Student acceptance of violence as reaction to speech spikes

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The sickening assassination of Charlie Kirk at a campus speech this week has brought attention to worrying trends in political violence and the public’s stated support for it.

According to FIRE’s annual College Free Speech Rankings survey, in 2020, the national average showed about 1 in 5 students said it was ever acceptable to use violence to stop a speaker. That number has since risen to a disturbing 1 in 3 students.

While we have seen no evidence that Kirk’s shooter is a student, there’s no doubt that the 50% increase in this level of support for political violence among college students over the last 5 years has broad implications for the future of the country.

When we subdivide by party affiliation, we see a more complete story, but the trends are roughly the same.

Students who identify as “Strong Democrats” are one of the few groups that haven’t markedly increased in support for using violence to stop a speaker, but only because they started at a higher rate of acceptance. Once the second most accepting of violence, they are now the second least accepting, thanks to a rise in acceptance by other groups. In other words, they didn’t get better — everyone else got worse. But consistently the worst group of all remains those who identify as “Something else.”

The portions of “Strong Republicans” and “Republicans” who accept the use of violence to stop a speaker have more than tripled in four years. Even acceptance among “Independents” has more than doubled. To give you a sense of how bad things have gotten, the group that currently accepts violence the least, Republican-leaning independents, would have ranked alongside those who accepted it the most back in 2020.

Those students who are the furthest to the left have been the most accepting of violence for as long as we’ve asked the question. That includes very liberal and democratic socialist students. But a rising tide of acceptance of violence has raised all boats. Now, regardless of party or ideology, students across the board are more open to violence as a way to shut down a speaker. What was once an extreme and fringe opinion has become normalized.

Where do we go from here? Violence is antithetical to free speech, and political violence is wholly incompatible with — and toxic to — democracy. As FIRE Executive Vice President Nico Perrino put it, it is a cancer in our body politic. Hopefully, the horrific image of the assassination of a young father, in front of his family, during a campus speech will show students who say they support violence what that actually looks like in practice.

The great innovation of free speech is that we settle disputes with words and arguments, not violence. Too many have turned away from this principle. For the sake of all Americans, we must return to it.

I refuse to feel sorry for a man who would have gladly applauded MY death at the hands of hate groups. As far as I'm concerned he and his family deserve no sympathy from their targets.

to quote Kirk himself: Gun deaths are a necessary cost to allow Americans the freedom to carry arms. By his own logic, MAGAs shouldn't complain. He died by the very gun violence he defended as the “price” of liberty.

to quote Kirk himself: Gun deaths are a necessary cost to allow Americans the freedom to carry arms. By his own logic, MAGAs shouldn't complain. He died by the very gun violence he defended as the “price” of liberty.

I refuse to feel sorry for a man who would have gladly applauded MY death at the hands of hate groups. As far as I'm concerned he and his family deserve no sympathy from their targets.

And frankly do you truly believe that the MAGA lunatics crying for liberal blood are going to care if we try to take the moral high ground and muster up sympathies and condolences for that piece of work?

I make no apologies for saying that. The only thing I'm truly sad about in all this is the fact that this country has gotten this unstable.

One can harbor no symphony for Kirk and even believe he deserved to die and at the same time be against assassinating him precisely because it made a bad situation worse and put more progressive lives in danger. IMHO that is both practical politics and the moral thing to do. MAGA lunatics won’t care but images on social media of people celebrating his murder are making the progressives look like lunatics to the swing voters who decide elections.

Believe me I DO get all that, but there's a fine line between doing the practical and moral thing and refusing to stand up to the MAGA BS. That's also part of the reason why the Democrats are losing to Trump, because they refuse to fight as dirty as the MAGAs are fighting.

I'm not calling for violence and war but if the Democrats want to be taken seriously by voters they need to beat Trump at his own game and quit being so nice about it.

I never blame video games because humans have been violent since the dawn of humanity.

People seem to forget that despite how crazy the world seems today for most of our shared history our favorite pastimes included things like sacking entire cities during war and burning fellow human beings at the stake for heresy and witchcraft as the crowds gathered and cheered.

If anything video games gave us a way to indulge in our inherent desires for violence without actually BEING violent. They subdued our worst human impulses.

Any time the video games are blamed for violence by politicians it's always just a red herring.

Not sure I would credit video games with having been the thing that "subdued our worst human impulses," but I agree that they should not be seen as a primary CAUSE of violence. Blaming video games stinks of moral panic.