Researchers Discovered One Shocking Group Driving Assassination Culture In America

Charlie Kirk warned about this exact threat months before he was killed at Utah Valley University.

He shared a research report tracking what experts call "assassination culture" spreading through America.

And researchers just discovered one shocking group driving assassination culture that nobody saw coming.

The Data Nobody Expected

The Network Contagion Research Institute has been studying public tolerance for politically motivated murder since before Kirk's assassination on September 10.

Joel Finkelstein directs the research group that tracks emerging threats to national security and American youth online.

He went into this study expecting to find the usual suspects: unemployed young men radicalized in online echo chambers.

The actual results blindsided him completely.

"I thought we'd be seeing a bunch of guys who were unemployed who'd be endorsing this," Finkelstein told Fox News Digital.

Instead, three factors kept appearing together: heavy social media usage, belief that America is "an empire in decline," and being female.

Women overall are about 15% more likely than men to support assassination culture.

But when you break it down by ideology, liberal women dominate every other demographic group by roughly 75%.

Conservative men? They're the least likely to condone political murder.

The NCRI surveyed over 1,000 Americans nationwide about whether assassinating figures would be justified.

Respondents rated justification on a scale of zero to six.

Anything above zero meant they saw at least some justification for murder.

The numbers are staggering: 67% of left-of-center respondents said political assassination could be at least somewhat justified compared to 54% on the right.

That's up from 56% among leftists just one year ago.

How Luigi Mangione Became A Revolutionary Sex Symbol

The pattern crystalized after Luigi Mangione allegedly murdered UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in December 2024.

Social media platforms exploded with women sexualizing the accused killer.

"We see these lurid images of Luigi Mangione that have been packaged into some kind of sexual symbol," Finkelstein explained.

"I think that we may be seeing some downstream effects of that on people who use social media a lot, on females."

He compared it directly to Che Guevara.

The communist revolutionary who ordered mass executions became a romanticized icon on t-shirts and dorm room posters.

Now Mangione is getting the same treatment from liberal women who spend hours scrolling BlueSky and Reddit.

Posts referencing Mangione, Trump, and Elon Musk have generated over 2 million engagements in recent months.

Entire online communities dedicated to celebrating Mangione have ballooned into tens of thousands of members.

The digital worship isn't staying online anymore.

California actually saw a ballot initiative named "the Luigi Mangione Access to Health Care Act" submitted for real consideration.

Agitators stalked ICE agents at gas stations in Minnesota, pelting them with food and spitting on them.

The Department of Homeland Security reported a 1,150% increase in assaults against Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in 2025 compared to the previous year.

Someone torched Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro's residence while his family slept inside.

A gunman systematically hunted down Minnesota House Speaker emerita Melissa Hortman and murdered her.

And Charlie Kirk was killed on live video while Kirk was speaking to college students about conservative values.

Social Media Platforms Created This Monster

The research nailed down social media as the primary accelerant.

BlueSky — where progressives fled after Elon Musk bought Twitter – seems to have accounted for the sharp increase on the left.

Mainstream media treats BlueSky users as heroes fighting fascism instead of extremists glorifying murder.

People who spend hours daily on these platforms are significantly more likely to justify killing political opponents.

But the effect compounds when you combine social media addiction with left-wing politics and female gender.

That combination produces the highest tolerance for assassination in America today.

Kirk himself saw this coming.

He shared the NCRI's earlier assassination culture report months before Robinson allegedly killed him.

Kirk understood that when Democrats spend years calling conservatives "Nazis" and "fascists," some unhinged person will eventually decide violence is justified.

The White House responded to the new study by pointing directly at Democrat rhetoric.

"For years, radical leftists have slandered their political opponents as Nazis and Fascists, inspiring left-wing violence," White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson stated.

"It must end."

But the data shows it's accelerating, not slowing down.

Nearly 40% of all Americans now believe killing a president could be justified under some circumstances.

Among self-identified leftists, that number jumps to 55%.

The Spiritual Crisis Behind The Violence

Finkelstein warned this goes beyond partisan politics into something darker.

"Taken together, I think that the findings suggest that this is a moral, this is a spiritual crisis — it's not a partisan one," Finkelstein said.

"We need people coming together to talk about the fissures that are showing up in our national family."

The research found people who justify violence against political opponents are also more likely to accept violence against their own side.

Support for assassination doesn't exist in isolation.

It's part of a coherent worldview that sees murder as legitimate political action when the cause is righteous enough.

Older Americans across all ideologies remain far less susceptible.

The crisis concentrates among younger, chronically online liberals marinating in echo chambers that dehumanize conservatives.

Those echo chambers finally produced real-world results: bodies.

General murders and violent crime have been declining nationwide.

Political violence tells the opposite story, surging upward at the exact moment Democrats claim to want unity.

You can't spend four years calling half the country Nazis, then act shocked when someone takes you seriously and starts shooting.

Kirk paid the price for Democrat rhetoric with his life.

The study he shared proved prophetic — liberal women lead the charge in normalizing what used to be unthinkable.

And the 75% gap between them and conservative men reveals which side actually values human life versus which side sees murder as just another political tool.

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Sources:

• Michael Ruiz, "'Assassination culture' is on the rise, especially among women, study warns," Fox News, January 22, 2026.
• Network Contagion Research Institute, "Assassination Culture Brief," April 2025.
• PBS NewsHour, "How recent political violence in the U.S. fits into 'a long, dark history'," September 12, 2025.
• Robert Pape, "America's New Age of Political Violence," Foreign Affairs, October 16, 2025.
• Fox News, "Political violence has 'just started,' former FBI agent warns in 2026 outlook," January 2026.