Assassination culture: Leftists identify as killers, study finds

FPI / April 14, 2025

A new report produced by the Network of Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) in partnership with Rutgers University’s Social Perception Lab states that an “assassination culture” appears to be “emerging within segments of the U.S. public on the extreme left, with expanding targets now including figures such as Donald Trump.”

Even after two assassination attempts on Trump during the 2024 campaign and the ongoing violence directed at Elon Musk's Tesla dealerships and vehicles, leftists have ratcheted up the violent rhetoric.

But is the political violence targeting the president and adviser Musk coming only from the "extreme left"?

“These attitudes are not fringe — they reflect an emergent assassination culture, grounded in far-left authoritarianism and increasingly normalized in digital discourse,” states the report, titled, “Assassination Culture: How Burning Teslas and Killing Billionaires Became a Meme Aesthetic for Political Violence.”

The threats are real:

• In February, law enforcement officials charged 28-year-old David Allen June Cherry of southern Indiana with felony intimidation after police say he posted online multiple violent threats against Elon Musk, including that Cherry would “gut” the close adviser to Trump.

• A Tennessee man reportedly upset with Trump and Musk was arrested on charges of assembling explosives to “burn down” Musk’s artificial intelligence data facility in Memphis. Ethan Paul Early, 25, told police that his friends talked him out of going through with the plan.

• On April 4, Jupiter, Florida, police arrested Glen DeCicco on charges of making written threats on his Facebook page a to kill Trump. “The Jupiter Police Department worked in coordination with the United States Secret Service throughout the investigation,” the police said in a press release.

• Shawn Monper, a 32-year-old Butler, Pennsylvania resident, has been charged with making online threats to assault and murder Trump as well as other officials. Monper was taken into custody by the FBI, with the assistance of the Butler Township Police Department, and was detained. A hearing is set for April 14.

Among the troubling numbers from the report:

• Murder Justification: 31% and 38% of respondents stated it would be at least somewhat justified to murder Elon Musk and President Trump, respectively. (These effects were largely driven by respondents that self-identified as left of center, with 48% and 55% at least somewhat justifying murder for Elon Musk and President Trump, respectively, indicating significantly higher justification for violence against these figures.)

• Property Destruction: Nearly 40% of respondents (39.8%) stated it is at least somewhat acceptable (or more) to destroy a Tesla dealership in protest.

• Psychological/Ideological Correlations with Assassination Culture: These beliefs are highly correlated with one another, as well as with the justification of the murder of the UnitedHealthcare CEO and hyper-partisan left-wing ideology. (This suggests that support for violence is part of a broader assassination culture, underpinned by psychological and ideological factors.)

“The reports found widespread justification for lethal violence — including assassination — among younger, highly online, and ideologically left-aligned users,” the authors of the report note.

The report also cites a proposed California ballot measure named “the Luigi Mangione Access to Health Care Act,” celebrating the alleged leftist terrorist and murderer of United Healthcare head Brian Thompson. The ballot measure targets health insurance denials, one of Mangione’s reported flashpoints.

On April 4, a California man reportedly “angry with pharmacies” was arrested on charges of murdering a Walgreens employee just days after the Luigi Mangione Act was filed with the state. ABC 30 reported that Erick Velazquez, the victim, was not a pharmacist, and was a respected husband and father of two.

The leftist-dominated social media platform BlueSky “plays a significant and predictive role in amplifying radical ideation,” the report finds.

BlueSky has seen its new user numbers surge since November’s election, according to the leftist publication The Guardian. Curiously, the “great X-odus” has been driven by liberals “seeking to escape Elon Musk’s X amid warnings from anti-hate speech campaign groups and the EU about misinformation and extremism on the platform,” The Guardian asserts.

BlueSky users are increasingly tying the “memification” of Mangione with calls for political violence against Trump, Musk and others, “reflecting the growing cyber-social presence of assassination culture,” the report said.

Mangione's fans have been using a meme of the Luigi character from the Super Mario Brothers video game/movie franchise as a symbol of political violence. Some of the threats echo the “Deny, Defend, Depose” mantra inscribed by Mangione on the shell casing that killed Brian Thompson, according to the report.

The report includes a stark warning: “Unless political and cultural leadership explicitly confronts and condemns this trend, NCRI assesses a growing probability of real-world escalation. Given the current economic volatility and institutional distrust, the online normalization of political violence may increasingly translate into offline action.”

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