Right-wing violence outpaced left-wing attacks for 30 years — until now, study finds

For the first time in 30 years, left-wing terrorism is now outpacing right-wing attacks in the U.S., according to a new study. The findings highlight a shifting landscape of political violence, marked by growing leftist activity and waning threats from right-wing groups.

The study — published by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) on Sept. 25 — follows the assassination of Charlie Kirk, an influential conservative activist. His killing reignited concerns about politically-motivated attacks and sparked a debate over which side of the aisle was more to blame.

To conduct the study, CSIS researchers specifically focused on domestic terrorism, which they defined as the “deliberate use or threat of premeditated violence by nonstate actors with the intent to achieve political goals by creating a broad psychological impact.”

Applying this framework, they created and assessed a database of 750 acts and attempts of terrorism that took place in the U.S. from January 1994 to July 2025.

Incidents were categorized as left-wing if they were motivated by a number of factors, including resistance to capitalism, support for LGBTQ rights, black nationalism and anti-fascist rhetoric. In contrast, they were considered right-wing if they were propelled by racial supremacy, misogyny or opposition to liberal agendas.

Researchers noted that clear classification of incidents was difficult as perpetrators often have muddled beliefs — described by former FBI Director Christopher Wray as “a salad bar of ideologies.”

Rising left-wing terrorism

In the first half of 2025, five left-wing attacks were recorded — excluding the assassination of Kirk. That continues a decade-long rise that is poised to make this the most violent year for such incidents in 30 years.

By comparison, the years between 1994 and 2000 saw an average of 0.6 incidents perpetrated by the left. But, during the next decade, this figure reached 1.3 per year.

Then, starting in 2016 when Donald Trump won the presidential election against Hilary Clinton, the numbers rose sharply, averaging four incidents annually from 2016 through 2024.

The recent uptick in left-wing attacks may be attributed, in part, to opposition to Trump’s administration, including its crackdown on illegal immigration, the report said.

In recent weeks, Trump — and other high-ranking officials — have telegraphed their intent specifically to target “radical left political violence,” which he said “has hurt too many innocent people and taken too many lives.”

Waning right-wing attacks

By comparison, there was only right-wing terrorist incident — the killing of Minnesota state lawmaker Melissa Hortman and her husband — in the U.S. during the first six months of 2025, the report found.

This marks a significant downturn in right-wing incidents, which have long accounted for the bulk of domestic terrorism in the country.

Between 1994 and 2000, there were an average of 21 right-wing plots or attacks per year. The next decade, such incidents dropped to an average of seven annually. Then, they shot back up to 20 per year between 2011 and 2024.

The sudden shift this year was described by CSIS researchers as “striking and harder to explain.”

It’s possible that the crackdown on right-wing extremism under former President Joe Biden may have played a role in this. It may also be the case that, following Trump’s election win, “at least some extremists do not feel the need to act violently if their concerns are being addressed,” researchers said.

Expert reactions

McClatchy News spoke with two political violence experts to obtain their reactions to the CSIS study, which they were not involved with. One expressed skepticism about the findings.

“Far-left violence is rising slightly: not from Democrats, but a fringe on the far-left that also disavows the Democratic Party,” Rachel Kleinfeld, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who researches political violence, told McClatchy News.

“But the real story is that right-wing violence has plummeted since the Trump Administration took power, and that is why the far-left numbers are higher even though they have not risen by much,” Kleinfeld said.

She said the results track with the available research on political violence.

“When your ideological side is in power, there is less need to resort to violence,” Kleinfield said. “Meanwhile, when a group feels the government is not providing equal justice, fringes start to take what they see as justice into their own hands.”

Sean Westwood, a government professor at Dartmouth College and director of the Polarization Research Lab, raised doubts about the study’s methodology.

“This report’s analysis is fundamentally flawed,” he told McClatchy News.

“The authors’ ideological categorization is overly simplistic and often indefensible,” Westwood said. “They problematically force a broad set of motivations into a rigid right-wing versus left-wing framework. For instance, bombing a Black church is a crime of racism, and murdering a Jewish person is a crime of antisemitism. To label these acts with a simple political descriptor is a categorical error.”

He also noted that, by beginning the analysis in 1994, the study authors exclude the period of greatest political violence in the U.S.: the 1960s and 1970s.

“Finally, the methodology for deducing motivation is limited,” Westwood said. “For a large number of perpetrators, in some years a majority, motives are inferred from unreliable sources such as social media histories, anecdotes, and circumstantial evidence. Many individuals who commit this kind of violence are mentally unwell and do not draft manifestos or provide clear public statements explaining their actions.”

Experts, including Kleinfeld and Westwood, previously told McClatchy News that neither side of the political divide holds a monopoly on political violence and that, typically, mental illness and social isolation are more relevant factors.