Borrowed Battlegrounds: Global Audiences and Online Discussion of American Political Violence

Why do foreign audiences mobilize around American political violence, and does their engagement mirror domestic partisan dynamics? I analyze 1.2 million posts on X across five languages (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, French, Russian) surrounding two events: the Trump assassination attempt and the Kirk assassination. Both events generate 50--100 times increases in event-specific discussion, with non-U.S. users showing larger proportional volume gains than U.S. users---consistent with dramatic shocks activating otherwise-dormant distant audiences. Sentiment analysis reveals that violence produces pro-target sympathy shifts, with asymmetric spillover to adjacent partisan objects. Affective intensity and hostility decline on average, reflecting fatigue among returning users partially offset by positively-selected new entrants. U.S.-based users exhibit generalized activation across all partisan topics; non-U.S. users respond specifically to focal events. American partisan symbols are globally legible, but cross-border engagement remains episodic rather than systemic---activated by dramatic focal points without importing the connective tissue of the domestic partisan landscape.