Debunking Cato - "Just three days after the public assassination of conservative debate king Charlie Kirk, the tasteless lackwit Alex Nowrasteh of CATO proudly debuted his database of politically motivated violence, making much of a supposedly massive gap in fatalities between so-called right wing vs left wing violence. In the chaotic days that followed, it received massive publicity. A “right wing” think tank conveniently confirming everyone’s priors at the exact moment it was desperately desired. If you’ve read my previous work, you’ll know I was immediately suspicious. A quick skim for familiar names told me everything- yet another carefully crafted bit of bespoke propaganda. As is the way with these pieces, a ham-fisted attempt was made to justify the exclusion of a great many acts of violence from the political left, while including many absolute absurdities in the “right wing” column. I’m not going into the weeds trying to parse Nowrasteh’s supposed methodology, which he fails to adhere to, anyway. It’s sufficient to note that much like Everytown including BB gun incidents as “school shootings,” his criteria do not align with public perception of what constitutes political violence. There is also the wholly arbitrary decision to begin counting in 1975, a decision likely undertaken to avoid counting the obscene number of attacks by radical leftists in the prior decade, while still including fatalities from the Oklahoma City bombing... I am including killings by Neonazis, et al, but not gendered hate, as there is no evidence of political belief motive in the latter. (Exceptions for manifestos with explicit politics) Inceldom, likewise. Unlike Nowrasteh, I am also including anti-white and anti-Jewish killings by black nationalists and adherents of the Nation of Islam, Black Hebrew Israelites, and similar groups with explicitly political, anti-white or antisemitic views. I reject the bizarre premise that racism in and of itself is a right wing phenomenon, or that groups affiliated with racist black organizations cannot be counted because leftism rejects racism — an absurd and circular argument. I am not including internecine squabbles, or like-on-like violence, unless committed during an overt political action... In addition to sloppy methodology, this list is riddled with simple counting mistakes, all of which predictably accumulate in one direction. These include inflated fatalities, un-indicted perpetrators,double-counting, acquittals etc... Numerous events are misclassified, either by affiliation of the perpetrators, or by political intent. Alex has been made aware of his mistakes, but has refused to acknowledge or correct them... Misclassified: Robert Justus, et al. Marked as a "right wing" "white supremacist" "boogaloo." This speaks to the incurious nature of Nowrasteh and others who frequently slot boogaloos as RW, despite them being libertarian accelerationists who despise both left and right politics... It should be obvious at this point that it is extremely easy to manipulate the numbers via sloppy accounting and highly creative methodology (Racist violence only counts in one direction! Domestic violence is political — but only if the perp is “right wing.” Personal beliefs in unrelated murders/crimes only count in one direction! Anyone anti-government is by definition right wing! If we don’t release the manifesto, it didn’t happen! Communists are foreign actors, anti-communists are right wing!)
The most obviously egregious bullshit:
-Arbitrarily beginning the list just after a decade of some of the worst leftist violence the US has ever seen -but just before a decade of unusually high rw violence, neatly excising dozens of killings and other violence by a variety of extremist groups.
-The decision to exclude Jonestown- the largest mass murder of Americans outside of 9/11 (including the assassination of a US Congressman) by an American leftist with extensive political connections, merely because the killer relocated his operation to avoid legal scrutiny. Disgusting.
Final tally:
Left wing political attack casualties since 1975: 1,149
Right wing political attack casualties since 1975: 327
Removing the largest mass casualty outlier from each:
231L
159R"
Left wingers have killed more people than right wingers since 1975 - even with the year chosen to make the left look better
Murders by politically motivated left-wing and right-wing killers, grouped by decade. What do you see? : r/charts - "The CATO data was posted earlier and it’s complete bullshit that doesn’t break down any of the cases and cites “numerous FBI reports”. I expect statistics to be repeatable, so if I cannot come to the same conclusions from your given sources then your data is invalid."
Eric Levitz on X - "A conservative murdered a Democratic lawmaker -- and wounded another -- three months ago. Between 2013 and 2022, right-wingers committed the vast majority of political murders. If you actually care about political violence, you should not spread wild lies about it."
"Domestic Extremist-Related Killings in the US. by Perpetrator Affiliation, 2013-2022. Right wing extremists are responsible for the great majority of extremist-related murders over the last decade."
James Kirkpatrick on X - "Bullshit. I think I’m the only guy in the country who actually reads these reports. It includes prison gangs (usually attacking other prison gangs), domestic violence (by guys with “rw tattoos,”) and even counted a convert to Islam who killed rw guys as “rw violence”"
Sean W. Malone | That’s just, like, your opinion. on X - "This has been true for a long time, and Kirkpatrick hits on a very important point: These stats are deeply unreliable because they became a partisan tool, built on the (accurate) assumption that most people will not read the studies or even look into the details of the claims at all, and will instead only look at the headlines written about them."
Owen Winter on X - "Political violence in the US is down from its peak in 2018/2019" *chart from The Prosecution Project claiming the right are responsible for most political violence*
memetic_sisyphus on X - "I went to this source in the first five listed as right wing violence one was a homeless man who said a racial slur when he broke into a hotel and attacked the guy behind the counter. The homeless man was put into a mental institution, and another was a black woman who slapped a Jew in nyc. I quit checking after that."
Anthony J. Constantini on X - "In 2023 a gay activist left a threatening voicemail for George Santos because he felt he had undertaken "anti-gay acts." They marked it as "rightist: government focused" violence."
Jimmy Carter’s Peanut Farm ๐ฅ๐๐ฅ on X - "Spot checking these is great but the biggest caveat is right there on the graph: “* = criminal conviction.” If you choose not to prosecute, or simply lack the order to even find, say, dozens of people who burned down a police station, you get low left numbers for 2020. Simple as."
Left wingers produce fake studies and launder them into "facts"
Thread by @memeticsisyphus on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "I don’t have time to do all of that, but I did check the three month period starting Nov 2021. Worth noting this time period includes date of sentencing, not date of incident. There were 26 cases listed. 7 were dismissible outright. I’ll get into those in this thread. In addition to the 7 dismissible ones, two were prison violence by white prison gangs. The database tracks no other racial gang violence. One was a dispute over littering that lead to violence, the guy was white his neighbor Mexican this was also marked as right wing violence. Two cases were guys putting hateful stickers around town, definitely political and hateful, but they were stickers… One was a Chinese man who had a hit list of people, mostly dems but his motives seemed to be anti-USA and was targeting the current administration. Then there were two firearm charges, white supremacists charged with converting rifles to full auto. They were white supremacists, but their crime had nothing to do with ideology. So I would categorize these 8 as questionable.
Right off the bat, two of the cases were people arrested and charged for protesting peacefully at abortion clinics. The inclusion of these should be enough to throw out the rest of the data as worthless. Next we have an armed robbery targeting Mexicans. The armed robbers were black… this was counted as three different events since there were multiple perps. Idk if the forth perp was charged he wasn’t on the list. This one was the defacement of a Catholic Church by a rabid leftist. Complete category error. Muslim hating Jews… again complete category error.
So out of the random sample of 26: 7 were false and 8 questionable. 58% failure rate. In the same time period there were only two cases they counted for left wing violence. Both were pretty clear cut examples. Keep in mind they included right wing peaceful protests, stickers, and vandalism which according to this list the left doesn’t do lol.
The more you look the worse it gets."
Beachook on X - "From the Feb 2018 one, here's my favorite: 8 people were involved in a gang killing where they killed another white person in their own gang. This was counted as 7 separate instances of rightist extremism"
Meme - Greg Price @greg_price11: "25% of people who describe themselves as "very liberal" and 17% as "liberal" say that it's sometimes justified to restore to violence to achieve political goals. Just 6% of conservatives say the same. As @JDVance said, only one side of the aisle in this country has a lunatic problem."
"Most Americans across the political spectrum say political violence is never justified, but younger and more liberal Americans are more likely to disagree
Do you think it is ever justified for citizens to resort to violence in order to achieve political goals?"
Clearly, left wingers aren't more violent even though they are more willing to resort to violence
Polls Show Rising Number of Americans Justify Political Violence - "In the latest poll by YouGov taken after Kirk was murdered, 11% said violence can sometimes be justified to achieve political goals, while 72% said violence is never justified. (Another 5% said they would prefer not to say whether they think violence is sometimes justifiable to achieve political goals.) Saying that violence can be justified was more prominent among Democrats and independents than among Republicans, with 14% of Democrats, 13% of independents, and only 6% of Republicans holding that opinion, according to the Sept. 10 poll. On the other end of the scale, 81% of Republicans said violence is never justified, compared with 72% of Democrats and 65% of independents."
Eric Schmitt on X - "For those who don’t understand the problem
ABC News: 87% of Democrats view Trump as a fascist
NPR: 47% of Democrats say the “rise of fascism” is their top political concern
Rutgers: 55% of Americans on the Left believe assassinating Trump would be “at least somewhat justified”"
Survey Finds Record 34% of College Students Say Violence May Be Justified to Stop Campus Speech - " A landmark survey by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) has uncovered a sharp and concerning rise in the number of U.S. college students who believe violence can be justified to stop a campus speech. The data, drawn from over 68,000 students across 257 institutions, shows that 34% now hold this view, marking a record high and a significant jump from 24% just five years ago. Of those, 19% consider it rarely acceptable, 13% sometimes, and 2% always. While a majority—66%—maintain that violence is never acceptable, the growing minority signals a profound shift in campus norms. The trend is part of a broader pattern of increasing acceptance of disruptive tactics; the survey also found that 71% of students say shouting down a speaker is acceptable, and 54% approve of blocking other students from entering an event."
Meme - Andrew Kolvet @AndrewKolvet: "Young conservatives are more peaceful than older conservatives, and even political moderates. Our side of the aisle is doing its part. Meanwhile young progressives have been dangerously radicalized to believe violence is justified. This must be addressed immediately. Pray for peace."
"Is it ever justified for citizens to resort to violence in order to achieve political goals?, % responding yes. United States, September 12th-15th 2025
Liberals: Aged 18-39 30%, 40-59 15%, 60+ 9%
Conservative: Aged 18-39 6%, 40-59 8%, 60+ 8%
Moderate: Aged 18-39 11%, 40-59 5%, 60+ 2%"
Guy Benson on X - "I’d like to ask my non-conservative followers to pay attention here for a moment. I don’t need a response or a rebuttal or a ‘whatabout.’ Just read on and consider what I’m saying. Please. We are only a few weeks removed from a leading conservative figure being shot in the throat and killed by a leftist, for and during his speech, at a public speaking event. Stunning, jarring numbers of leftist Americans justified or celebrated this assassination, aligning with multiple public polls showing that a sizable minority of leftists in this country think political violence can be acceptable. Today — just today — many conservatives are thinking about:
(1) a major leftist statewide candidate being exposed for sending texts to a political opponent (R) explicitly hoping for the death of another conservative political opponent…along with the deaths of that opponents’ young children. He WROTE DOWN that the pain of those deaths might promote his own agenda, which would be worth it, in his estimation. This candidate is now condemning his current conservative opponent for noticing this information.
And also (2) a development in the case of a leftist would-be assassin of a conservative Supreme Court Justice, who traveled across the country, heavily armed, with the stated intent of murdering up to three right-leaning Justices because he was angry about their abortion jurisprudence. The leftist judge in the case rejected prosecutors’ request for a multi-decade sentence, giving the defense team the very lenient sentence they’d sought. The leftist judge, in her reasoning, cited the criminal’s trans identity as a factor & expressed happiness that the assassination plot and its aftermath helped with the criminal’s family therapy around the trans issue.
And also (3) yet another violent leftist attack — this time an apparent ambush — against federal immigration officers. This did not take place in Dallas, where a leftist sniper very recently went on a deadly spree while trying to murder as many ICE officers as possible. This one happened in Illinois, where the leftist governor just called these officers “jack booted thugs.” Violent attacks on these federal agents (thugs, fascists, gestapo, per various leading leftist politicians) are up approximately *one thousand percent,* per DHS.
And also (4) a prominent university being pressured into reversing its attempt to shut down a conservative event commemorating the second anniversary of the Oct 7 terrorist massacre of Jews — because, the school said, they were worried about the security situation around the event. They were referring, of course, to the violent Islamist-Leftist coalition pro-Hamas mob, which has engaged in harassment, threats, violence and murder ever since that mass slaughter.
AND YET, we see many of our leftist friends tweeting and posting about how *their opponents* are the “dangerous” and “authoritarian” “fascists.” I ask you to try to contemplate, even for a quiet moment or two, how this might strike many of us. That’s all for now. Thank you."
Cynical Publius on X - "Honestly, this is the final straw. A significant portion of the Democrat Party is ok with their political opponents being murdered. I am not exaggerating. This is not hyperbole. And if you consider yourself a "moderate Democrat," realize that the "moderate" part is sheer fantasy, as your votes are actually votes in favor of radical outcomes based in violence."
New York Post on X - "NJ school board race shaken up by vile text attacking conservative mom and her body: ‘This bitch needs to die’"
Sunny on X - "Crazy how this keeps happening It’s almost like the whole “wishing death on conservatives and their families” is more common on the left than you’re told it is"
End Wokeness on X - "Joy Reid on the fascist agenda: "They want to take us back to no income tax, no regulations, earn what you want, family inherits everything""
From Joy Reid on Project 2025, Project Esther & the Urgent Need for a Civil Rights Movement | BET Talks - YouTube. This is a good reminder that when left wingers go on about "Nazis" and "fascism", they don't mean Nazis and fascism
Meme - Reddit Lies @reddit_lies: ""Fascism is when the men's bathroom doesn't have tampons" -Reddit, unironically"
"Mark Zuckerberg Orders Removal of Tampons From Men's Bathrooms at Meta Offices"
"So he's going all in with fascism?"
Meme - Rock solid @ShitpostRock: ">hammer and sickle in username
>tries to imply that family values "reek of nazism"
DO YOU GUYS EVEN READ YOUR OWN IDEOLOGY???
*2 Communist Soviet family posters*"
@SailorJiren: "This reeks of Nazism"
Modern commies hate the family after all and everything that's not Communism is Nazism
Meme - Jeremy Kauffman @jeremykauffman: "Why do so many people see those who support liberty and freedom as Nazis?"
Jeff Bezos: "I shared this note with the Washington Post team this morning: I'm writing to let you know about a change coming to our opinion pages. We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets. We'll cover other topics too"
Keith Olbermann: "Fuck you, Nazi"
When you realise that Communists hate personal liberties and free markets, and see everything standing in the way of Communism as Nazism and Fascism, it all makes sense
Meme - "Oh no I'm being arrested for assaulting an officer. Fascists!!"
"America is now officially a fascist state"
"DHS says she threw objects at Border Patrol's car and was arrested for assault of a federal law enforcement officer"
Police are only heroes when arrested peaceful January 6th protesters
Left wingers keep inciting violence against ICE, then pretend they're peaceful
Ricky on X - "Hey man. You're a Nazi."
"What?"
"I'm going to kill all Nazis."
"What are you talking about? Don't kill me."
"WEEWOOWEEWOOWEEWOO! LOOK OUT GUYS! HE IDENTIFIES AS A NAZI!"
The "media literacy" and "dog whistle" crowd are incredibly poor at logical deduction when it suits them
Meme - "I say I hate Nazis and conservatives get mad? Why are they defending Nazis? Pretty telling if you ask me... Surely my prior comments saying all conservatives are Nazis have nothing to do with this."
Meme - "After years of calling Trump Hitler and people who voted for him Nazis and the finally convince one of their followers to kill a Charlie Kirk the liberals claim the conservatives have to "tone it down". How about a little self reflection you useless liberals Democrats are violent and provoke violence"
"Democrats are violent and provoke violence"
"TRUMP IS A FASCIST TO HIS CORE." - Walz
"MAGA IS NOT WELCOME ANYWHERE!!!" - Maxine
"MAGA EXTREMISTS ARE A THREAT TO OUR DEMOCRACY!" - Biden
"PUNCH TRUMP IN THE MOUTH!" - Newscum
"FIGHT IN THE STREET!" - Jeffries
Democratic Donkey: "REPUBLICANS SHOULD TONE DOWN THEIR RHETORIC!!"
DSA on X - "Rest in Power, Assata Shakur. The American state brutally oppressed Assata and her Black Panther Party Comrades. The Cubans welcomed her and other Black Revolutionaries with asylum, and their solidarity and loyalty allowed Assata to live out her days in Havana."
PoIiMath on X - "My favorite story about Shakur was the time she robbed a church and threatened to blow the priest's head off over $1800 that was set aside to feed the poor. The perfect socialist."
Murders by politically motivated left-wing and right-wing killers, grouped by decade. What do you see? : r/charts - "buddy you spend way too much time on reddit if you think this is a conservative echo chamber. The furthest right subs on Reddit are maybe 10% as conservative as the average Republican."
"For real, the lines are way shifted on Reddit. Far left irl = reddit democrat. IRL Left = Reddit centrist. IRL centrist = Reddit conservative. IRL far right = probably banned. I’m not super political but that’s what it seems like based on my personal experiences. It just seems like if anyone has any conservative views (like most irl centrists do), they are an automatic conservative here."
"Shit, I'm pretty far left IRL and consistently have people call me MAGA just because I don't fall in line with stupid ass rhetoric"
Libs of TikTok on X - "HOLY CRAP Texas State Rep Joland Jones (D) just said she wants to wipe out Republicans “If you hit me in my face, I'm not going to punch you back in your face, I'm going to go across your neck... we need to wipe out every Republican." Cc @FBI"
delaney vandergrift on X - "we should be clear about what political violence is.
1. starving people when there is enough food for all of us to eat.
2. denying people healthcare so they die from preventable illnesses
3. denying people shelter
4. increasing police budgets across the country"
Left wingers classify everything they don't like as violence to justify murdering those they disagree with
