The tide is not turning. A wave of political violence is sweeping across liberal democracies, with no signs of slowing down. As the American political class has recognised, from Donald Trump to Zohran Mamdani, Charlie Kirk’s assassination is first and foremost a human tragedy. But, like any act of political violence, it also constitutes a blow to the practices that lie at the heart of democracy.

Few people understood the danger that violence poses to democracy better than Hannah Arendt. As a German Jew who fled Europe during the Second World War, Arendt had a very personal experience of political violence. Yet, rather than falling prey to a politics of retribution and revenge, she became one of the firmest critics of violence. She believed that the purpose of politics was to foster the ability of people to speak and act together. This was what she defined as power, and it had everything to do with democracy. Power created the space for arguments to be made and disagreements to be debated.

Unusually, therefore, she put power in strict opposition to violence. As she stated, ‘violence can destroy power; it is utterly incapable of creating its own’. It kills the capacity for the ‘speaking and acting together of individuals’. It does not create anything new or lasting, but disrupts the ties that bind political actors within a democracy. While violence might be a tempting instrument to use in achieving certain political ends, Arendt warned us that it more often than not becomes the end in itself. The reasoning behind one’s violence is rarely heard by the other side; those ideas are drowned out by the visceral force of the act committed. With violence, nothing is being said but everyone is being silenced.

Authoritarianism thrives on silence: no one speaking, no one acting. By rationalising violence within the political system, authoritarian states create powerless obedience among their citizens. In Arendt’s words, ‘Out of the barrel of a gun grows the most effective command, resulting in the most instant and perfect obedience… What never can grow out of it is power.’ In contrasting violence and power, Arendt was nudging us toward an even more profound thought. Living in a time of extreme political strife, she was able to identify what truly distinguishes democracy from authoritarianism.

There are two aspects to a political act: its content and its methods. What matters more in separating democracy from authoritarianism, Arendt discovered, is the latter. Insist on the right method of political action, and you are already safeguarding against the worst political beliefs. Commit only to content, and you’ll find that no method is off-limits. Arendt saw first-hand how ideas created authoritarian regimes that unleashed unprecedented atrocities upon its citizens. What appeared to many (and still appears to some today) as laudable ideas led people to justify horrible acts of political violence.

Being willing to speak with a political opponent is a sign of mutual esteem and respect. Dialogue serves as the best vaccine to dehumanisation. As Arendt stated, ‘in acting and speaking, men show who they are, reveal actively their unique personal identities and thus make their appearance in the human world’. Once we speak to someone, they leave the abstract and become real to us, softened and human. To be clear, Arendt did not strive for consensus – in her view, politics had to be antagonistic and, if needed, controversial. What mattered most was the act in itself. Her whole body of work could be summarised as a call to democratic action. Speak, criticise, engage with others – do anything you can to avoid the peril of silence, and the temptation of violence.

Better still, through speech, you create the opportunity for new people to hear you. True political action could ‘force open all limitations and cut across all boundaries’. The boundlessness of action, Arendt believed, was ‘only the other side of its tremendous capacity for establishing relationships’. Democracy is not merely about holding the ‘right’ or ethical ideas, it is about creating a process for dialogue and decision-making. At its best, it is about the new relationships that arise from it.

While many disagreed with his political views, Charlie Kirk was committed to the method of democracy. At a time where young Westerners are becoming increasingly indoctrinated into extremes, he offered a route out of the lure of political violence. His approach could be provocative and sensationalist, and Arendt – like many of us – would probably have preferred more classical styles of debating. But we don’t live in an ideal world, and we never will. Within the constraints of 21st-century America, he generally upheld Arendt’s standard of democracy. As Ezra Klein put it, ‘he was practicing politics the right way’.

With Kirk’s assassination, and the rise of political violence it symbolises, reading Arendt leads us to think we are not simply witnessing the end of democracy, but the beginning of a new state of powerlessness. Without the capacity to speak to one another, we become isolated and vulnerable, entering a world akin to Thomas Hobbes’ state of nature, in which change can only be achieved through force and brutality. Arendt’s advice is clear: do not let this tide swell. Violence can neither create power, nor can it save democracy. There is no political idea that justifies the method of violence. The heart of democracy is not about what you say, but how you say it.