for Mr Kirk’s death and calling the unknown killer an “animal”.

Mr Kirk had previously said that gun deaths were inevitable in a country in which citizens were armed.

But this was “worth it” to “protect our other God-given rights," he said in 2023.

The 31-year old was shot dead while speaking at the University of Utah, reportedly being questioned about gun control at the time. He had a wife and two young children.

Mr Kirk was widely credited — and praised by Trump — for bringing MAGA ideology to young Americans.

President Trump recorded a video in the Oval Office which he posted to social media, blaming the media and the left wing for Mr Kirk’s violent death.

People turn to their leaders at a time of national shock for comfort, Dr Harrington said.

But President Trump is not providing any salve to a polarised, frightened and increasingly violent nation.

“[Former US President] Bill Clinton in the 1990s was known as the ‘Consoler in Chief’.

“He had that capacity to comfort. And I think that's an important trait of a leader," Dr Harrington said.

“Trump has many skills […] hence, that's why he's in the job he's in. But he is not an empathetic person.

“And so I think what came across in that address [from the Oval Office following Kirk’s killing] was anger and no sense of healing or of anything constructive.

“It was all about the radical left political violence being responsible for the killing of his friend and contemporary.” 

With such further enflaming language coming from the White House, more political unrest is likely, Dr Harrington said. And what happens in the US is also generally felt across the Atlantic.

Threats against Tánaiste Simon Harris and his family — including threats to kidnap his young children and multiple bomb threats at their home — already illustrate an increase in political violence here, she said.

“Everything that happens there resonates here in some way, from an economic collapse to how covid is managed to how social media is mismanaged to political violence.

Things that might have been unthinkable a generation ago are here now, like the recent threats against Simon Harris

“It’s really quite staggering to think that that's where we're at over here."

And despite the wringing of hands, Mr Kirk’s death is unlikely to herald in a new era of greater gun regulation in the US, she said.

Social media

Despite what seemed like “peak horror” when 20 children and six school staff were massacred by a gunman in Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, gun violence has if anything, increased in the US, Dr Harrington said.

But now a largely uncontrolled social media is also “in the mix”, ramping up the violence.

Algorithms promote the most controversial and incendiary rhetoric online.

And with AI becoming more powerful and prevalent, the opportunity for further destabilisation is even greater.

And the reality is already "horrendous enough,” Dr Harrington said.

Videos of Mr Kirk's murder spread widely across social platforms, including to millions of teenagers across TikTok.

But tackling social media regulation could be a relatively easy, un-divisive way to calm rabid political divisions and slowly bring communities back together again, Dr Harrington said.

“If the politicians aren't reining in things like gun control, and they're not necessarily going to reach across the aisle to talk to each other, there are some more mechanical type solutions.

It's the big tech companies that are facilitating all of the horror online, not to be blaming them for everything but they have a role because that stuff wasn't here a generation ago

“You had to go out and buy a newspaper to get the news, or you had to put on the radio or you might have looked at a website.

“But you have to actively stop the information coming at you now because we all have our phones pinging in our pockets.

“If there's any practical opportunities there for tightening up of the kind of material that gets put out on platforms and you have more stringent age restrictions and content restrictions, I think that perhaps could make it through Congress. Because, to put it bluntly, a piece of tech legislation is more boring for the public, everybody falls asleep. But everybody perks up and focuses when you're talking about guns."

Finding common ground

Dr Harrington does have hope for the future. Academics are actively working on ways to bring communities back together by encouraging people to focus on the core human values they share.

“Some scholars are now working on ideas around finding the common ground. So before anybody starts getting hysterical about abortion or climate, let’s just get really, really pedestrian and go ‘okay, let's say anybody with kids wants them to attend a decent school, a safe school. And that their journey to school is straightforward and that they have clean water coming out of the tap and that they have access to reasonable healthcare should they need it', that kind of thing.

“So just literally boiling it down to a place where even the most polar opposite ideological people can go, ‘yes, I agree on that point’ and try to thread things together so that you have something going on in the middle.

“Because there's been no middle for ages. It's just empty. The political middle is just a wasteland in recent times.

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“But there is potential to start knitting together some kind of central political ground again and having conversations whereby everyone doesn't get hysterical and not have the capacity to listen to an opposing view.

“I know people who leave the room when they hear an opinion they don't like now, and these are really educated people. That's where we've gotten to.”