Echoes of a bullet by Edoardo Moretti

The assassination of Charlie Kirk did not just take one man’s life. It cracked open a fault line already trembling beneath the surface of political discourse, not only in the United States but across Europe as well. His death has been instantly transformed into a symbol, a rallying cry, and a warning. The man who built his career on agitation, provocation, and loyalty to a populist cause has now, in death, been recast as a martyr.

What strikes me is not only the grief and rage swelling within the MAGA movement but how that fury now seeps across borders. It spills into a Europe where political emotions are already running dangerously high, and where the memory of bullets and bombs punctuating democracy is never far from the surface. Europe knows assassinations; they have shaped its past and twisted its politics. From the shot in Sarajevo that triggered World War I, to the killing of Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme, to the murders of journalists and activists across the continent in more recent years, the history is both bloody and instructive.

The parallels are unsettling. In the United States, Kirk’s assassination electrifies a movement that thrives on a sense of siege. It feeds the narrative that enemies lurk everywhere: the media, the elites, the left, the globalists. Now, with his blood on the ground, that suspicion hardens into a demand for vengeance. In Europe, where populist currents are already boiling, the symbolism of such a killing resonates like an imported virus.

It is not that Europe has lacked its own combustible conditions. Migrant crises, economic inequalities, rural versus urban divides, and the dizzying fragmentation of political parties have all created a landscape where polarization thrives. Add to this the growth of populist parties from Italy to Poland; from Hungary to the Netherlands, and you have a continent primed for emotional contagion. The Kirk assassination, though geographically distant, offers exactly the kind of trigger that extremists here are eager to exploit.

But Europe’s danger is subtler than mere imitation. The assassination provides a template, a story of betrayal, sacrifice, and righteous anger. Every movement seeking to harden its grip on the imagination of disenchanted voters can use such a tale. “If they can kill one of ours, what will they do to you?” is the whisper that creeps through Telegram channels, town square speeches, and darkened pubs where grievances ferment.

Here lies the peril: the normalization of revenge. Democracy is never safe when politics becomes soaked in blood. Once martyrdom enters the vocabulary, opponents are not adversaries but enemies. And once enemies are defined, violence is never far behind. Kirk’s assassination risks becoming a myth, retold and reshaped, carrying with it the possibility of copycat attacks and retaliatory fantasies.

Europe is particularly vulnerable because its institutions, while robust, are also weary. The European Union, mired in bureaucracy, often struggles to address the raw emotions that nationalism manipulates so effectively. Parliaments and presidents can debate endlessly about inflation targets or agricultural subsidies, but a single act of political violence speaks to people in a language more visceral than policy. It awakens tribal instincts. It reopens old wounds of “us versus them,” a dichotomy that has fueled Europe’s darkest chapters.

It is precisely this shadow that makes the current moment so volatile. The assassination lands in a climate where suspicion of elites and contempt for compromise are already growing. It reinforces the idea that politics is not about persuasion but survival. That is not democracy; that is the language of civil war.

One must resist the temptation to dismiss this as mere American importation. Europe has its own traditions of political violence, its own ghosts eager to be awakened. The 1970s and 80s saw the Red Brigades in Italy and the Baader-Meinhof Group in Germany take lives in the name of ideology. The Irish Troubles scarred generations with bombs and bullets. Even the supposed calm of Northern Europe has been shaken by targeted killings. Europe has walked this road before, and the warning signs now flash in red.

The question is whether Europe’s leaders, and indeed its citizens, can remember these lessons before it is too late. Mourning Kirk should not mean mirroring America’s cycles of rage. Instead, it should push Europe to confront its own vulnerabilities: the growing radicalization online, the shrinking spaces for civil dialogue, and the lazy assumption that “it cannot happen here.”

In truth, it can and it has. Political violence never really disappears; it hibernates, waiting for the right mix of anger and opportunity. What Kirk’s death offers to extremists in both America and Europe is the opportunity to turn grievance into action. To romanticize revenge. To call for retribution instead of restraint.

There is no easy remedy. But one can at least say this: Europe cannot afford to import America’s worst political instincts. To do so would be to add fuel to a fire already smouldering beneath its democracies. Kirk’s assassination is not a European tragedy, but its echoes may well become one.

The bullet that killed him was fired in America, but its reverberations will test Europe’s ability to remember its past and resist repeating it. The choice now is stark, learn from the darkness, or stumble back into it.