When Political Violence Becomes a Signal

The assassination of Charlie Kirk is a tragedy on several levels. It robs his family and friends of the time they would otherwise have had with Charlie, especially his young children and wife. It is a tragedy to Charlie—his life was cut prematurely short. And it is a tragic signal that the wrong words spoken, even in a liberal democracy, can get you killed. As an academic and public intellectual, I find that chilling.

It is also, unsettlingly, a case study in how democratic incentives can corrode political life. For all the shock and horror surrounding the killing, its logic is not entirely mysterious. The tools of political economy and philosophy, especially concepts like rational irrationality and theories like costly signaling theory, can aid our understanding why political violence sometimes emerges from within democracy itself.

Economists and philosophers have long puzzled over a simple question: Why do citizens participate in politics when their individual actions are almost certain not to matter? Casting a single vote, attending a protest, or writing a letter to a representative rarely changes the outcome. The probability that your ballot tips a national election is about one in sixty million. That’s roughly the same chance as winning a state lottery jackpot twice. So, in light of this, it would seem irrational for anyone to spend time or resources on politics at all. Yet people do and they often do so passionately.

A popular account developed by the economist Bryan Caplan holds that citizens are “rationally irrational.” It is thus practically rational for individuals to indulge epistemic biases and partisan fantasies because the cost of doing so is virtually zero. If my single vote or tweet or protest sign won’t decide the outcome, why not use politics to express my tribal identity?

On this account, political ignorance and bias are not the products of stupidity, but instead are the product of perverse incentives. It is rational for individuals to remain ignorant about complex policy details while indulging in expressive forms of political identity. The personal cost of error is negligible, and the tribal payoff can be large.

This same logic extends into darker domains. Assassination almost never achieves the ends its perpetrators imagine. Institutions adapt, successors step in, movements endure. Killing Charlie Kirk will not dissolve the conservative youth movement he helped energize, nor will it cure America’s polarization. Yet the assassin’s calculus often looks different. Violence can be treated as a kind of expression—an act that signals loyalty, registers rage, or manufactures instant notoriety. Within the distorted incentive structures of democratic politics, such violence may appear subjectively rational: a way to demonstrate tribal allegiance. However, judged from the outside, it remains objectively irrational, producing social and political harms that far outweigh whatever fleeting sense of meaning or recognition the killer sought.

Here signaling theory helps deepen the analysis. Economists and biologists alike distinguish between cheap and costly signals. A cheap signal is easy to produce and therefore easy to fake. A political bumper sticker or social media post is cheap: anyone can slap it on their car or timeline without much effort. Costly signals, by contrast, are harder to counterfeit precisely because they involve sacrifice. Buying an expensive engagement ring is a costly signal of commitment; serving in combat is a costly signal of loyalty to one’s nation. And, at the extreme end of politics, violence unfortunately functions as the ultimate costly signal. To risk imprisonment or death signals has a steep cost that no slogan could. For political radicals desperate to signal loyalty or to cement a reputation, violence becomes perversely attractive.

But the reputational logic does not end with the assassin. Political actors, media figures, and activists quickly seize upon acts of violence to enhance their own standing. Some rush to blame opponents, portraying the tragedy as proof of the other side’s depravity. Others posture as voices of unity, presenting themselves as moral exemplars. Still others exploit the moment to harden their preferred policy positions. The assassination becomes a reputational resource, a grim coin to be spent in the economy of tribal politics. 

It is unpopular to admit that sometimes virtue signaling and rationalization in politics can have unintended benefits similar to Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” in markets. In those cases, the self-interested signaling of partisans sometimes nudges social norms in a positive direction. And, by broadcasting their moral connections to look good to others, even if insincerely, political actors sometimes thereby commit to moral progress on the pain of moral hypocrisy.

Unfortunately, assassinations reveal the dark side of this process where violence can hijack the signaling and reputation process, turning it from a potential source of progress into a driver of collapse. Instead of nudging norms upward, costly signals like political violence drag norms downward, reinforcing polarization and mistrust. Expressive violence, intended as a tribal signal, can end up corroding the conditions that make democratic cooperation possible.

The assassination also illustrates a broader truth about democratic governance. Democracies are admirable because they diffuse political power, making it harder for a single person or faction to dominate. But this diffusion also creates weak incentives for truth-seeking. Individual voters have little reason to become informed. Politicians have strong incentives to pander rather than persuade. Partisans are rewarded for tribal loyalty rather than epistemic integrity. 

These are statements meant to persuade regardless of truth. And, after an assassination, the incentive is not to investigate carefully or deliberate patiently. The incentive is to frame the tragedy in ways that will resonate with one’s base, regardless of the truth. So, that is why we see political leaders blaming entire ideological camps, activists policing speech on social media, and commentators spinning narratives before the facts are known. 

None of this analysis excuses the act. It does not diminish the horror of Kirk’s death or the grief of those who mourn him. But it does help us in appreciating that democracy—by diffusing political power—weakens the incentives for individuals to pursue truth or policy impact. This vacuum encourages expressive politics, where reputation and tribal identity take precedence over rational deliberation. In most cases, the result is merely wasteful, but in some cases, it is horribly tragic and catastrophic.