Murder is mimetic. The Zodiac Killer — who murdered at least five people in Northern California in the 1960s and sent cryptic messages to the news media — inspired copycats and established a dark cultural archetype: the serial killer who leaves taunting clues for his pursuers to try to decipher. School shooters, often emerging from irony-poisoned, meme-addled online subcultures, tend to perform for one another. The same day Charlie Kirk was assassinated, a 16-year-old apparent white supremacist opened fire at his Colorado high school; one of his TikToks included a picture of Natalie Rupnow, who killed two people at her Christian school in December.
Over the last 10 months or so, a frightening new pattern has emerged. First, in December, Luigi Mangione became an internet icon after allegedly assassinating the chief executive of UnitedHealthcare in New York City. Messages left on the bullet casings seemingly alluded to the way insurance companies refuse coverage. The sniper who murdered Kirk left messages on his bullet casings as well, though in his case they appear to have been a macabre sort of trolling. Joshua Jahn, the 29-year-old who staged a sniper attack on an ICE field office in Dallas this week — killing a migrant detainee and injuring two others — reportedly wrote “Anti ICE” on his bullet casing. F.B.I. Director Kash Patel claims that Jahn repeatedly searched online for information about Kirk’s killing.
It is not surprising that the Trump administration would use these hideous acts as a pretext to crack down on its political enemies. Particularly since Kirk’s killing, the mood in this country has sometimes reminded me of what it felt like after Sept. 11, a combination of genuine fear and mourning, hysterical sanctimony and vicious opportunism. The Justice Department, The Times reported, has now instructed more than a half-dozen attorneys to draft plans to investigate George Soros’s Open Society Foundations for possible crimes including material support of terrorism. A frighteningly expansive new White House memorandum describes left-wing political violence as “a culmination of sophisticated, organized campaigns” and directs federal agencies to target progressive political networks. Donald Trump was going to use the power of the presidency for vengeance no matter what, but left-wing violence has given him momentum.
As a new wave of repression sweeps over this country, it’s become difficult to have a rational discussion about the killings being used to justify it. Violence that at least looks left-wing really does appear to be on the rise. In The Atlantic, Daniel Byman and Riley McCabe wrote that “2025 marks the first time in more than 30 years that left-wing attacks outnumber those from the far right.” Yet the men committing the highest-profile left-coded killings have little discernible connection to progressive politics, on or offline. Neither Mangione, Tyler Robinson, nor Jahn were registered Democrats or, so far as we know, involved in activism of any kind. They’re less men of the left than men of the internet.
As for Mangione, Politico reported that, based on his online footprint, “he was broadly interested in A.I., self-improvement, mental and physical health and how the modern world can make it difficult to be well-adjusted or content.” He has expressed some admiration for Ted Kaczynski — better known as the Unabomber — but so have disaffected people across the political spectrum.
It’s important to acknowledge that Mangione, Robinson and Jahn all appear to have espoused leftish motives for their alleged crimes, and given their notoriety, others may try to follow in their footsteps. This is a disaster for both the victims and the broader culture. Fear and instability redound to the benefit of authoritarians, so violence done in the name of left-wing causes serves right-wing ends. Progressives should condemn these killers and do whatever is in their power to push back on the voices that lionize them, and the toxic social media algorithms that boost those voices. But it may not make a difference, because the suspects in these murders exist outside of recognizable political movements.
America has had genuine subversives and left-wing terror networks in the past. For all the cruelty, paranoia and oppression of the Red Scare in the 1940s and 1950s, there really were Soviet spies in America. In the 1960s and 1970s, there were left-wing sectarians who truly thought they were waging revolution. None of that exists today. Instead, we have loners lashing out, cloaking their personal grievances and homicidal impulses in political rationales.
That makes such violence particularly hard to counter. It should go without saying that Trump’s plan to wage war on his enemies will do precisely nothing to address this building crisis. But as long as America is a country awash in guns and choking on hatred, full of people retreating into the disembodied half-life of the internet, it’s hard to see what will.
After Kirk was murdered, video of his death played online unceasingly, becoming what my colleague Zeynep Tufekci called a viral snuff film. An endless stream of content parsed the meaning of the words and symbols on the bullet casings. Anyone who has spent time on TikTok knows when someone finds a formula for capturing mass attention, imitators rush in. It’s the kind of problem we might be able to address if we had a base-line social compact about the speech private platforms should allow and promote. But for now, we’re stuck in a ratchet, where violent losers copy one another, and their deeds become an excuse to oppress the rest of us.