The Left (and the Media) are Working Overtime to Blame the Right for Political Violence

After a nihilistic left-wing extremist assassinated conservative activist Charlie Kirk for his political beliefs, liberals rushed to deny that left-wing political violence is a problem and claim that the real problem is right-wing domestic terrorism. At their disposal, Democrats in Congress and the media had multiple studies, supposedly proving that right-wingers are responsible for many times more political killings, attacks, and hate incidents than left-wingers and Islamists combined.

“Data isn’t vibes,” Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) posted above a pair of pie charts showing that “right-wing extremists” are responsible for 80% of all “incidents” and 75% of all “killings,” and “left-wing extremists” are only to blame for a tiny sliver of the violence.

Liberal columnist Jill Filipovic responded to worries about left-wing violence by posting at conservatives, “Please do let actual facts get in the way of your conclusions about political violence.”

These liberals’ “actual facts” and “data” are two studies purporting to count and compare the extremist or political violence by the different sides.

“Between 2013 and 2022, right-wingers committed the vast majority of political murders,” said liberal columnist Eric Levitz of Vox. “If you actually care about political violence, you should not spread wild lies about it.”

Levitz and Omar cited the Anti-Defamation League, which has published studies on extremism for years. Filipovic cited a study by libertarian Alex Nowrasteh of the Cato Institute. The Center for Strategic and International Studies published its own study, and a liberal academic study called “The Prosecution Project” asks similar questions.

The major news media cited all four studies and reported that they found exactly what reporters and commentators would want to find: conservatives are far more violent and murderous than liberals.

These quantitative studies are worthy of consideration because our memories of headlines can leave false impressions, especially in a day and age when media diets can be so siloed, either by choice or by default. But upon even light examination, the bold claims fall apart.

The first problem is that these studies do not show what the commentary on them claims. A deeper problem with these studies is their conceit of being objective data when they are really subjective research. What counts as “extremist violence” or “political violence” is a judgment call. Who is really motivated by ideology over madness is a judgment call. Some calls are easy. On the tough calls, most of these researchers seemed to err on the side that would support their ideological prior suppositions.

The studies fall prey to poor methodology and questionable judgment calls, and the media accounts of them are even worse.

— Timothy P. Carney in The shoddy efforts to pin political violence on the Right