**Assessing Political Violence in the U.S.: Separating Rhetoric from Reality**
After the September 10, 2025, assassination of conservative political activist Charlie Kirk, President Donald Trump claimed that radical leftist groups foment political violence in the U.S. and argued that they should be jailed. “The radical left causes tremendous violence,” he said, asserting they seem to do it even more extensively than groups on the right.
Top presidential adviser Stephen Miller also weighed in following Kirk’s killing, labeling left-wing political organizations a vast domestic terror movement. “We are going to use every resource we have throughout this government to identify, disrupt, dismantle, and destroy these networks and make America safe again,” Miller stated.
Yet policymakers and the public need reliable evidence and actual data to understand the reality of politically motivated violence. From our research on extremism, it is clear that the assertions made by the president and Miller about political violence originating from the left are not based on actual facts.
Based on our own research and a review of related work, we can confidently say that most domestic terrorists in the U.S. lean politically to the right, and right-wing attacks account for the vast majority of fatalities from domestic terrorism.
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### Political Violence on the Rise
The understanding of political violence is complicated by differences in definitions and recent developments, such as the Department of Justice’s removal of an important government-sponsored study on domestic terrorists.
Political violence in the U.S. has increased in recent months, often taking forms that go unrecognized. During the 2024 election cycle, nearly half of all states reported threats against election workers, including social media death threats, intimidation, and doxing.
Kirk’s assassination underscores this growing threat. The man charged with the murder, Tyler Robinson, allegedly planned the attack extensively through writing and online communication.
This incident follows other politically motivated killings, including the June assassination of Democratic Minnesota state Representative and former House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband.
These incidents reflect a dangerous normalization of political violence, where threats and acts of violence are increasingly treated as acceptable tactics to achieve political goals. This trend poses serious risks to democracy and societal stability.
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### Defining Political Violence
This article draws upon our own research on extremism, other academic studies, federal reports, academic datasets, and ongoing monitoring to assess what is known about political violence.
Support for political violence in the U.S. is spreading from extremist fringes into the mainstream, which has the effect of normalizing violent actions. Threats that begin as online rhetoric can escalate to actual violence, threatening democratic processes.
However, various agencies and researchers use different definitions of political violence, making comprehensive comparisons difficult.
The FBI and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) define domestic violent extremism as involving actual violence or credible threats thereof. These agencies emphasize that they do not investigate individuals for constitutionally protected speech, activism, or ideological beliefs.
Specifically, domestic violent extremism is defined as violence or credible threats of violence intended to influence government policy or intimidate civilians for political or ideological purposes. This broad framing encompasses diverse activities under a single category and guides federal investigations and prosecutions.
In contrast, academic datasets often use narrower, more operational definitions. For example, the Global Terrorism Database only counts incidents involving intentional violence linked to political, social, or religious motivations.
Because of these varying definitions, the same incident may or may not be included in a given dataset depending on the applied criteria.
The FBI and DHS stress that these distinctions have practical consequences. Labeling an event as terrorism rather than a hate crime, for instance, changes which agencies investigate the case and the resources allocated to it.
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### Patterns in Incidents and Fatalities
Despite differing definitions, several consistent patterns emerge from available evidence:
– Politically motivated violence constitutes a small fraction of total violent crime in the U.S., but its impact is magnified due to symbolic targets, timing, and media coverage.
– In the first half of 2025, 35% of violent events tracked by University of Maryland researchers targeted U.S. government personnel or facilities—more than twice the rate seen in 2024.
– Right-wing extremist violence has been deadlier than left-wing violence in recent years. Government and independent analyses estimate that right-wing extremist violence accounts for approximately 75% to 80% of domestic terrorism deaths in the U.S. since 2001.
**Illustrative cases include:**
– 2015 Charleston church shooting: White supremacist Dylann Roof killed nine Black parishioners.
– 2018 Tree of Life synagogue attack in Pittsburgh: Eleven worshippers were murdered.
– 2019 El Paso Walmart massacre: An anti-immigrant gunman killed 23 people.
– 1995 Oklahoma City bombing: The deadliest domestic terrorist attack in U.S. history, killing 168 people.
By comparison, left-wing extremist incidents—including those linked to anarchist or environmental movements—represent about 10% to 15% of incidents but less than 5% of fatalities.
Examples of left-wing extremism include:
– The Animal Liberation Front and Earth Liberation Front arson and vandalism campaigns in the 1990s and 2000s, which primarily targeted property rather than people.
– Violence during Seattle May Day protests in 2016, where anarchist groups clashed with police, resulting in multiple injuries and arrests.
– The 2016 sniper attack in Dallas, where five police officers were killed; the perpetrator appeared to target white police officers.
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### Challenges in Counting Political Violence
There are additional challenges in accurately accounting for and characterizing certain types of political violence and their perpetrators.
The U.S. legal system focuses on prosecuting specific criminal acts rather than formally designating organizations as terrorist groups. Instead, existing statutes such as conspiracy, weapons violations, RICO provisions, and hate crime laws are used to pursue individuals responsible for violence.
Unlike foreign terrorism cases, the federal government lacks a clear mechanism to formally charge someone with domestic terrorism, which complicates efforts to label individuals as domestic terrorists.
Furthermore, the State Department’s Foreign Terrorist Organization list applies only to groups outside the United States.
Due to First Amendment protections of free speech, U.S. law also bars the government from formally designating domestic political organizations as terrorist entities.
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### Rhetoric Versus Evidence
Without standardized reporting and uniform definitions, available data cannot provide a fully accurate overview of political violence in the U.S. Nevertheless, several key conclusions emerge:
– Politically motivated violence in the U.S. remains rare compared to overall violent crime.
– Its disproportionate impact arises from the ability of even rare incidents to amplify fear, influence policy, and deepen societal polarization.
– Right-wing extremist violence has been more frequent and lethal than that associated with left-wing actors.
– Although the number of extremist groups is substantial and skewed toward the right, the quantity of organizations does not necessarily reflect the frequency of violent incidents.
– High-profile incidents of political violence often spur intense rhetoric and calls for sweeping policy responses.
– However, the empirical evidence shows that political violence remains concentrated within specific movements and networks rather than spread evenly across the ideological spectrum.
Distinguishing between heated rhetoric and factual evidence is vital to protect democratic institutions and foster informed policymaking.
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**In summary**, the data clearly indicate that right-wing extremism currently poses the most significant threat in terms of politically motivated violence and fatalities in the United States. As political discourse becomes increasingly polarized, relying on rigorous research and evidence-based analysis remains crucial for understanding and addressing the realities of domestic political violence.
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