The headlines are alarming. “Left-Wing Political Violence Reaches Record High,” warns the National Review. Newsweek explains there’s “The Growing Threat of Political Violence From the Left.” “Left-Wing Terrorism Is on the Rise,” states The Atlantic, while The Independent details that “Left wing attacks outnumber those from the right for first time in decades.”
Really? I began to think about the high-profile incidents of political violence that have occurred since Trump took his escalator ride to infamy back in 2015. Immediately I could think of about a dozen right-wing incidents, but surely that must be because I’m such a left-wing guy. The only left-wing political violence I could recall was the shooting at the Congressional Republican softball practice back in 2017, when Rep. Steve Scalise was shot.
So, you know me, I look shit up. I finally found the study that all these alarming headlines refer to. It’s from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), entitled “Left-Wing Terrorism and Political Violence in the United States: What the Data Tells Us.” When I read through the study and finally found out just how many incidents of left-wing political violence had occurred this year, I was stunned.
It is five.
That’s right, all the breathless coverage of the rise of left-wing political violence is referring to five incidents that have occurred in 2025. That’s up from three in 2024 and just one—one!—in 2023.
So, how are these media outlets reporting that, as The Atlantic says, “For the first time in more than 30 years, attacks by the far left outnumber those by the far right?”
Because it is technically true. There have been five left-wing incidents and one right-wing incident in 2025.
But looking at the bigger picture, the dominance of right-wing extremist violence becomes clear. As the CSIS report explains:
Since 2015, right-wing extremists have been linked to 267 terror plots or attacks, resulting in 91 fatalities. By contrast, far-left actors accounted for 66 incidents and 19 deaths, often targeting property rather than people. In 2022, all 25 extremist-related murders were committed by right-wing perpetrators, 21 tied to white supremacists. The trend held firm in 2023 and 2024, with right-wing actors responsible for every identified extremist killing.
There has been an average of just over 24 attacks and 8 fatalities every year from the right, compared to 6 attacks and less than one fatality from the left. Literally four times as many attacks and eight times as many deaths come from the right.
That’s because attacks from the right come in the form of mass shootings against targeted groups: the 2015 Charleston Church shooting targeting Blacks, the 2018 Tree of Life Synagogue shooting targeting Jews, the 2019 El Paso Walmart massacre targeting Latinos, and the 2022 Buffalo Supermarket shooting targeting Blacks again.
Then there are the right-wing attacks of a personally political nature: the 2020 Michigan Governor kidnapping plot, the 2020 killing by Kyle Rittenhouse, the 2022 hammer attack on Paul Pelosi, the 2022 shooting at Louisville Mayor Craig Greenburg, and the 2025 Melissa Hortman assassination.
But attacks from the left tend to be targeting property, not people, like in 2022 when there were a series of firebombings against pro-life pregnancy centers, attacks that were timed at night to avoid fatalities. There was a GOP headquarters that was shot up—again, while vacant—in New Mexico this year, with vandalism added reading “ICE=KKK.”
Then there’s the question of what is and is not being counted. For instance, the arson attack on Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro isn’t considered a right-wing attack, but an ethnonationalist one based on anger over Israel’s obliteration of Gaza (apparently, “Jewish” outranks “Democrat” in Shapiro’s bio). Luigi Mangione’s shooting of a health insurance CEO is catalogued as left-wing violence, when it’s really more of a personal vendetta. Thomas Crooks’s attempted assassination of Donald Trump is classified as left-wing violence, though its unclear whether he had political motivations beyond “shoot someone famous.” And a woman who turned herself in to Capitol Police this year saying she planned to use Molotov cocktails to target Pete Hegseth, Mike Johnson, and Scott Bessent is as much a “left-wing attack” as the Arizona DNC office being riddled with bullets last year is a “right-wing attack.”
But the media, perhaps eager to get on the regime’s good side, has gone all-in for the headlines that left-wing violence is outpacing right-wing violence. This year.
Yes, as a percentage of the overall political violence this year, or as compared to the past two years, there is more left-wing political violence. But the reason behind that isn’t some crazy upswing on the left. The data show that before Trump’s escalator descent, the number of left-wing incidents hovered between zero and three. In the Trump Era, that has risen to hovering between one and eight.
The real story is in the steep decline this year in right-wing political violence, with the researchers classifying only the assassination of Melissa Hortman in Minnesota for the right, a classification that elides one very important fact: now the right-wing political violence is administration policy.
Why does some lone wolf need to bother with attacking Latinos and Blacks when Trump’s ICE goons will rappel from Blackhawk helicopters in Chicago to roust an entire apartment building in the middle of the night, zip-tying half-clothed children and detaining American citizens of darker complexion? Right-wing terrorists aren’t compelled to violence against the left this year because they can just join ICE and get paid for it.
When it comes to the alleged rise in left-wing political violence, heed the words of Flavor Flav and “don’t believe the hype.” Five incidents of violence from the left isn’t good, but there haven’t been that few incidents on the right since 2007, and every incident of ICE terrorizing immigrant and American citizens without warrants and probable cause is right-wing political violence.
