Americans see left and right violence as equal issues. The data doesn't.

[surfered]

“A 2021 study published in the journal Criminology, Criminal Justice, Law & Society analyzed ideologically motivated extremist killings from 1990 to 2020. The results were clear: Only 42 incidents of politically motivated homicide, or 15.6% of all incidents, involved far-left extremists. In contrast, far-right extremists were responsible for 227 incidents—84.4% of the total.”

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/9/12/2343189/-Americans-see-left-and-right-violence-as-equal-issues-The-data-doesn-t

[RockRaven]

1. Because of the beyond-worthless, actively-misinforming corporate media.

And the wimpy-as-shit politicians of the left who dance to the media's tune.

[JBTaurus83]

2. Yes

I just said on another post, our leadership and governor’s should be holding big press conferences reading out the stats, names and crimes of radical right wingers. Don’t allow them to control the narrative.

[Marcuse]

3. True dat (!)

[Johonny]

4. Because all the money is all in one direction

No one making Kirk type cash radicalizing the left.

[Old Crank]

5. Starts at the top.

Every republican is an attack dog.

[wiggs]

6. I'm guessing stats for ALL killings are even more lopsided. The quoted stats are for extremist killings with

political motivation. There were a lot more killings that weren't political and I bet most of those are gun cult white men.

Didn't read the linked article but that's how I see the excerpt.

[spanone]

7. That says it all.

K&R

[Scrivener7]

8. That's messaging.

[markodochartaigh]

9. I know how it is in

Texas. When some reich-wing nut job shoots a Black person a whole lot of people ask "What did the Black person do to get themselves shot." You may just shrug this remark off, but those people really do believe that it was the fault of the victim that they were killed.

[muriel_volestrangler]

10. And that was a 2021 study. In 2022, 2023 and 2024, all US extremist killings were by the right wing

Instead, and at a time when no one was in custody and nothing at all was known of Kirk’s killer, Trump said the blame for his death lay with “the radical left”. It was its “rhetoric” that was “directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today”. The problem was not political violence in general, but “radical left political violence”.

Put aside the inaccuracy of such a statement. Put aside the documented fact that not some, but all extremist-related killings in the US in 2024 were connected to rightwing extremism, just as they were in 2023 and in 2022. Put aside that, although Trump listed incidents in which figures associated with the right had been attacked, he pointedly did not mention and wilfully chose to ignore the murder of the Democratic Minnesota lawmaker Melissa Hortman and her husband in June; or the arson attack on the home of the Democratic governor of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro, in April; or an earlier plot to kidnap the Democratic governor of Michigan.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/sep/12/us-era-political-violence-donald-trump-charlie-kirk