At least two more young men embraced assassination culture this month, culminating in Saturday’s shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.

Prosecutors charged Cole Allen Monday with trying to assassinate President Donald Trump. The president attended Saturday’s dinner, where Allen allegedly charged past security and shot a law enforcement officer.

The president topped Allen’s list of intended victims, which he included in a document he reportedly sent to his family shortly before the attack.

He signed his name “Cole ‘coldForce’ ‘Friendly Federal Assassin’ Allen.”

Allen’s alleged crimes and manifesto bear all the hallmarks of assassination culture, a worldview which glorifies and celebrates political violence against the rich, powerful and politically conservative.

Assassination culture stems from a growing number of American who believe political violence, including destruction of property, can be at least partially justified.

In a 2025, nationally representative survey of nearly 1,300 American adults by the Network Contagion Research Institute and Rutgers’ University Social Perception Lab, 32% and 39% of respondents said it would be at least partially justified to murder Elon Musk and President Trump, respectively.

Nearly 40% said it would be at least partially justified to destroy Tesla dealerships.

Respondents who identified themselves as politically left of center showed higher willingness to accept political violence. More than half of respondents in this group said it would be at least partially justified to murder Musk (50%) and the president (56%). Nearly 60% felt it would be at least partially justified to destroy a Tesla dealership.

Growing acceptance of political violence resulted in the radicalization and celebration of young men like Luigi Mangione, who allegedly killed UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson to protest the healthcare system, and Tyler Robinson, who allegedly assassinated Charlie Kirk after he’d “had enough” of the conservative leader’s “hatred.”

Like Mangione and Robinson, Allen deemed himself judge, jury and executioner in a dangerous and unconstitutional display of vigilante justice.

“Turning the other cheek when someone else is oppressed is not Christian behavior; it is complicity in the oppressor’s crimes,” Allen justified in the manifesto sent to his family.

As the Daily Citizen has explained, narratives pitting “oppressors” against the “oppressed” can be used to justify any violence, so long as it’s perpetrated against the “oppressors.”

Pro-Hamas protesters, for instance, justified the terrorist group’s massacre of Israeli civilians on October 7, 2023, by labeling Israel the “oppressor” and Hamas part of the “oppressed.”

Mangione used rhetoric like this to justify shooting Thompson in the back on a Manhattan street. Thompson was part of a group of “parasites who simply had it coming,” he wrote in a manifesto attributed to him.

Another young man, 29-year-old Chamel Abdulkarim, also reportedly compared himself to Mangione after allegedly setting a 1.2 million square foot Kimberly-Clark distribution center on fire earlier this month.

Abdulkarim, who reportedly worked for company running the warehouse, allegedly filmed and posted several videos of himself setting paper products on fire.

“It you’re not going to pay us enough to [expletive] live or afford to live, at least pay us enough not to do this [expletive],” the narrator says in one video.

Later, as 175 firefighters from two fire stations battled the six-alarm blaze, text messages and phone calls attributed to Abdulkarim included messages like, “I just cost these [expletive] billions,” and, “All you had to do was pay us enough to live.”

Abdulkarim faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted. He pled not guilty to local charges on April 13.

Assassination culture promotes a parody of justice which permits humans to deprive others of due process and proportionate punishment to exact vengeance.

While God expects humans to make just judgements and uphold biblical justice through the legal system, only God has the wisdom, moral standing and clarity to take vengeance, or give an evil person their due.

Romans 12:19, drawing from Deuteronomy 32:25, reads, “Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.’”

Daily Citizen is a news division of Focus on the Family that provides a faith-based perspective to counter the mainstream media’s anti-Christian bias.