Analysis: The ugly aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s assassination: It didn’t used to be like this

By Aaron Blake, CNN

Analysis - The ugly political fighting that follows moments like Charlie Kirk's assassination can feel all too familiar - and even unavoidable.

But it wasn't always like this, even relatively recently.

The 24th anniversary of 9/11 is a reminder that America didn't used to respond to tragedies in this manner.

People didn't leap so eagerly and quickly to speculate about and politicise them, despite having next to no information. There was much less of a focus on capitalising and more of a focus on our better angels.

And those better angels often prevailed. People generally declined to reflexively blame the easy culprits.

But - and this is the crucial distinction - this didn't happen without those in power helping guide things in that direction.

One of those instances was September 11, 2001.

There was a quick tendency to demagogue Muslims and Arabs. Polling in the days after showed a 58 percent majority of Americans blamed moderate Muslim leaders for not doing more to oppose terrorism.

Nearly half favoured requiring Arabs to carry special IDs. A Washington Post-ABC News poll shortly after showed 43 percent said the attacks would probably make them "more suspicious" of Arabs.

But six days after the attacks, then-President George W. Bush delivered an address wholly devoted to reining in the anti-Muslim fervour: the "Islam is peace" speech.

Speaking at the Islamic Centre of Washington, DC, Bush said the "face of terror is not the true faith of Islam" and that intimidation of Muslims "will not stand in America."

Anti-Muslim sentiment didn't disappear, but it clearly ebbed. Subsequent Post-ABC polls showed the percentage of Americans who said they would be "more suspicious" of Arabs dropped from 43 percent shortly after 9/11 to 38 percent a month later to 31 percent in December 2001.

Similarly, the 2015 massacre by a White supremacist at a Black church in Charleston, South Carolina, spurred a real and legitimate debate about racial animus in America.

Then-President Barack Obama didn't ignore the role of racism, but he also emphasised unity and grace - and how even the families of the victims had expressed forgiveness.

"The alleged killer could not imagine how the city of Charleston… how the state of South Carolina, how the United States of America would respond - not merely with revulsion at his evil act, but with big-hearted generosity and, more importantly, with a thoughtful introspection and self-examination that we so rarely see in public life," Obama said in delivering a eulogy for a slain reverend.

The result was a previously unthinkable bipartisan effort by South Carolina politicians to remove the Confederate flag from the state capitol. Polls showed the vast majority of Black Americans agreed with the move on the flag, and so did a majority of White Americans.

Americans also generally declined to leap for their political priors after the 2011 shooting of Democratic Rep Gabrielle Giffords in Arizona.

Even before she was shot, Giffords raised concerns about a political PAC featuring an image of her district under crosshairs, saying that "when people do that, they've got to realise there are consequences to that action."

The confluence of events, including Giffords' earlier comments, led some to speculate about a connection between political rhetoric and the shooting. Congress also engaged in a heated debate about gun control.

But otherwise, our nation's leaders made a point to demonstrate unity.

"Rather than pointing fingers or assigning blame, let's use this occasion to expand our moral imaginations," Obama said, "to listen to each other more carefully, to sharpen our instincts for empathy and remind ourselves of all the ways that our hopes and dreams are bound together."

Americans largely abided. An NBC News poll at the time showed Americans said 71 percent-24 percent that they blamed a "disturbed person" more so than "extreme political rhetoric" for the Giffords shooting.

What we've seen since then, though, is a steady politicisation of the responsibility question - especially in the Trump era.

Americans are simply much quicker to blame rhetoric - and, more specifically, the other side's rhetoric.

While just 24 percent mostly blamed political rhetoric for the Giffords shooting, that number rose to 41 percent after the 2017 shooting at a GOP congressional baseball practice, to 49 percent after the 2022 attack on Paul Pelosi and to 54 percent after the September 2024 assassination attempt against President Donald Trump.

The spikes were even greater among the partisans whose side was targeted - from just 35 percent of Democrats in 2011 to 52 percent of Republicans in 2017 to 74 percent of Democrats in 2022 to 76 percent of Republicans in 2024.

None of which is to say those views aren't legitimate; political rhetoric can play a role in radicalising people to violence. Each case is different. But those numbers show how people have become more willing to reach for political explanations.

And the initial 24 hours after Kirk's death have been a far cry from the more cautious and sombre aftermaths of each of these tragedies.

Political figures are much more eager to jump to conclusions now and to fight over the political framing.

Trump and GOP allies quickly blamed the political left, even as we had no idea who had done this or what their politics might have been.

(The rush to make judgements was similar after the Pelosi attack, the Trump assassination attempts, the shootings of Minnesota lawmakers in June, and last month's shooting at a Catholic school in Minneapolis.)

Fox News and conservative social media were rife with harsh language and even allusions to war after Kirk was shot.

"They are at war with us," Fox host Jesse Watters said. Added Fox's Greg Gutfeld: "And Jesse is right. If they could do this, they are capable of anything."

Some on the left suggested Kirk's controversial words might have brought this upon himself; MSNBC parted ways with analyst Matthew Dowd over his comments to that effect.

And just hours after Kirk was killed, Congress briefly erupted into ugly chaos over something as basic as memorialising him.

A Republican pushed for a spoken prayer rather than a silent one, and Democrats objected to Republicans not giving the same treatment to a Colorado school shooting that also took place Wednesday.

We're starting to see some prominent politicians step forward to try and rein in the ugliness.

Republican Sen Thom Tillis of North Carolina decried the "cheap, disgusting, awful" words of conservative "talking heads" who were inflaming people with talk of war.

GOP Rep Don Bacon of Nebraska called for Trump to focus more on unity, adding: "But he's a populist, and populists dwell on anger."

Time will tell if they have any success. But if nothing else, Thursday's 9/11 anniversary reminds us that it doesn't have to be this way.

- CNN