Individuals on both sides commit violence, but has the right (even far right) ever openly celebrated murdered Americans like we've seen repeatedly from the left in just the past 12 months?
Violence is a both sides issue. Justifying and normalizing it is not.
Trump gave a wholesale pardon to 1,600 Capitol Hill rioters who made a violent attempt to overturn an election, and his supporters are okay with that. I can't think of a more blatant act of justifying or normalizing political violence.
The Democrat party of 20 years ago is not the same as we see today. The Republican party of 20 years ago is not the same as we see today... but generally because of the former as moderate Democrats have drifted to the MAGA side of the Republican Party.
So, any data collected older than 20 years on ideological political violence is irrelevant. It would be like claiming the Democrats are the racist party because they opposed abolition and the Civil Rights Act.
But when considering the overall violence that can be attributed to left-leaning vs right-leaning people, politically-motivate or not, the Democrats own an order of magnitude higher rates considering the current ideological stamp for each party.
The separation of Islamist murder is one good example. Current Democrats are supportive of, or at least sympathetic of, Islamic cultures that practice extremism and terrorism. This is confirmed by the polling data and the large inventory of protest activity against Isreal and in support of Hamas and Hezbollah. For example, in a recent Gallup poll, when asked if sympathetic to Israel or Palestine, 67% of Republicans were sided with Israel, but 89% of Democrats sided with the people of Palestine ruled by Hamas and Hezbollah. Also, Democrats are open borders people and clearly the risk of terrorist immigrants increases with that position.
Then there is gang crime, primary crime in the urban black community where the black people in those communities vote Democrat 95%. Although rarely specifically politically motivated, the Democrat tendency to push and enflame racial victim mindsets into these people as a strategy to keep them voting for Democrats, also causes anger and hatred that increases the incidents of violence.
Take all violence done in this country and decide the following:
- More aligned with current left/Democrat ideology?
- More aligned with current right/Republican ideology?
- Not aligned with either current left-vs right or Democrat vs Republican ideology?
Most violence done in this country is associated with number 1.
"Current Democrats are supportive of, or at least sympathetic of, Islamic cultures that practice extremism and terrorism." This is blatantly untrue. And as a recent report made clear, over the last decade, the body count of right wing extremism is nine times that of left-wing.
Fuck no. Take another MSM pill and call your doctor. BLM and Antifa 2020 riots added enough violence to keep the Democrat numbers over the top for another decade.
"President Barack Obama’s election corresponded with a surge of violence from the right. From 2009 to 2016, right-wing extremists were responsible for 106 terrorist attacks and plots, nearly double the 58 right-wing incidents that occurred in the eight years prior. These tend to be more lethal than left-wing attacks, which generally target specific individuals, such as the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson last year or the assassination attempt on Trump at his West Palm Beach golf course. Right-wing extremists, by contrast, are more likely to target whole groups. In the past decade in the United States, 36 left-wing attacks have killed 13 people, whereas 152 right-wing attacks have killed 112." --Center for Strategic and International Studies
New Orleans, Louisiana (Jan 2025): A man rammed a pickup truck into a crowd on Bourbon Street, killing 14 people and injuring dozens more before being shot and killed by police. DEMOCRAT.
Hollywood, California (Jul 2025): A car rammed into a crowd waiting to enter a concert, injuring 30 people. DEMOCRAT
Brooklyn, New York (Feb 2023): A man drove a U-Haul truck into pedestrians, killing one person and injuring eight others. DEMOCRAT
Waukesha, Wisconsin (Nov 2021): An SUV drove through the annual Christmas parade, killing six people and injuring 62. The driver, Darrell Brooks, a BLM activist, was later convicted of intentional homicide. DEMOCRAT
U.S. Capitol, Washington D.C. (Apr 2021): A man rammed a car into a police barricade, killing one officer and injuring another before he was shot and killed. DEMOCRAT
George Floyd protests (2020): Over 30 killed and thousands injured... including over 2000 cops. DEMOCRATS
New York City, New York (2017): A man drove a pickup truck down a crowded bike path in Manhattan, killing eight people and injuring more than a dozen others. DEMOCRAT
Stillwater, Oklahoma (2015): A woman drove a car into a crowd at the Oklahoma State University homecoming parade, killing four people and injuring many others. DEMOCRAT
Nashville, TN (2023): Audrey Hale, identified as transgender, killed six people at The Covenant School. DEMOCRAT
Denver, CO (2019): Alec McKinney, a transgender teenager, was involved in a school shooting that killed one and injured eight. DEMOCRAT
Aberdeen, MD (2018): Snochia Moseley, reportedly transgender, killed three at a Rite Aid facility (not a school). DEMOCRAT
Colorado Springs, CO (2022): Anderson Lee Aldrich, who killed five at an LGBTQ nightclub (not a school), was claimed to be non-binary by their lawyers, though this is disputed. DEMOCRAT
Minneapolis, MN (2025): Robin Westman, identified as transgender, killed two children and injured 17 at Annunciation Catholic School. DEMOCRAT
My impression is that you're not too keen on data that contradicts your worldview, but maybe check out this study on whether violent attacks have come from the left or the right over the last 30 years.
But remember, it's not a competition and it's perhaps good for all of us to be more honest and self-aware and realize that both sides do it and that it's a problem.
I don't dispute that the data shows more right-leaning political violence over the last 30 years except for the fact that the studies tend to be more lenient for what they brand as right vs what they exclude that should be considered left. The studies are biased because they are done in academia and academia is biased left.
However, putting that aside the only meaningful data are the trends. And over the last few years left violence has FAR exceeded what can and should be counted as left violence. BLM alone blows the stats for left violence through the roof.
I really appreciate the balance of this piece. Cathy Young is right: too much of the conversation around political violence collapses into a numbers game calling out whose extremists are worse, who started it, who’s more excused by the media. This article does a service by showing how selective each side’s “ledgers” can be, and by reminding us that accountability has to begin at home.
But I think something is missing in nearly all of these discussions, whether they come from left, right, or center: a sense of the larger passage humanity is stumbling through right now. If we only count incidents or trace them to partisan blame, we miss the deeper question of why so many people (especially young people) are vulnerable to radicalization in the first place.
The old sources of belonging, purpose, and trust have weakened. Institutions feel brittle, the future looks precarious, and many feel profoundly unmoored. In that vacuum, rigid ideologies (whether on the left or the right) can feel like lifelines. They offer clarity, belonging, and moral certainty, even at the cost of compassion or nuance.
History shows that the “dominant flavor” of extremism shifts: left in one decade, right in another. The constant isn’t the side, but the pattern. And that pattern tells us something more profound: we are in a turbulent period of cultural evolution, where old frameworks are collapsing but the new ones are not yet clear. Polarization, radicalization, and violence are tragic symptoms of that uncertainty.
So yes, let’s keep holding our own “teams” accountable, as Cathy suggests. But let’s also keep asking the larger question: how do we create healthier sources of meaning, community, and identity so fewer people need to find them in cult-like politics at all? If we don’t address that, we’ll still be counting bodies on ledgers long after the “dominant side” has shifted yet again.
It would help a whole lot if all media, including social media, would include sufficient background information to allow readers to place these stories in context. In “black lives matter’ liberal publications, such as The NY Times, did not report on the risk that whites might face in a hostile confrontation with police. When this data became known, the idea that blacks were being selectively persecuted looked unconvincing. It doesn’t take a lot of sophistication to be fair and to practice good journalistic ethics. In fact, it should be possible to compel public media to refrain from sensationalism without any risk to free speech. “Free speech” is waved as a bloody flag by media that for profit reasons do not want to be responsible.
“The fine print on the ADL graphic Levitz reproduces notes that the numbers include ‘both ideologically and non-ideologically motivated killings.’”
That’s important. Immersion in talk of social polarization can cause us to forget, collectively, what we learned decades ago about social contagion. (It doesn’t help that the term “social contagion” has been stigmatized in the discussion of gender dysphoria.) People used to be alert to the earmarks of a copycat killing.
Seen from a mile up, various recent cases may seem classifiable as ideologically motivated while the details tell a different story.
Overall, a sound and thoughtful piece about the pitfalls of attempting to classify violence as political or right vs. left. I agree with the overall sentiment that we should stop bickering over left vs. right wing political violence and start trying to address it in a bipartisan manner.
The problem is that, as you have noted in the piece, prominent officials in the Republican Party seem to have no interest in doing this, and are quite obviously exploiting it for political gain. This would include both the President and the Vice President, who are blatantly using this tactic to inflame tensions for the purpose of justifying an authoritarian crackdown on "radical leftist Democrats". They haven't even been subtle about it.
And of course, when people rightfully speak in outrage regarding such abuses of authority and power, those same people use that "inflammatory rhetoric" as justification for pinning political violence on the left. This is like when people on the left say that denial of racism is itself more evidence of racism, or pushing back against the notion of "white fragility" is the kind of defensiveness that characterizes white fragility. Or like when people on the right characterize feminists as shrill and hysterical and then wait to criticize the outraged reactions as more shrill hysteria.
In other words, this is more than just unfair—it's a pre-arranged defense mechanism used to falsify-proof an ideology and shield it from criticism, in order to preserve an exploitative agenda. The difference with this current effort is that it isn't culturally-driven, but driven by the power of the state and our elected officials.
And if those are the people pushing this narrative, how can we not at least push back with numbers, to call out the hypocrisy and demand that our government stop demonizing half the country—especially in the face of explicit threats from the President to bring the military into "Democrat run cities"?
And especially when—and this is something that even the most blatant right-wing apologist could scarcely deny—the American right is what stands in the way of the significant gun-control this country so obviously needs? (Ok, they'd certainly deny that last part, but they have to own the fact that America is awash in guns, because that's clearly what they want.)
We all have our own biased perspectives, to be sure. But from where I sit, I have observed years and years of demagoguery against liberals and progressives by prominent Republicans as we became more culturally ascendent, and a growing mass within the American right that has been itching for an opportunity to violently oppress us. And just like certain illiberal tendencies on the left were exposed in the woke hysteria of the late teens and early 2020s, the right has been exposed as well over the past 10 years.
The continued widespread approval among Republicans of Trump's tactics, rhetoric, and agenda, even now that many of the most alarmed assertions by people with "TDS" have been borne out in reality, confirms my worst fears. The lie about needing guns to oppose a tyrannical government has been exposed as nothing but a cynical farce to nuture citizen support for a right-wing authoritarian regime friendly to radical Christianity, among a small but disproportionately dangerous segment of the population.
Had to come to the comments section to see how Frank Lee spun this rather balanced article. He did not disappoint.🥴
Individuals on both sides commit violence, but has the right (even far right) ever openly celebrated murdered Americans like we've seen repeatedly from the left in just the past 12 months?
Violence is a both sides issue. Justifying and normalizing it is not.
What does "the left" here mean, exactly?
Trump gave a wholesale pardon to 1,600 Capitol Hill rioters who made a violent attempt to overturn an election, and his supporters are okay with that. I can't think of a more blatant act of justifying or normalizing political violence.
The Democrat party of 20 years ago is not the same as we see today. The Republican party of 20 years ago is not the same as we see today... but generally because of the former as moderate Democrats have drifted to the MAGA side of the Republican Party.
So, any data collected older than 20 years on ideological political violence is irrelevant. It would be like claiming the Democrats are the racist party because they opposed abolition and the Civil Rights Act.
But when considering the overall violence that can be attributed to left-leaning vs right-leaning people, politically-motivate or not, the Democrats own an order of magnitude higher rates considering the current ideological stamp for each party.
The separation of Islamist murder is one good example. Current Democrats are supportive of, or at least sympathetic of, Islamic cultures that practice extremism and terrorism. This is confirmed by the polling data and the large inventory of protest activity against Isreal and in support of Hamas and Hezbollah. For example, in a recent Gallup poll, when asked if sympathetic to Israel or Palestine, 67% of Republicans were sided with Israel, but 89% of Democrats sided with the people of Palestine ruled by Hamas and Hezbollah. Also, Democrats are open borders people and clearly the risk of terrorist immigrants increases with that position.
Then there is gang crime, primary crime in the urban black community where the black people in those communities vote Democrat 95%. Although rarely specifically politically motivated, the Democrat tendency to push and enflame racial victim mindsets into these people as a strategy to keep them voting for Democrats, also causes anger and hatred that increases the incidents of violence.
Take all violence done in this country and decide the following:
- More aligned with current left/Democrat ideology?
- More aligned with current right/Republican ideology?
- Not aligned with either current left-vs right or Democrat vs Republican ideology?
Most violence done in this country is associated with number 1.
"Current Democrats are supportive of, or at least sympathetic of, Islamic cultures that practice extremism and terrorism." This is blatantly untrue. And as a recent report made clear, over the last decade, the body count of right wing extremism is nine times that of left-wing.
Fuck no. Take another MSM pill and call your doctor. BLM and Antifa 2020 riots added enough violence to keep the Democrat numbers over the top for another decade.
"President Barack Obama’s election corresponded with a surge of violence from the right. From 2009 to 2016, right-wing extremists were responsible for 106 terrorist attacks and plots, nearly double the 58 right-wing incidents that occurred in the eight years prior. These tend to be more lethal than left-wing attacks, which generally target specific individuals, such as the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson last year or the assassination attempt on Trump at his West Palm Beach golf course. Right-wing extremists, by contrast, are more likely to target whole groups. In the past decade in the United States, 36 left-wing attacks have killed 13 people, whereas 152 right-wing attacks have killed 112." --Center for Strategic and International Studies
Oh Jesus.
New Orleans, Louisiana (Jan 2025): A man rammed a pickup truck into a crowd on Bourbon Street, killing 14 people and injuring dozens more before being shot and killed by police. DEMOCRAT.
Hollywood, California (Jul 2025): A car rammed into a crowd waiting to enter a concert, injuring 30 people. DEMOCRAT
Brooklyn, New York (Feb 2023): A man drove a U-Haul truck into pedestrians, killing one person and injuring eight others. DEMOCRAT
Waukesha, Wisconsin (Nov 2021): An SUV drove through the annual Christmas parade, killing six people and injuring 62. The driver, Darrell Brooks, a BLM activist, was later convicted of intentional homicide. DEMOCRAT
U.S. Capitol, Washington D.C. (Apr 2021): A man rammed a car into a police barricade, killing one officer and injuring another before he was shot and killed. DEMOCRAT
George Floyd protests (2020): Over 30 killed and thousands injured... including over 2000 cops. DEMOCRATS
New York City, New York (2017): A man drove a pickup truck down a crowded bike path in Manhattan, killing eight people and injuring more than a dozen others. DEMOCRAT
Stillwater, Oklahoma (2015): A woman drove a car into a crowd at the Oklahoma State University homecoming parade, killing four people and injuring many others. DEMOCRAT
Nashville, TN (2023): Audrey Hale, identified as transgender, killed six people at The Covenant School. DEMOCRAT
Denver, CO (2019): Alec McKinney, a transgender teenager, was involved in a school shooting that killed one and injured eight. DEMOCRAT
Aberdeen, MD (2018): Snochia Moseley, reportedly transgender, killed three at a Rite Aid facility (not a school). DEMOCRAT
Colorado Springs, CO (2022): Anderson Lee Aldrich, who killed five at an LGBTQ nightclub (not a school), was claimed to be non-binary by their lawyers, though this is disputed. DEMOCRAT
Minneapolis, MN (2025): Robin Westman, identified as transgender, killed two children and injured 17 at Annunciation Catholic School. DEMOCRAT
Assassination of Charlie Kirk. DEMOCRAT.
Two attempted assassinations of Trump. DEMOCRAT.
My impression is that you're not too keen on data that contradicts your worldview, but maybe check out this study on whether violent attacks have come from the left or the right over the last 30 years.
https://www.axios.com/2025/09/28/left-wing-terrorism-far-right-violence-research?ref=readtangle.com
But remember, it's not a competition and it's perhaps good for all of us to be more honest and self-aware and realize that both sides do it and that it's a problem.
I don't dispute that the data shows more right-leaning political violence over the last 30 years except for the fact that the studies tend to be more lenient for what they brand as right vs what they exclude that should be considered left. The studies are biased because they are done in academia and academia is biased left.
However, putting that aside the only meaningful data are the trends. And over the last few years left violence has FAR exceeded what can and should be counted as left violence. BLM alone blows the stats for left violence through the roof.
I really appreciate the balance of this piece. Cathy Young is right: too much of the conversation around political violence collapses into a numbers game calling out whose extremists are worse, who started it, who’s more excused by the media. This article does a service by showing how selective each side’s “ledgers” can be, and by reminding us that accountability has to begin at home.
But I think something is missing in nearly all of these discussions, whether they come from left, right, or center: a sense of the larger passage humanity is stumbling through right now. If we only count incidents or trace them to partisan blame, we miss the deeper question of why so many people (especially young people) are vulnerable to radicalization in the first place.
The old sources of belonging, purpose, and trust have weakened. Institutions feel brittle, the future looks precarious, and many feel profoundly unmoored. In that vacuum, rigid ideologies (whether on the left or the right) can feel like lifelines. They offer clarity, belonging, and moral certainty, even at the cost of compassion or nuance.
History shows that the “dominant flavor” of extremism shifts: left in one decade, right in another. The constant isn’t the side, but the pattern. And that pattern tells us something more profound: we are in a turbulent period of cultural evolution, where old frameworks are collapsing but the new ones are not yet clear. Polarization, radicalization, and violence are tragic symptoms of that uncertainty.
So yes, let’s keep holding our own “teams” accountable, as Cathy suggests. But let’s also keep asking the larger question: how do we create healthier sources of meaning, community, and identity so fewer people need to find them in cult-like politics at all? If we don’t address that, we’ll still be counting bodies on ledgers long after the “dominant side” has shifted yet again.
It would help a whole lot if all media, including social media, would include sufficient background information to allow readers to place these stories in context. In “black lives matter’ liberal publications, such as The NY Times, did not report on the risk that whites might face in a hostile confrontation with police. When this data became known, the idea that blacks were being selectively persecuted looked unconvincing. It doesn’t take a lot of sophistication to be fair and to practice good journalistic ethics. In fact, it should be possible to compel public media to refrain from sensationalism without any risk to free speech. “Free speech” is waved as a bloody flag by media that for profit reasons do not want to be responsible.
“The fine print on the ADL graphic Levitz reproduces notes that the numbers include ‘both ideologically and non-ideologically motivated killings.’”
That’s important. Immersion in talk of social polarization can cause us to forget, collectively, what we learned decades ago about social contagion. (It doesn’t help that the term “social contagion” has been stigmatized in the discussion of gender dysphoria.) People used to be alert to the earmarks of a copycat killing.
Seen from a mile up, various recent cases may seem classifiable as ideologically motivated while the details tell a different story.
Going beyond the left/right split, there is a better way to partition violence in a 95/5 or so way: extremes vs. the center.
Overall, a sound and thoughtful piece about the pitfalls of attempting to classify violence as political or right vs. left. I agree with the overall sentiment that we should stop bickering over left vs. right wing political violence and start trying to address it in a bipartisan manner.
The problem is that, as you have noted in the piece, prominent officials in the Republican Party seem to have no interest in doing this, and are quite obviously exploiting it for political gain. This would include both the President and the Vice President, who are blatantly using this tactic to inflame tensions for the purpose of justifying an authoritarian crackdown on "radical leftist Democrats". They haven't even been subtle about it.
And of course, when people rightfully speak in outrage regarding such abuses of authority and power, those same people use that "inflammatory rhetoric" as justification for pinning political violence on the left. This is like when people on the left say that denial of racism is itself more evidence of racism, or pushing back against the notion of "white fragility" is the kind of defensiveness that characterizes white fragility. Or like when people on the right characterize feminists as shrill and hysterical and then wait to criticize the outraged reactions as more shrill hysteria.
In other words, this is more than just unfair—it's a pre-arranged defense mechanism used to falsify-proof an ideology and shield it from criticism, in order to preserve an exploitative agenda. The difference with this current effort is that it isn't culturally-driven, but driven by the power of the state and our elected officials.
And if those are the people pushing this narrative, how can we not at least push back with numbers, to call out the hypocrisy and demand that our government stop demonizing half the country—especially in the face of explicit threats from the President to bring the military into "Democrat run cities"?
And especially when—and this is something that even the most blatant right-wing apologist could scarcely deny—the American right is what stands in the way of the significant gun-control this country so obviously needs? (Ok, they'd certainly deny that last part, but they have to own the fact that America is awash in guns, because that's clearly what they want.)
We all have our own biased perspectives, to be sure. But from where I sit, I have observed years and years of demagoguery against liberals and progressives by prominent Republicans as we became more culturally ascendent, and a growing mass within the American right that has been itching for an opportunity to violently oppress us. And just like certain illiberal tendencies on the left were exposed in the woke hysteria of the late teens and early 2020s, the right has been exposed as well over the past 10 years.
The continued widespread approval among Republicans of Trump's tactics, rhetoric, and agenda, even now that many of the most alarmed assertions by people with "TDS" have been borne out in reality, confirms my worst fears. The lie about needing guns to oppose a tyrannical government has been exposed as nothing but a cynical farce to nuture citizen support for a right-wing authoritarian regime friendly to radical Christianity, among a small but disproportionately dangerous segment of the population.