On April 30, 2020, just after 2 a.m., a man positioned himself in front of the Cuban Embassy in Washington and fired 32 rounds from his automatic rifle. Inside were ten Cuban diplomatic officials.
On September 10, 2025, while addressing his audience at Utah Valley University (UVU), conservative political activist Charlie Kirk was killed by a gunshot to the neck.
These two regrettable and tragic events, occurring in such distant and isolated places, could not be related in any way, were it not for the fact that both were preceded by the dissemination of a hateful discourse so deeply entrenched in the way politics and communication are conducted in the United States.
The Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement, founded by now-President Donald Trump in 2015, has as its hallmark the promotion and normalization of an extremist, polarizing, and deliberately divisive rhetoric, already deeply rooted in broad sectors of American society.
We have seen Trump and his closest collaborators hurl unjustifiable insults, assign degrading labels, shamelessly marginalize minorities, and attack leaders and nations, with no regard for the consequences.
The current administration’s discourse against Cuba is a product of the same hatred that seeks to forcibly suppress the most disadvantaged sectors within the United States. Charlie Kirk was an active spokesman for that style of communication; for that incendiary language.
No one deserves to die for what they think or say. But constantly fueling violence can only reap violence. Kirk’s death is accompanied by a brutal irony.He died from a weapon sold to an irresponsible person, under a right he fervently defended. He died in the same way anyone in the Cuban embassy could have died that night. From a weapon probably acquired in the same manner.
President Trump has personally taken charge of the case. He promised the death penalty for the murderer, while simultaneously using the incident to lash out at left-wing organizations, which he accuses of being the intellectual authors of the crime.
In the purest Trumpian style, the MAGA machinery has sworn to avenge his death and punish those who dare to mock his legacy. ABC News announced the suspension of Jimmy Kimmel’s popular show due to his comments about Kirk’s death. Conservative business owners have fired and coerced employees who refused to mourn his death. Could anything be more polarizing?
Following the massacre at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, in 2022, the debate on gun control reached a boiling point. In the face of collective mourning, Kirk’s voice rose to fiercely oppose any reform that restricted access to firearms. He blamed law enforcement and argued that more “law-abiding citizens” should be armed to the teeth.
According to a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll, 63% of Americans blame extreme political rhetoric for the alarming rise in violence. The Pew Research Center reports that 45% of Republicans own a gun, compared to only 20% of Democrats.
This is not a simple problem. Gun ownership and political violence have accompanied the United States since its founding. The Second Amendment, fiercely defended by conservatives but with bipartisan support, enshrines this right.
In 2021, nearly 50,000 people died from gunfire. The majority recognize it as a serious social problem, but powerful lobbying groups like the National Rifle Association (NRA) pull the strings of power and prevent any restrictive legislation. Meanwhile, hateful discourse continues to accumulate resentment and fuel vendettas. And violence will inevitably claim more lives.
The United States is sick with violence; it is trapped in a vicious cycle that it itself fuels. A cycle where verbal hatred and bullets justify and feed off each other. Until that toxic link between incendiary words and executing weapons is broken, tragedy will continue to be written with the same blood and the same excuses.
