As soon as Charlie Kirk was assassinated, the pundit class starting wringing its collective hands about retribution.

But instead of acts of vengeance, instead of looting and burning down buildings, instead of terrorizing communities, Charlie Kirk’s supporters … held prayer vigils.

In fact, the only violence that we’ve seen so far has been instigated by leftists, who showed up at some of these vigils with a clear intention of stirring up hostility.

In Idaho, a scuffle broke out – at a candlelight service – after a man on a scooter with a rainbow backpack started yelling “F*** Charlie Kirk.” He continued to scream and shout obscenities as he left, apparently unharmed.

At another vigil, a reporter was physically attacked by shrieking harpies.

Contrast this with the reaction on the left after a police officer unintentionally killed George Floyd during an arrest, which led to several days of riots across the country — fomented by leftist groups and encouraged by prominent Democrats.

This isn’t by accident. The left has been radicalizing its followers for years. And, as we have been cataloguing in these pages for years, it’s working.

We noted this back in 2021, when a poll found that 33% of “very liberal” respondents said violence was justified to achieve political goals, compared with just 4% of the “very conservative.”

After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade in 2022, leftists went on a spree of violence, which included calls to assassinate Justice Clarence Thomas.

A 2023 University of Chicago Project on Security and Threats found that more than 16% of Democrats agreed that “the use of force is justified to prevent Donald Trump from becoming president.”

Rutgers Social Perception Lab-Network Contagion Research Institute reporter earlier this year that 55.2% of those on the left said that murdering Trump would “at least somewhat justified.”

Leftists celebrated the assassination of UnitedHealthCare CEO Brian Thompson and sent love letters to his murderer.

And this year, it was leftists who mounted terrorist attacks against Tesla and Tesla owners in reaction to Elon Musk’s efforts to cut waste and fraud from the federal government.

Do you see the pattern here?

Of course, those who claim to be on the right have committed acts of violence. But unlike leftists, your everyday conservatives don’t grab cameras and film themselves cheering murderers on.

So please, spare us the warnings about “retribution” by conservatives. It only serves as a distraction to the fact that the real hatred, the real intolerance, and the very real violence are coming from the increasingly radicalized left.

— Written by the I&I Editorial Board