The American political environment has changed drastically over the past few years, and few people truly understand why. Many of us still struggle to make sense of that strange feeling, not merely that seismic events happen, but that the U.S. itself has changed. They’re right to think so. America has changed. And, unfortunately, not very much for the better.
At the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI), our team studies the dynamic (and often toxic) relationship between mainstream politics and the cyber-domain. In plain language, we spend much of our time figuring out whether the corrosive effects of social media is making our politics crazier, or whether our politics has become crazier and that is simply reflected on social media. It’s not easy. Violence existed long before social media and will likely exist long after it’s gone. But, at this point, we have absolutely no doubt that what’s happening on the internet is shaping and changing America in ways far beyond any of us can easily control – and are only beginning to understand.
Whilst the NCRI has had major impact revealing the Chinese Communist Party’s manipulation of TikTok, or how excessive social media use is making us become more like the ‘bots’ that farm engagement across millions of accounts; our most recent work on the growth of what we call an “assassination culture” has received some of the most widespread attention. And that’s because when Luigi Mangione decided to kill the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, Brian Thompson, one cold day in December last year, the public reaction shocked almost everyone. Most people condemned the murder as an act of cold-blooded, inexcusable violence. But, Americans discovered, many also didn’t. Many said not only was this the right thing to do – it should be actively celebrated as a form of resistance: to CEOs, capitalists, the healthcare industry, or just the rich in general. This was an America which few of us had seen before.
Violence existed long before social media and will likely exist long after it’s gone. But, at this point, we have absolutely no doubt that what’s happening on the internet is shaping and changing America in ways far beyond any of us can easily control – and are only beginning to understand.
The murder of Brian Thompson went viral, shocking many of us into facing a new reality, one in which political violence against so-called “elites” was appropriate and acceptable. So, we began investigating why so much of the population felt that Luigi Mangione was a hero, an all-American Che Guevara. What we discovered was that vast corners of the internet were absolutely rife with celebrations of the killing. We found the celebrations of him on X/Twitter, Bluesky, and Reddit. We found that such a sophisticated circulation of memes, jokes, Nintendo pictures, and taglines about Mangione that we started referring to it as a kind of ecosystem; a sort of cyber-subculture in which ideas previously beyond the pale could live and breathe without, so to speak, too much adult supervision. A vast digital world of artistic support for Luigi Mangione was hidden right before our eyes. We were witnessing an assassination culture.
Part of what made this story so interesting was that it flipped the story we were used to hearing in the U.S. today: that political violence always comes from the Right. What we were seeing is that, at least in this case, almost all of it was coming from the political Left. The vast numbers of Americans who supported the killing of Brian Thompson did so in the name of an anti-capitalist, and very anti-American, kind of ideology.
To understand this better, we launched a survey of thousands of Americans. The results were even more surprising than what we found on social media. Slightly over half of all those who were politically left-wing agreed that the murder of public figures – including Elon Musk – could be at least partially justified. Even more (around 56 percent) believed that there was at least some justification for killing President Donald Trump. Around 60 percent believed that smashing up a Tesla dealership could justify at least some destruction, too. Most worryingly, in our latest survey (December 2025), we found that a high number of politically left-wing respondents expressed at least some justification for killing Donald Trump (data forthcoming). Together, this shows a generalized approval of violence that is only climbing year-on-year.
Although fewer of those surveyed believed in actively going and doing all of this, these numbers are extremely significant for social scientists not because they reflect a growing amount of violent psychopaths in our society, but because they show that more and more of us believe that such actions are basically OK. And when enough of those violent psychopaths feel that, too – we are in deep, deep trouble.
Ultimately, what connects this growing acceptance of violence to the online ecosystem of pro-Luigi memes is what scholars call “permission structures.” Think of them like the wink or a nod towards some kind of behavior. When enough people are willing to overlook – or worse, promote – acts of violence and disorder, the likelihood of it grows significantly. “Permission structures” are essentially psychological corridors that can pull someone towards even the most subversive behavior possible – like justifying shooting Donald Trump or burning down one of Musk’s Tesla dealerships. And when you find entire online cultures just full of people celebrating the killing of Brian Thompson, it’s not difficult to see how easy it could be to believe it’s the right thing to do.
There’s another part to this puzzle, too, one that gets right to the heart of so much of the bigger narrative about what’s going on in America today. Most mainstream academics will talk about something called “right-wing authoritarianism”, a cluster of attitudes that revolve around defending social order, punishing outsiders, and venerating some kind of hero. They’ll use it to point to someone like Trump and use it to explain almost all of the current polarization in our politics today. But it’s only half the story.
There is a “left-wing authoritarianism” in the world, too, though it is far less studied or discussed than the “right-wing” variety. In fact, it is the single most salient characteristic across all the people we surveyed who support political violence against figures like Trump, Elon, and Brian Thompson. The attitudes of “left-wing authoritarianism” are everywhere around us: on college campuses, in the “free speech” debates, and so many more. The “woke” energy which has become so prevalent in American culture is, from one perspective, just an expression of these growing characteristics amongst Americans to overthrow the social order, censor those who disagree with them, and punish those in power. Such antisocial attitudes can not only be measured; they are increasingly common.
The “woke” energy which has become so prevalent in American culture is, from one perspective, just an expression of these growing characteristics amongst Americans to overthrow the social order, censor those who disagree with them, and punish those in power. Such antisocial attitudes can not only be measured; they are increasingly common.
There is one last ingredient in the stew of American dysfunction today, and that is the idea of personal agency. People today, particularly young people, feel powerless. They feel powerless to change their life, and to do many of the things that were previously relatively simple to do: buy a house, get a good job, graduate from college debt-free, and so on. When Luigi Mangione told his friends about his plans, he said he wanted to break the “NPC” – an acronym in video-game slang for “Non-Playable Character”. He wanted to revolt against a sense of helplessness that his whole generation feels whether it’s right or not. And that feeling – what psychologists call the “locus of control” – is, in fact, one of other important characteristics of those who support left-wing violence. They feel like the system is against them, and so they react by supporting violence against those who seem to run it. And social media appears to be directly feeding this sense of helplessness even more, especially given that people can cheer it on whilst remaining completely anonymous.
It’s a completely different world from traditional incitement, where there was at least the necessity of clandestine physical meetings and escape. Today, you can connect to people who harbor violent and anti-social attitudes just by joining a Telegram channel on your phone. What’s more, young people today have grown up in an era of an increasing lack of civic responsibility or engagement. They are fed an endless stream of nihilistic content on social media and cannot do many of the things that are expected of adults. It makes some of them feel good to join the online mob and support the killing of “establishment” figures. And it makes it almost impossible to legislate against, too, because American laws vigorously (and correctly) prohibit interfering in free speech.
The solution, instead, is in the right leadership. Probably the single most consequential action that politicians could take would be to stand together and say that whatever our differences, violence is never, ever, the answer. There are problems in our society, just as there are in any society. And Americans are free to disagree about what to do about them, for that is the beauty of the Republic. What can never be acceptable is the celebration of violence against opponents. What America needs, in the end, is courage.
Max Horder is a senior fellow at the Network Contagion Research Institute. He has a PhD in Anthropology from Princeton University, where he studied the causes of political polarization in Western democracies.