The assassination of Charlie Kirk whipped people into a frenzy across the partisan spectrum. Whether they were mourning or celebrating, high-intensity reactions flooded across social media and the country at large.
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.
According to Le Bon, such previous preparation comes in the form of a three-step process that applies to a wide range of political and mainstream media narratives. It was especially apparent with Kirk’s assassination, where the rapid suggestion of the news cycle reached a fever pitch.
- Affirmation: The first step in ‘stirring up a crowd’ is affirmation. Bernays and Le Bon both understood that to influence the masses, messaging had to be simple and clear. “Affirmation pure and simple…is one of the surest means of making an idea enter the mind of crowds,” Le Bon advised. Some key affirmations at play among left-wing and right-wing crowd reactions to Kirk’s assassination were “right-wing extremism,” “democracy is at risk,” and “fascism” for the left-wing and “radical left,” “Democrats hate America,” and “left-wing lunatics” for the right-wing.
- Repetition: Le Bon said affirmations alone aren’t enough: Repetition is key. An affirmation, he argued, “has no real influence unless it be constantly repeated.” Nazi propaganda minister Josef Goebbels agreed. He wrote in his diary that propaganda had to be “simple and repetitious.” The affirmations listed above have been repeated ad nauseam for years by mainstream media, online influencers, politicians, and other authority figures.
- Contagion: Le Bon believed that once affirmations work their way into crowd consciousness through repetition, the third step, contagion, occurs. Le Bon said “ideas, sentiments, emotions, and beliefs” are all contagious in crowds. “A panic that has seized on a few sheep will soon extend to the whole flock.” He asserted that “in the case of men collected in a crowd, all emotions are very rapidly contagious, which explains the suddenness of panics.” With social media, people are effectively “collected” in crowds in the cloud for hours each day, sharing frenzied opinions with like-minded others herded together by algorithms. The contagion of polarizing, partisan beliefs is one of the biggest dangers in America and has been spreading for years, but Kirk’s killing unleashed a fresh wave of all the crowds’ simmering outrage, disdain, divisiveness, and fear. In Le Bon’s words, when Kirk was killed, the crowd was ‘stirred up.’
The Power of Imagery (and Authoritarians)
One more key factor provides a foundation for affirmation, repetition, and contagion. Le Bon wrote elsewhere in his book that the real ‘magical’ power of language is in the images it conjures rather than the words themselves. “Right-wing extremism,” “fascism,” and “democracy is at risk” are influential because they bring imagery to the minds of those who believe them: Charlottesville, January 6th, Trump’s refusal to accept defeat in the 2020 election, and actual Nazi imagery from the 1930s and 1940s fill the minds of many on the left. For the right, “radical left,” “Democrats hate America,” and “left-wing lunatics” whip up imagery of Antifa, rioting, Democratic leadership either doing nothing or encouraging it, and brutal communist regimes throughout history (*it’s worth noting that this article focuses on the highly questionable official story of who killed Kirk—a radical leftist—rather than the truth of who was responsible).
When Kirk was killed, it wasn’t just the singular event that whipped so many people into a frenzy but the activation of years and decades of high-stakes, hyper-emotional programming and all the imagery that has come with it. Ruling class manipulators of public opinion may not have intentionally, explicitly orchestrated the crowd’s reactions to the specific event of Kirk’s assassination. But people’s ideas, behaviors, and feelings boiled over directly in line with all the narratives they’ve been consuming for years.
Unsurprisingly, ruling authorities have exploited Kirk’s killing for political clout and power. Pam Bondi indicated her intention to police hate speech, and Trump questioned Kirk’s rejection of the term. FCC chairman Brendan Carr appeared to threaten ABC for Jimmy Kimmel’s commentary. Trump rode the wave of right-wing vitriol toward the left in the wake of Kirk’s death, designating Antifa a “terror organization” and setting a dangerous precedent for further domestic crackdowns. Even the Pentagon joined in, posting a video glorifying military violence and war “for Charlie, our warriors, and our nation.” The imagery of the ‘radical, lunatic left’ has no doubt played into the minds of Trump supporters who have condoned and even cheered such encroachments (it should be acknowledged that many in the MAGA movement have condemned Bondi’s hate speech comments and questioned the FBI’s official story).
“HATE SPEECH”: Pam Bondi vs. Charlie Kirk pic.twitter.com/XtKNx1yIV8
— Decensored News (@decensorednews) September 16, 2025
“Mass Reactions” and Systemic Control
A Bernays quote about World War I applies to the Kirk assassination and so much more:
“The manipulators of patriotic opinion made use of the mental cliches and the emotional habits of the public to produce mass reactions against the alleged atrocities, the terror and the tyranny of the enemy.”
Mass shootings, terror attacks, war, chaotic protests, elections, and many other high-stress events trigger mass reactions that follow Le Bon’s three-step guide to controlling crowds. Whatever the affirmations—“terrorism,” “illegal immigration,” “drain the swamp,” “constitutional crisis,” “save democracy,” “stop gun violence,” or “fight the oligarchy,” to name a few—they represent top-down narratives from people in power. They all stir up big emotions and mass submission to authority, whatever flavor it may be. Belief in these affirmations and the imagery they conjure is almost always accompanied by political polarization and popular support for politicians on the ‘good team’ to seize more control.
This polarization spurs collective stress as people fear what will happen if their perceived enemies gain control of the government. This chronic stress is exacerbated by many other sources of anxiety: the never-ending news cycle, social media addiction, and all the chronic stress and fight–or-flight overload that comes with chaotic, catastrophic developments and our constant awareness of them. Also consider that chronic fight-or-flight activation can lead to atrophy in the critical thinking center of the brain. In this context, all the fanaticism that erupted after Kirk’s killing seems entirely predictable.
Crowd hysteria didn’t begin and won’t stop with Kirk’s assassination. It is a symptom of a much more systemic rot in the current political and societal paradigm and the machinations of those in positions of authority. With so much divisiveness and the political stakes so high, many more outbursts are likely to occur. “Charlie Kirk” is already becoming its own repeated affirmation, driving further partisan division and animosity. “Charlie Kirk is a martyr,” and “Charlie Kirk was a fascist” will continue to rattle through people’s minds, conjuring imagery that confirms both sides’ biases and beliefs.
The next time yet another politically polarizing event of any kind occurs, it is almost certain to reflect the same type of programming that reared its head after Kirk was shot. The details will be different, but the reactions that come with it will unfold along the lines of affirmation, repetition, contagion, and conditioned imagery in the minds of crowds. Considering the powerful and pervasive presence of propaganda, it is essential to be aware of ruling-class tactics to control the masses in order to protect ourselves from such manipulation at the expense of our consciousness and freedom.
Not *all* Americans, but the programming is showing…🌀🧠 I wonder if the left and/or right will approve of this free speech! pic.twitter.com/qWl1qE92SH
— Carey (@carey_wedler) September 22, 2025
