To the editor:

Charlie Kirk was just one of many pundits (on both the right and left, but mainly on the right) who have discovered a great way to make a living by saying outrageous things to stoke fear and rage against “them.” Tyler Robinson is just one of several assassins (on both the right and left, but mainly on the right) who drank deep from the trough of social media outrage, taking what the algorithm fed them to its murderous conclusion against “them.”

Follow the money. More than most political operatives, Kirk was energetic and charismatic enough to impress the deep-pocketed donors that funded his Turning Point USA (which provided him with a $300,000 salary). He said offensive things to gain more attention in a media that awards “counterintuitive” but shallow and simplistic arguments. He was as motivated by the excitement of being noticed as by any half-baked MAGA/Christian nationalist ideology, enjoying the easy money that came with being outrageous.

Before social media, talk radio, and the 24-hour news channels, right- and left-wing extremists could be easily ignored. But since these platforms are beholden to advertisers, they need to capture and hold the attention of media consumers through punditry that favors outrage rather than civility (“be nice to each other” is clearly not a message that keeps people engaged with social media — or with Fox News or MSNBC).

Preceding Charlie Kirk was a string of media personalities who attracted attention by promoting fear and rage that began with Rush Limbaugh, continued through Fox News (Bill O’Reilly, Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Jesse Watters), found poor imitators at MSNBC (Rachel Maddow and the like), and brought us podcasters like Joe Rogan alongside meme-driven nonsense on social media platforms.

While Kirk enriched himself through this media environment, Robinson was an engaged consumer of it. Robinson’s radicalization was much like that of the mass shooters of Jews in Pittsburgh in 2018, of Latinos in El Paso in 2019, and of Blacks in Buffalo in 2022, as well as of the would-be assassins of Donald Trump in 2024, the murderer of UnitedHealth executive Brian Thompson last December, and the assassin of former Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband in June. Indeed, the rioters at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 hardly needed much of a push from President Trump — they had long been devouring “deep state” conspiracy theories promoted online, on talk radio, and on Fox News, Newsmax, and OAN.

And so here we are as a nation, awash in weapons with a media that profits from the threat of political violence.

Dr. Thomas J. Williford

Marshall