Polarization in Politics: A Case Study

by: Anik Bhattacharjee & Alistair MacKay-White

On September 10th, 2025, Charlie Kirk was assassinated at a Turning Point USA rally at Utah Valley University. The assassin was Tyler James Robinson, a 22-year-old from Utah. He shot Kirk in the neck with a singular bullet whilst Kirk, somewhat ironically, was discussing gun violence and its relation to transgender rights. Four bullets were found at the scene, one fired and the other three abandoned alongside the weapon. Each bullet was inscribed with a reference to anti-fascist rhetoric or pop culture. For example, one contained a reference to the popular video game Helldivers II. The game parallels George Orwell’s classic dystopian novel 1984 in its fictional representation of a government that spews propaganda and is constantly engaged in warfare with an unknown enemy. Another bullet features lines from a popular anti-fascist song, “O Bella ciao,” a response to Mussolinism within Italy pre-World War II.

In Robinson’s inscriptions and Kirk’s final words, a sharp contrast is drawn, one that serves as a crux for American politics in the 21st century. A collision between two kinds of contradictory rhetoric and absolute conviction. Two sides of a battle that has been formed by constant political combat, and neither side has the vocabulary to admit defeat, or the supposed “wrongness.” Both men believed they were the last line of defense. When two sides both believe they are the resistance, a bulwark for a society they seek to defend, political violence becomes logical to both, and democracy becomes impossible for either. The Kirk assassination is a prime example of what occurs when we allow a democracy and its citizens to stop sharing a reality and become championed by emotion and fear.

Something key has been lost here, something that was core within the founding fathers' vision of the US: bipartisanship. It is often said our nation’s unity was fractured by political polarization, yet what exactly do we mean by this? What’s really happening is known as affective polarization, or when people don’t just disagree with the other side but despise them as well. Pew Research has tracked this trend for decades, and the share of Democrats and Republicans who view the opposing party as a threat to the nation's well-being has almost doubled since 2016. This is significantly different from simple policy disagreement, because you can negotiate policy, but you cannot negotiate with someone you believe is an existential threat.

Whether a result of the media ecosystem, social media’s architecture, or socio-economic factors, the nation must agree that the radical differences we see across the aisle must be tempered. The difference between what is said and what is true has become an abyss, and we must fill it with the light of truth. If we seek to return to political normalcy.