Despite their stark differences, both partisan reactions stemmed from deeply held beliefs expressed with intense emotion. Many of these beliefs concerned the biggest threats facing the United States. The mainstream right-wing reaction generally reflected a narrative familiar to their worldview: the evil left killed Charlie Kirk. Meanwhile, left-wing indifference and celebration reflected their worldview: that Charlie Kirk was a Nazi, and MAGA is largely a collection of evil fascists.
The reactions to the assassination have settled down—for now. But the collective reactivity it triggered is cause for both concern and curiosity and applies to far more than his murder. Such volatile emotions and behavior will undoubtedly flare up again as current events grow increasingly inflammatory and polarized. Because this dynamic will inevitably play out again, it is vital to understand what made it so explosive.
One way to understand the collective chaos in response to Kirk’s death and many other dramatic events comes from a book that inspired one of America’s top propagandists, Edward Bernays. Bernays helped engineer public support for World War I, lent his talents to promoting and sanitizing a CIA-backed coup while working for the United Fruit Company, and wrote openly about the “conscious and intelligent manipulation of the masses.”
“The Leaders of Crowds and Their Means of Persuasion”
The Crowd by Gustav Le Bon, written in 1895, explores crowd psychology, analyzing the hivemind and herd-like behavior of collective groups. In a chapter called “The Leaders of Crowds and Their Means of Persuasion,” Le Bon discussed how “leaders” can program beliefs, sentiments, and behaviors into collective groups. He explained how leaders can “stir up a crowd for a short space of time, to induce it to commit an act of any nature,” cautioning that “the crowd must be acted upon by rapid suggestion.” While rapid suggestion is key, Le Bon stressed that “it is necessary that the crowd should have been previously prepared” to react in the way the leaders desire.
Hellbound and Down 