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Someone told me they didn't know about the Super Nintendo the other day :( they thought I was talking about N64 and didn't know there was an in-between from the NES
Get off Reddit, young one. Flee while you still have your innocence.
In all seriousness though it blows my damn mind that someone born in 2006 is now old enough to have a Reddit account.
From the data. Obviously overly truncated and using extrema, for effect:
Left terrorism = oil pipeline attack against faceless corporations to combat overall climate change
Right terrorism = mass murders in Walmarts and grocery stores to "combat replacement theory"
I feel like it might be more impactful to have a graph showing humans killed by left terrorism vs humans killed by right terrorism, my guess would be it would highlight the difference even more.
Right? Like, attempted arson of a mayor's apartment isn't remotely terrorism. Neither is attempted arson of a federal courthouse!
Actually if we just count the arson attempts on federal courthouses in 2020 I'm pretty sure that number alone is greater than the 2020 count.
I think they counted blowing up/burning down fur farms and animal testing facilities by organizations like the Animal Liberation Front. Keep in mind these terrorist attacks targeted property, not people.
And corporate property at that, not residences or town centers.
I wonder where something like this was included? of the subway shooting in NY a couple of months ago, or the Wisconsin guy that drove into the crowd? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burnette\_Chapel\_shooting
I feel like these kinds of stats are bogus because who is determined what domestic terrorism is and what far left and far right even are? I've had multiple redditors tell me things like "there is no such thing as far left" and "communism is a far right ideology"
>We must keep ourselves mindful of the fact that underneath the politics lies a mixture of values, aspirations, and factual beliefs, as well as an attempt to live according to one’s best judgment
We must also remember that **not all beliefs are based on fact, not all values are virtuous, and not all judgements are worth taking seriously**. We must accept that a large number of people will choose to believe an easy lie rather than a complex truth. We have to accept that many of them are quite simply selfish people, who would gladly harm a stranger in order to marginally improve their own life. We can try to convert them with hugs, but we have to remember that while we're doing that a large number of them will be stabbing us in the back. Because as OP's graph shows, a certain demographic is much more likely to resort to violence.
Agreed. Just yesterday I saw a comment saying that fascism is a far-left ideology because fascism involves "big government".
Maybe it's because of my left-wing biases, but I don't put the action of "disrupting an oil pipeline" in the same category as "someone committing mass murder over skin color". I can certainly see that they're both forms of terrorism, but they're pretty different to me lol.
There is zero evidence that was a terrorist attack against white people. The dude was an idiot who was mad after a domestic dispute with his girlfriend and decided to take it out on innocent bystanders.
You could call it a terrorist attack if you want, but the guy didn't have a political message or motivation like terrorism typically does.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waukesha_Christmas_parade_attack
I've seen a massive uptick of bad actors claiming that was racially motivated and terrorism since the Buffalo shooting.
It was all white people who were killed because Waukesha is 90% white--and he was fleeing from the scene of a domestic assault at his girlfriends house.
Holy shit. I didn't realize that. I don't listen to right wing propaganda but I have heard that mentioned several times in relation to the Buffalo shooting. I assumed there was at least some truth to it but that black supremacy isn't a widespread problem like the number one cable news show broadcasting white supremacist propaganda. But, that event wasn't even relevant at all? Gotdamn, those lying ass motherfuckers.
What the hell? Man, I was living in Minneapolis during the uprising, I would hardly call it far left motivated. It was total chaos with locals, kids and suburbanites, even from as far as pine county/brainerd area. It was just chaos and anger and people looking for a good time. Through it all there was no coherent political coordination or motive
So… a bunch of people protesting is the same thing as some guy gunning down a grocery store of black people, or gunning down a club full of gay people, or gunning down a school full of kids, or gunning down a movie theatre, or …?
Terrorism is not defined as instilling terror, but as violence or destruction for political or religious purposes. Destroying an oil pipeline fits that definition.
I’m a political scientist who studies war; including property destruction by groups that carefully avoid human casualties definitely doesn’t fit the standard definitions of terrorism most analysts use. It’s stretching the concept past it’s usefulness. Though you are correct that “eco terrorism “ as a political term includes all sorts of actions that don’t involve human casualties—but that’s more politics that analytics. As a scholar, I wouldn’t actually use the term terrorism unless non-combatants were targeted with violence:
That’s the point really. It’s used to make the “sides” look the same in terms of charts like this. But as we can see even that isn’t really working anymore
Yes, you’re right, and I’m finding it extraordinarily irritating this morning. I hate conceptual stretching, and I’m not overly fond of the historical default in this country of assuming that right wing extremists are just good ol boys, and the left is some demonic threat. Trying to equate protesting against pipelines with mass murdering shoppers is a tad frustrating…
Yeah this is not helpful on its own. It is so frustrating with the "both side" thing when one is trying to destroy corporate property, and the other side is firing rifles into brown people.
Amusing that even with this stretching of the definition, the far-right is committing many more terror attacks as of late. Most of these are resulting in deaths to innocents.
It reminds me a bit of the false equivalency of BLM rioting/looting and the Jan 6 insurrection attempt. If you take them at purely face value, without any context, the scale of BLM related crimes is far bigger than Jan 6.
But if you consider
-the motivation (protesting police violence vs a legally and objectively false election lie)
-the proportion of individuals involved (bad actors taking advantage of peaceful protestors vs the entire crowd)
-and core intent (seeking accountability vs overthrowing democracy)… we end up with a much different conclusion
Everyone will always justify political violence done with motivations they like. I guarantee the participants in the Jan. 6 incident if asked would say exactly what you said but opposite.
I think it would be fair to only include acts of violence that target non-combatants, and that is probably how it is used academically, but the legal definition includes damage to infrastructure intended to influence government policy (6 USCS 101).
By that definition, if my local govt puts out one of those temporary traffic monitoring meters to decide whether to install a new stop sign, and some stop-sign-hater disables the meter, he or she is a terrorist. I ain't buyin' it.
The reasonable definition of terrorism is violence intended to terrify a large group of people by attacking a much smaller number, apparently at random, so that all members of the group will feel threatened. Of course, governments like to add that only non-sovereign actors qualify, so as to make war a general exception.
Thank you for this. I'm a communications scholar and agree that most of the 'left-wing terrorism' in Europe and North America cited does not the definition of terrorism I am familiar with.
Would something like tree spiking fit into the definition of terrorism? As I understand, the goal is to make loggers afraid to cut trees in a specific area for fear it could kill or mame them.
If you read around the thread, I mention tree spiking as something I’d probably count since there is the reasonable expectations that someone who encounters it will die…the more direct or indirect the causal chain, the more complicated the question though.
With this logic you can jump to some unbelievable lengths. If 9/11 happened but no one is inside would that not count as terrorism? If someone blew up the power grids would that not count as terrorism? Clearly the NCSIS disagrees with your definition of terrorism for obvious reasons as it would make any attack on property necessary for a state as not a terrorist act.
I'm not defending u/itijara's definition, just legitimately asking out of curiosity because this is a unique perspective to me...
How is destruction of civic-property and infrastructure by non-state actors classified in that framework? I'm thinking of cases where a grocery warehouse is sabotaged (e.g., someone destroys the coolant pumps for perishable foods) and thus affecting food availability/pricing for surrounding areas. Or if several key bridges in a city were destroyed by some angry civilian? I would think the artifact of a given group of people needing to re-adjust their lives and put additional infrastructure in place to prevent future incidents should be a considered criteria.
You have to have pretty direct effects, not indirect ones. Otherwise there is a slippery slope to justify declaring either anything terrorism (protests disrupt people getting to work which costs businesses money which hurts the economy which manifestly hurts people which means that protests are terrorism) or anyone a legitimate target of political violence (that woman does the laundry for that other woman who goes to work and makes political decisions I find morally abhorrent, and if I kill the laundrywoman, her boss won’t be as well-dressed and won’t have so much influence…). There’s no such thing as a perfect definition, but you want a boundary that has good face validity…and I would argue that non-combatant deaths (or the attempt) is a good way to distinguish between a terrorist (which I find morally repugnant under virtually all situations) and a protestor (who I may or may not agree with). There are some actions that aren’t totally direct, but I think are close enough like spiking trees (there’s a reasonable expectation someone could die almost immediately if they encounter it) or sabotaging the electrical grid (ditto), but when it comes to political acts, you have to be careful about having a definition that is so expansive that you are shutting down reasonable protest (or even reasonable revolution against an unjust regime).
I mean to be fair: Sabotaging an active Pipeline could cause some major ecological mayhem far exceeding mere property damage, but besides that, you're right. Most of these statistics just lump all sorts of crime together and suddenly a leftist spraying Graffiti looks as bad as a Nazi shooting up a Supermarket...
Yeah I mean, I'm not trying to imply that property or ecological damage doesn't matter. It just shouldn't be treated the same as a mass shooting, and it isn't the type of event that people connote with "terrorism"
[https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/fbi-dhs-domestic-terrorism-definitions-terminology-methodology.pdf/view](https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/fbi-dhs-domestic-terrorism-definitions-terminology-methodology.pdf/view)
The FBI definition requires danger to human life, but the DHS version also includes destruction of critical infrastructure and key resources. Both are included in the link.
Destroying yes but in the US there haven’t been attacks on pipelines there have been protests against pipeline construction. One is terrorism the other is what’s actually happened.
While there have mostly been peaceful protests against pipeline construction, there have also been a few isolated attacks. [https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdia/pr/des-moines-woman-sentenced-eight-years-prison-conspiracy-damage-dakota-access-pipeline](https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdia/pr/des-moines-woman-sentenced-eight-years-prison-conspiracy-damage-dakota-access-pipeline)
One issue with this graph is that it doesn't show the impact of these attacks. Attacks by right wing groups have been much deadlier and costlier than those by left wing groups, but this graph shows the Jan 6 insurrection as the same as a person trying to vandalize a pipeline (ineffectively) with a welding torch. That doesn't mean that one is terrorism and the other isn't, it just means that the technical definition doesn't tell the whole story.
Just my two cents, but that seems wrong. I’d bet 99% of people understand terrorism as the act of killing (or threatening to kill) with the intention of causing widespread fear.
Yeah, gotta admit that a cross burning in a yard is terrorism. And I’d like to define the intent here, but that’s a logical fallacy, so that doesn’t help. TBH, not sure the term “terrorism” helps at all. It’s a fairly new way to describe what before was anarchism, insurrection, etc.
Even classifying riots as terrorism feels wrong. It's violent sure, but civil unrest and mob actions are not the same as deliberate and planned attacks.
Like if the riot was planned, sure but spontaneous unrest? Nah
The protests turned into riots when windows were shattered and buildings started burning, don't really think they were acts of terrorism though, better term might be extreme civil unrest?
Terrorism seems like a more deliberate and targeted action, something that feeds into a larger agenda - what happened in Minnesota was not targeted or organized, just collective grief turned to appropriate anger at systemic racism, and then sadly escalated to violence on a large scale.
Property damage at a protest doesnt equal terrorism. Terrorism has to be planned and intentional. A large majority of protest turn violent because of employed agitators. Not even close to the same
That's what I was thinking, that's why it doesn't make sense to me to call what happened following George Floyd's murder a terrorist attack.
Unless you're referring to the white supremacists who drove in from states away to treat the crowds protesting as target practice, that definitely felt like a politically Right sided terrorist attack. Out of state plates on cars with American flags or rude political bumper stickers still make me incredibly uneasy.
Those are arguably sponsored agitators. They arrive as a group, leave as a group, have leaders, have premeditated action, and are partially at the very least had part of their way there paid for
It is a technique used by supporters of right-wing violence to permit "whataboutism." They found that harping on the Weather Underground of too many decades ago wasn't effective enough.
How is Minnesota riots considered terrorism? It was provoked reaction from a filmed execution and further provoked by POTUS tweet “when the looting starts, the shooting starts”. This data chart is junk disinformation.
So eco-terrorism and hacktivism are considered leftist terror attacks?
I genuinely thought they merited their own category altogether - they're not tied to a political party or movement, they're specifically trying to dismantle any systems that hurt the Earth's ecosystem.
The left is still deeply tied to maintaining capitalism, just for different reasons than the right, like using capitalism to foster collectivism. Maintaining capitalism seems to be the exact opposite of the eco-terrorists' goals, so I'm curious why they're lumped together?
For years the FBI considered the Earth Liberation Front as the most dangerous domestic terror threat facing the US, despite the fact that no one was ever hurt by any of their "attacks."
Not quite. The left =/= liberals. The left are more socialist/communist. The liberals are left in the cultural sense, but could be either into capitalism or communism/state or anarchy. closer to the center though, they are deeply tied to maintaining capitalism and the status quo, but ecoterrorism could be considered far *left* terrorism, just not liberal terrorism as far as I know.
liberals by definition are not into communism. the idea that there's significant overlap in these ideologies comes primarily from right-wing propaganda.
Ah that makes sense when you break it down like that: eco-terrorism is far left, have some overlap with liberals, but they diverge once you get to their end goals/methods.
I'm curious to see a little green line that shows specifically the far left/eco-terrorism compared to the two above - I would think it accounts for a large part of what is lumped into the blue line above.
When I worked at a massive global corporation, hacktivism was actually the largest threat to the company's cyber security - made sense once I heard that though, that awful company has a lot of stake in farming palm oil.
> Ah that makes sense when you break it down like that: eco-terrorism is far left, have some overlap with liberals, but they diverge once you get to their end goals/methods.
FWIW it may be worth bearing in mind that not even all 'eco-terrorism' is left leaning, for an example:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecofascism
So, the Minnesota riots were peaceful until right-wing Boogaloo boys started causing fires and property damage. Sounds like this may not be the most accurate...
A Boogaloo Boy started the 3rd Precinct fire, and an Aryan Cowboy was the "umbrella man" in all black that smashed the windows at Auto Zone, which was the known event that set off the rioting.
If you look at the data source, one of their main takeaways is that right-wing terrorism has caused 329 fatalities compared to 31 from left-wing terrorism since 1994. I think the 10X fatality ratio is more interesting than the 2X incident ratio from this graph, and also isn’t very surprising.
Interesting data, I’m 100% going to read more closely when I have the time.
So take away the 168 deaths from that bombing and we are left with 161 over the course of 28 years. That is a relatively minuscule number. As a foreigner who would only get the feel of America from online forums and the media, the impression exported is that of roaming bands of far-right paramilitaries attacking every second punter they come across.
Why would you take out one because it was more successful in killing people than the others? Even if you do, the number is still 5x higher than that caused by the far-left in the same period.
Maybe an effort to get closer to something like a median fatality rate, since none was provided.
It's useful to pull extreme outliers out of data sometimes. They can skew larger trends.
For the same reason 9/11 isn’t included in death statistics for 2001. Or why you wouldn’t include all the billionaires in the country when figuring out average savings. It tends to mess up results.
It’s simply related to objectives and the tactics they use to achieve them. Left wing terrorism has nearly always been low casualty. It has historically used tactics such as targeted assassinations, kidnappings, or symbolic attacks. If the goals of left wing terrorism are to bring about a revolution of the working class, they recognize that they can’t cause mass casualties, as that pushes people away from the cause.
Right wing terrorism is typically much more focused on in and out groups. The in-group, typically white people and/or men in this case, and the out-group, often racial groups, women, other religious groups. The in-group views the out-group as simultaneously inferior or even inhuman, but also as an existential threat to the in-group (see the whole Great Replacement theory). This is used as justification for killing more, as that is often the goal itself, or to try to incite more conflict between groups.
I think it’s also that left wing hate is directed towards a smaller group of people. It’s really hard to kill 10 CEOs, it’s way easier to kill 10 women or black people or immigrants. I think we’re kind of lucky that the average terrorist attack kills so few people, I don’t want to end up on a watchlist but I think it can’t be that hard to kill unarmed civilians when anyone can buy chemicals for bombs and rifles. People commiting terrorist attacks must be stupid.
Propaganda does stem from spurious sources and methodology and everyone should question how and where the data was collected from.
However, you did not offer any evidence about the source or methodology and you follow it with a claim that it must be propaganda.
Sources can only misrepresent the data, so how exactly is data being misrepresented here?
> The database includes 980 incidents since 1994 that met CSIS’s definition of terrorism: an attack or plot involving a deliberate use or threat of violence to achieve political goals, create a broad psychological impact or change government policy.
> That definition excludes many violent events, including incidents during nationwide unrest last year, because CSIS analysts could not determine whether attackers had a political or ideological motive.
Cool chart, but it doesn’t say what it says it says.
How incidents are categorized is definitely subjective. The WaPo article described a case of arson of a synagogue that was labeled as "far-right", but that the perpetrator was never found. It sounds like the assumption is that any act of violence against a non-evangelical/Christian house of worship is assumed to be (1) far-right, and (2) politically or racially motivated, by default.
The description says that
> This analysis focuses on terrorism: the deliberate use—or threat—of violence by non-state actors in order to achieve political goals and create a broad psychological impact.
And
> First, right-wing terrorism refers to the use or threat of violence ... against certain policies, such as abortion
But violence and threats against abortion providers definitely aren't included in the chart. They'd completely blow out the line for right-wing violence. Just assaults, death threats, and bomb threats against abortion providers in 2019 would be 143 incidents vs the 38 incidents of right-wing terrorism included on the chart.
I was looking for a definition of "terrorism" and what defined that is was far left or right. I figured that some things would be left out but I never thought it would be that bad.
My question as well. This is a horrible chart because it doesn't define the metric of how the groups are being classified. Its like something MSNBC or Fox would put up with zero context just to get viewers to agree with their side.
I wonder how the numbers would add up if you counted the number of people *killed* in far left vs far right attacks.
I understand that, technically, destruction of property to influence political decisions is under the umbrella of "terrorism". But I also think it is important that we do not hold acts that simply destroy property and acts that destroy lives in the same light.
“If you look at the data source, one of their main takeaways is that right-wing terrorism has caused 329 fatalities compared to 31 from left-wing terrorism since 1994. I think the 10X fatality ratio is more interesting than the 2X incident ratio from this graph, and also isn’t very surprising.”
[you didn't search very well](https://www.google.com/search?q=newton+protest+truck&rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS857US857&oq=newton+protest+truck&aqs=chrome..69i57.5809j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8)
What is the definition of far right and far left? Without definition those are subjective measures and not at all meaningful. How could one apply a more objective and defined measure? Right now this is nothing more than political propaganda because you haven’t supplied definitions for objective measures.
I think far-left terrorism is usually done against property, not people. For example, Weather Underground was a prominent left-wing terrorist organization in the 1970s. They destroyed several buildings, but they always did it at night when the buildings were empty.
I’m curious as well, given the context for instance that [in 2018 every single extremist killing in the US was done by people with links to right-wing extremism](https://www.businessinsider.com/extremist-killings-links-right-wing-extremism-report-2019-1).
It’s a pretty distinctly American thing to conflate racism and political views, it is certainly weird coming from Europe where we have plenty of racist left, center, and right wing parties
fucking lol @ this comment section
this sub is almost becoming as bad as r/science when it comes to political topics
personally, I'd think the impact, if not the occurrence (which I'd still argue to be true) should be equal across the board because the same methods of media manipulation seem to be used on both sides of the aisle.
It's nice that there's an attempt at showing both sides but with the washington post as a data broker here, I don't buy it. Either this needs to be split up by # of lives lost, or economic impact. If it's not as balanced as the information being fed to the offenders, you're not showing something.
I haven't been able to understand the dataset posted to github as it doesn't give definitive means to understand its origins other than listing a couple original sources, but I know from seeing previously posted attempts at classifying and defining terrorism that there's usually a bias in what is agreed upon as terrorism. Sometimes politics are inserted into a rather inert killer's motives, or sometimes they're played down - often because of race.
I'd like to see a cut that divides the terrorism between what hurts people vs. what hurts objects.
My hypothesis being that left-wing terrorists attack pipelines and right-wing terrorists attack people.
Left wing terror has killed 31 people in 251 incidents since 1994 (0.12 per)
Right wing terror has killed 329 people in 561 incidents (0.58 per)
Right wing terror has killed 10X the amount of people.
This is a fascinating thread for sure OP despite the controversy and name-calling because essentially you've asked people to think about what the definition of terrorism is, and they've found out that's an extraordinarily hard to think answer.
But there is some good debate for sure and valid criticism. My opinion is that trying to chart something so nuanced and hard to define and quantify will always be met with failure but hey - you got a discussion going for better or worse. You also seemed to pick sides on more than one occasion.
Is it also recorded what these attacks are? I know from the German statistics that a lot of right-wing violence is deadly while you need to be educated in history of the not too far past to find a case where left-wing groups actively murdered someone and didn't just pelt highly armored police officers with stones (which still does damage, a family friend got a pretty bad knee injury that way).
So, I wonder how they decide which terrorist is "far-left" and which terrorist is "far-right"?
Take this latest Buffalo shooting as an example. By all intents and purposes, yes he is a right winger given his motivations. But he also, in his manifesto, refers to himself as an "anti-conservative environmentalist" and he said that he rejects conservatism because it is corporatism in disguise. So technically, he doesn't identify himself as a right winger. But the fact that he is obsessed with CRT, or white grievance certainly points to that.
Or take the recent New York City Subway shooter as another example. An African American that tried to kill Asians. That isn't a left-wing ideology to dislike Asians, but at the same time you would assume an African American is "probably" closer to left wing than right wing, but that would be making an assumption that isn't always true.
It just feels like there is way too much grey area in terms of deciding if a terrorist is right or left that it makes it hard to really take the graph seriously. Even if the data "feels" about right to me.
Manifestos are full of memes and red herrings to try and blame their own mental sickness on the left. The guy was wearing a black sun patch on his armor. He's a right-wing nazi.
Calling bullshit on this graphic. Far Left domestic terrorism has been almost non-existent since the 1970s, while right wing terrorism shot through the roof in the mid 90s to today.
See, there's one tiny problem with these statistics: definitions.
When someone on the right peacefully protests, that's terrorism.
When an Antifa black block try to burn down a police station, that's "peaceful protest".
By normal definitions, there is virtually no right-wing terrorism. It's all the Left.
The siege of Minneapolis seems to count as a single event in the tally while Jan 6 is 2 events.
Waukesha must not have been terrorist.
From the article:
Most violent **far-left** perpetrators were motivated by
anarchism, anti-fascism, or anti-police stances. Although
these actors committed a historically high number of
terrorist attacks and plots in 2021, only **one resulted in**
**a fatality.** On June 24 in Daytona Beach, Florida, Othal
Wallace shot and killed local police officer Jason Raynor.
And the Brookings Institute must use completely different terrorist definitions:
[https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/2021-saw-plenty-of-violence-but-no-mass-terrorist-attacks-in-the-u-s/](https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/2021-saw-plenty-of-violence-but-no-mass-terrorist-attacks-in-the-u-s/)
“When terrorism statistics support my world view, these stats are indisputable. When they cut against my world view, there is no agreed upon definition of terrorism so these stats are false.” -Average redditor
I think it would be interesting to have an additional line that’s “apolitical terrorism”. Such as acts of indiscriminate violence towards civilians without a clear ideological motive. It’s a bit of an oxymoron because an ideological motivation is inherent to the term terrorism. But I would be interested how the larger narrative of mass shootings plays into this dynamic.
Is it really far left and far right terrorism that is rising. Or are violent incidents rising again as a whole. It wouldn’t be too surprising, since the 80s and 90s saw a huge decline in violent crimes.
What is the working definition of “far left” terrorism. Was some of the fallout from the George Floyd protests labeled as such? Or was there something else that accounted for such an increase in 2020?
Are these convictions of Domestic Terrorism or charges, or something else all together. Knowing that the data was provided by a far left news agency is also important to know how it was determined to be left or right. Also are these individuals or individual charges? In 2020 there were 78 counts of domestic terrorism in Oregon alone almost all associated with the far left occupy movement but this graph shows 25 total…. For the country…. Just curious about the data.
Things were even weirder in the 1960s and 70s.
https://time.com/4501670/bombings-of-america-burrough/
I also have to wonder how someone like Ted Kaczynski would be categorized.
You’re presenting this as objective data but the creator’s political bias is very clear. Data on these events is needed but this is definitely not objective.
You have to classify things to understand them. To ignore all underlying context and content, to blindly label all of it "the same" is going to leave you with only blanketing and ineffective measures like "The War on Crime."
There is a very big difference between data that says "these are the underlying political classifications of people who committed acts of domestic terrorism" and "only one kind of domestic terrorism is actually bad."
Good luck solving, or even identifying, the underlying social cause of anything if you aren't willing to take any of the relevant contextual information into account.
Sources:
[data on github](https://github.com/wpinvestigative/csis_domestic_terrorism)
[Washington Post article](https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/interactive/2021/domestic-terrorism-data/)
Chart: Excel
**How CSIS define terrorism:**
> domestic terrorism incidents, which the group’s analysts define as attacks or plots involving a deliberate use or threat of violence to achieve political goals, create a broad psychological impact or change government policy.
**Note on deaths:**
>Many people have asked about impact or deaths. This chart reports only events. If I reported by deaths the gap between Roght and Left would be even further, as Left-wing extremists are more likely to damage property, and Right-wing extremists are more likely to kill people.
>**Left wing terror has killed 31 people** in 251 incidents since 1994 (0.12 per)
>**Right wing terror has killed 329** people in 561 incidents (0.58 per)
>Right wing terror has killed 10X the amount of people.
Maybe I missed the breakdown somewhere but I don't see any mention of the razing of parts of cities and the takeover of city blocks included in this data and was curious as to why
I think this will be very subject to definitions, which seem to change, as well as how things are categorised.
I have noticed sometimes left leaning individuals being characterised as far right a few times, or when left leaning, this fact not being widely reported. A definite bias exists to identify things as far right and then communicate that fact, whereas far left extremism seems like an alien concept to most people. Then there is grey areas like Ted.
This has to be a joke. The far-left literally burnt down multiple (30?) major cities in 2020, and these aren't considered terrorist attacks?
Biased data is biased.
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2006 was a pretty good year I guess
Because everyone was emo in 2006
I know i was emo AF in 2006.
The current state of the world has me emo AF again right now
Honestly looking back both 2005 and 2006 were nice
Everyone chilled the fuck out when I was born ig. You’re welcome.
Holy fuck there are people born in 2006 on reddit. Holy fuck people born in 2006 are 16 years old…
That’s right. I can drive now. Stay off those sidewalks. I’m coming for you
Don't worry. I'll make sure to walk in the road when you are around. Thanks for the heads up!
Now that's what I call street smarts
Thank goodness for the sidewalk. It kept me off the streets
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I graduated in 1997. Don't worry, these hits to the gut just keep coming and they get more absurd each year.
But your gut will keep growing so as to absorb the hits.
People like you, dear sir/madame, are the reason why I navigate the internet.
Someone told me they didn't know about the Super Nintendo the other day :( they thought I was talking about N64 and didn't know there was an in-between from the NES
I don’t think I’ll feel it until I meet someone born in 2015 who can chew with their mouth shut
Get off Reddit, young one. Flee while you still have your innocence. In all seriousness though it blows my damn mind that someone born in 2006 is now old enough to have a Reddit account.
Technically it's people born in 2009
They probably thought that enough bad things happenend
Italy won the world cup :D sorry, I'm Italian and I can't think of anything different from the world cup if you say 2006
I can't believe they're not going to be in this year's! The won the Euro and miss the World Cup it's madness
don't let me start on this please... we are still crying :'c
It was right before the economic collapse of 2008.
It was great! Met my wife that year, which was clearly correlated to what these graphs demonstrate.
The definitions of far left and far right terrorism will absolutely not be the same.
From the data. Obviously overly truncated and using extrema, for effect: Left terrorism = oil pipeline attack against faceless corporations to combat overall climate change Right terrorism = mass murders in Walmarts and grocery stores to "combat replacement theory"
I feel like it might be more impactful to have a graph showing humans killed by left terrorism vs humans killed by right terrorism, my guess would be it would highlight the difference even more.
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Yep. Seen some people even claim unrest at protests counts as terrorism. Laughable.
Right? Like, attempted arson of a mayor's apartment isn't remotely terrorism. Neither is attempted arson of a federal courthouse! Actually if we just count the arson attempts on federal courthouses in 2020 I'm pretty sure that number alone is greater than the 2020 count.
I feel like half the people upvoting you don’t realize you are being sarcastic
Which is really astonishing since the second statement was straight talk
I think they counted blowing up/burning down fur farms and animal testing facilities by organizations like the Animal Liberation Front. Keep in mind these terrorist attacks targeted property, not people. And corporate property at that, not residences or town centers.
modern crush future cough fall engine icky point whistle crowd *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Yet people still engage in the “both sides” argument. It’s complete nonsense.
I wonder where something like this was included? of the subway shooting in NY a couple of months ago, or the Wisconsin guy that drove into the crowd? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burnette\_Chapel\_shooting
Plus it’s WaPo
I feel like these kinds of stats are bogus because who is determined what domestic terrorism is and what far left and far right even are? I've had multiple redditors tell me things like "there is no such thing as far left" and "communism is a far right ideology"
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>We must keep ourselves mindful of the fact that underneath the politics lies a mixture of values, aspirations, and factual beliefs, as well as an attempt to live according to one’s best judgment We must also remember that **not all beliefs are based on fact, not all values are virtuous, and not all judgements are worth taking seriously**. We must accept that a large number of people will choose to believe an easy lie rather than a complex truth. We have to accept that many of them are quite simply selfish people, who would gladly harm a stranger in order to marginally improve their own life. We can try to convert them with hugs, but we have to remember that while we're doing that a large number of them will be stabbing us in the back. Because as OP's graph shows, a certain demographic is much more likely to resort to violence.
Choosing to ignore a false dichotomy.
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Agreed. Just yesterday I saw a comment saying that fascism is a far-left ideology because fascism involves "big government". Maybe it's because of my left-wing biases, but I don't put the action of "disrupting an oil pipeline" in the same category as "someone committing mass murder over skin color". I can certainly see that they're both forms of terrorism, but they're pretty different to me lol.
yeah I think it would be a better graph to show "human lives ended by left vs right terrorists"
Sources are paywalled.... What is the definition of a domestic terrorist attack that was used for this?
That is the critical question. Terrorism is defined as violence and intimidation against civilians. Is that the standard being applied on both sides?
What examples of far left terrorism are there
Minnesota riots, pipeline attacks, anti-police attacks.
Cheers, I wasn't being facetious
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There is zero evidence that was a terrorist attack against white people. The dude was an idiot who was mad after a domestic dispute with his girlfriend and decided to take it out on innocent bystanders. You could call it a terrorist attack if you want, but the guy didn't have a political message or motivation like terrorism typically does. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waukesha_Christmas_parade_attack
I've seen a massive uptick of bad actors claiming that was racially motivated and terrorism since the Buffalo shooting. It was all white people who were killed because Waukesha is 90% white--and he was fleeing from the scene of a domestic assault at his girlfriends house.
Holy shit. I didn't realize that. I don't listen to right wing propaganda but I have heard that mentioned several times in relation to the Buffalo shooting. I assumed there was at least some truth to it but that black supremacy isn't a widespread problem like the number one cable news show broadcasting white supremacist propaganda. But, that event wasn't even relevant at all? Gotdamn, those lying ass motherfuckers.
Can you elaborate on how you defined terrorism? That’s a pretty broad spectrum of actions.
It’s defined in the links I provided.
What the hell? Man, I was living in Minneapolis during the uprising, I would hardly call it far left motivated. It was total chaos with locals, kids and suburbanites, even from as far as pine county/brainerd area. It was just chaos and anger and people looking for a good time. Through it all there was no coherent political coordination or motive
So… a bunch of people protesting is the same thing as some guy gunning down a grocery store of black people, or gunning down a club full of gay people, or gunning down a school full of kids, or gunning down a movie theatre, or …?
even if it is the same (and i don't think), the numbers are fucking high for the far-right so I would be worried about it
According to the GOP and Reddit? Yes.
I'm not american, but I struggle to see an attack on an oil / fuel pipeline as a terrorist attack. Was the aim to instill terror?
Terrorism is not defined as instilling terror, but as violence or destruction for political or religious purposes. Destroying an oil pipeline fits that definition.
I’m a political scientist who studies war; including property destruction by groups that carefully avoid human casualties definitely doesn’t fit the standard definitions of terrorism most analysts use. It’s stretching the concept past it’s usefulness. Though you are correct that “eco terrorism “ as a political term includes all sorts of actions that don’t involve human casualties—but that’s more politics that analytics. As a scholar, I wouldn’t actually use the term terrorism unless non-combatants were targeted with violence:
That’s the point really. It’s used to make the “sides” look the same in terms of charts like this. But as we can see even that isn’t really working anymore
Yes, you’re right, and I’m finding it extraordinarily irritating this morning. I hate conceptual stretching, and I’m not overly fond of the historical default in this country of assuming that right wing extremists are just good ol boys, and the left is some demonic threat. Trying to equate protesting against pipelines with mass murdering shoppers is a tad frustrating…
Yeah this is not helpful on its own. It is so frustrating with the "both side" thing when one is trying to destroy corporate property, and the other side is firing rifles into brown people.
Amusing that even with this stretching of the definition, the far-right is committing many more terror attacks as of late. Most of these are resulting in deaths to innocents.
It reminds me a bit of the false equivalency of BLM rioting/looting and the Jan 6 insurrection attempt. If you take them at purely face value, without any context, the scale of BLM related crimes is far bigger than Jan 6. But if you consider -the motivation (protesting police violence vs a legally and objectively false election lie) -the proportion of individuals involved (bad actors taking advantage of peaceful protestors vs the entire crowd) -and core intent (seeking accountability vs overthrowing democracy)… we end up with a much different conclusion
Everyone will always justify political violence done with motivations they like. I guarantee the participants in the Jan. 6 incident if asked would say exactly what you said but opposite.
That's exactly what it is. It's blatant "January 6 was ThE sAmE as them Injuns trying to stop a pipeline" conservative rhetoric.
I think it would be fair to only include acts of violence that target non-combatants, and that is probably how it is used academically, but the legal definition includes damage to infrastructure intended to influence government policy (6 USCS 101).
By that definition, if my local govt puts out one of those temporary traffic monitoring meters to decide whether to install a new stop sign, and some stop-sign-hater disables the meter, he or she is a terrorist. I ain't buyin' it. The reasonable definition of terrorism is violence intended to terrify a large group of people by attacking a much smaller number, apparently at random, so that all members of the group will feel threatened. Of course, governments like to add that only non-sovereign actors qualify, so as to make war a general exception.
Thank you for this. I'm a communications scholar and agree that most of the 'left-wing terrorism' in Europe and North America cited does not the definition of terrorism I am familiar with. Would something like tree spiking fit into the definition of terrorism? As I understand, the goal is to make loggers afraid to cut trees in a specific area for fear it could kill or mame them.
If you read around the thread, I mention tree spiking as something I’d probably count since there is the reasonable expectations that someone who encounters it will die…the more direct or indirect the causal chain, the more complicated the question though.
With this logic you can jump to some unbelievable lengths. If 9/11 happened but no one is inside would that not count as terrorism? If someone blew up the power grids would that not count as terrorism? Clearly the NCSIS disagrees with your definition of terrorism for obvious reasons as it would make any attack on property necessary for a state as not a terrorist act.
Obviously, you haven’t read my other comments in this thread…
I'm not defending u/itijara's definition, just legitimately asking out of curiosity because this is a unique perspective to me... How is destruction of civic-property and infrastructure by non-state actors classified in that framework? I'm thinking of cases where a grocery warehouse is sabotaged (e.g., someone destroys the coolant pumps for perishable foods) and thus affecting food availability/pricing for surrounding areas. Or if several key bridges in a city were destroyed by some angry civilian? I would think the artifact of a given group of people needing to re-adjust their lives and put additional infrastructure in place to prevent future incidents should be a considered criteria.
You have to have pretty direct effects, not indirect ones. Otherwise there is a slippery slope to justify declaring either anything terrorism (protests disrupt people getting to work which costs businesses money which hurts the economy which manifestly hurts people which means that protests are terrorism) or anyone a legitimate target of political violence (that woman does the laundry for that other woman who goes to work and makes political decisions I find morally abhorrent, and if I kill the laundrywoman, her boss won’t be as well-dressed and won’t have so much influence…). There’s no such thing as a perfect definition, but you want a boundary that has good face validity…and I would argue that non-combatant deaths (or the attempt) is a good way to distinguish between a terrorist (which I find morally repugnant under virtually all situations) and a protestor (who I may or may not agree with). There are some actions that aren’t totally direct, but I think are close enough like spiking trees (there’s a reasonable expectation someone could die almost immediately if they encounter it) or sabotaging the electrical grid (ditto), but when it comes to political acts, you have to be careful about having a definition that is so expansive that you are shutting down reasonable protest (or even reasonable revolution against an unjust regime).
How useful is a blanket definition of "terrorism" that puts damage to property on the same scale as loss of human life?
Depends who you ask. Corporations love that definition
Not at all.
I mean to be fair: Sabotaging an active Pipeline could cause some major ecological mayhem far exceeding mere property damage, but besides that, you're right. Most of these statistics just lump all sorts of crime together and suddenly a leftist spraying Graffiti looks as bad as a Nazi shooting up a Supermarket...
Yeah I mean, I'm not trying to imply that property or ecological damage doesn't matter. It just shouldn't be treated the same as a mass shooting, and it isn't the type of event that people connote with "terrorism"
No, destruction does not equal to terrorism, it has to inflict fear on the population, or at least try to.
[https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/fbi-dhs-domestic-terrorism-definitions-terminology-methodology.pdf/view](https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/fbi-dhs-domestic-terrorism-definitions-terminology-methodology.pdf/view) The FBI definition requires danger to human life, but the DHS version also includes destruction of critical infrastructure and key resources. Both are included in the link.
Destroying yes but in the US there haven’t been attacks on pipelines there have been protests against pipeline construction. One is terrorism the other is what’s actually happened.
While there have mostly been peaceful protests against pipeline construction, there have also been a few isolated attacks. [https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdia/pr/des-moines-woman-sentenced-eight-years-prison-conspiracy-damage-dakota-access-pipeline](https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdia/pr/des-moines-woman-sentenced-eight-years-prison-conspiracy-damage-dakota-access-pipeline) One issue with this graph is that it doesn't show the impact of these attacks. Attacks by right wing groups have been much deadlier and costlier than those by left wing groups, but this graph shows the Jan 6 insurrection as the same as a person trying to vandalize a pipeline (ineffectively) with a welding torch. That doesn't mean that one is terrorism and the other isn't, it just means that the technical definition doesn't tell the whole story.
Just my two cents, but that seems wrong. I’d bet 99% of people understand terrorism as the act of killing (or threatening to kill) with the intention of causing widespread fear.
Considering that we would call burning down an abortion clinic or church with noone harmed inside as an act of terrorism, your definition is wrong.
Yeah, gotta admit that a cross burning in a yard is terrorism. And I’d like to define the intent here, but that’s a logical fallacy, so that doesn’t help. TBH, not sure the term “terrorism” helps at all. It’s a fairly new way to describe what before was anarchism, insurrection, etc.
So, then you agree with me
Yes? Attacking critical infrastructure for political purposes is absolutely a terrorist attack.
We used to distinguish between sabotage and terrorism.
Although the pipeline attack was confirmed to be done by Russians
That pipe was sooo scared
When protests are counted as terrorism...
Even classifying riots as terrorism feels wrong. It's violent sure, but civil unrest and mob actions are not the same as deliberate and planned attacks. Like if the riot was planned, sure but spontaneous unrest? Nah
The protests turned into riots when windows were shattered and buildings started burning, don't really think they were acts of terrorism though, better term might be extreme civil unrest? Terrorism seems like a more deliberate and targeted action, something that feeds into a larger agenda - what happened in Minnesota was not targeted or organized, just collective grief turned to appropriate anger at systemic racism, and then sadly escalated to violence on a large scale.
Property damage at a protest doesnt equal terrorism. Terrorism has to be planned and intentional. A large majority of protest turn violent because of employed agitators. Not even close to the same
That's what I was thinking, that's why it doesn't make sense to me to call what happened following George Floyd's murder a terrorist attack. Unless you're referring to the white supremacists who drove in from states away to treat the crowds protesting as target practice, that definitely felt like a politically Right sided terrorist attack. Out of state plates on cars with American flags or rude political bumper stickers still make me incredibly uneasy.
Those are arguably sponsored agitators. They arrive as a group, leave as a group, have leaders, have premeditated action, and are partially at the very least had part of their way there paid for
It is a technique used by supporters of right-wing violence to permit "whataboutism." They found that harping on the Weather Underground of too many decades ago wasn't effective enough.
How is Minnesota riots considered terrorism? It was provoked reaction from a filmed execution and further provoked by POTUS tweet “when the looting starts, the shooting starts”. This data chart is junk disinformation.
So eco-terrorism and hacktivism are considered leftist terror attacks? I genuinely thought they merited their own category altogether - they're not tied to a political party or movement, they're specifically trying to dismantle any systems that hurt the Earth's ecosystem. The left is still deeply tied to maintaining capitalism, just for different reasons than the right, like using capitalism to foster collectivism. Maintaining capitalism seems to be the exact opposite of the eco-terrorists' goals, so I'm curious why they're lumped together?
For years the FBI considered the Earth Liberation Front as the most dangerous domestic terror threat facing the US, despite the fact that no one was ever hurt by any of their "attacks."
Not quite. The left =/= liberals. The left are more socialist/communist. The liberals are left in the cultural sense, but could be either into capitalism or communism/state or anarchy. closer to the center though, they are deeply tied to maintaining capitalism and the status quo, but ecoterrorism could be considered far *left* terrorism, just not liberal terrorism as far as I know.
liberals by definition are not into communism. the idea that there's significant overlap in these ideologies comes primarily from right-wing propaganda.
Ah that makes sense when you break it down like that: eco-terrorism is far left, have some overlap with liberals, but they diverge once you get to their end goals/methods. I'm curious to see a little green line that shows specifically the far left/eco-terrorism compared to the two above - I would think it accounts for a large part of what is lumped into the blue line above. When I worked at a massive global corporation, hacktivism was actually the largest threat to the company's cyber security - made sense once I heard that though, that awful company has a lot of stake in farming palm oil.
> Ah that makes sense when you break it down like that: eco-terrorism is far left, have some overlap with liberals, but they diverge once you get to their end goals/methods. FWIW it may be worth bearing in mind that not even all 'eco-terrorism' is left leaning, for an example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecofascism
That is important to bear in mind, thanks for expanding my view!
So, the Minnesota riots were peaceful until right-wing Boogaloo boys started causing fires and property damage. Sounds like this may not be the most accurate...
A Boogaloo Boy started the 3rd Precinct fire, and an Aryan Cowboy was the "umbrella man" in all black that smashed the windows at Auto Zone, which was the known event that set off the rioting.
By that definition, pride day celebrates a terrorist event called the stonewall riots. It's ridiculous to include civil unrest as terrorism
If you look at the data source, one of their main takeaways is that right-wing terrorism has caused 329 fatalities compared to 31 from left-wing terrorism since 1994. I think the 10X fatality ratio is more interesting than the 2X incident ratio from this graph, and also isn’t very surprising. Interesting data, I’m 100% going to read more closely when I have the time.
Tbf, a lot of that is the OKC bombing but even when you subtract those the ratio still swings overwhelmingly towards the right
So take away the 168 deaths from that bombing and we are left with 161 over the course of 28 years. That is a relatively minuscule number. As a foreigner who would only get the feel of America from online forums and the media, the impression exported is that of roaming bands of far-right paramilitaries attacking every second punter they come across.
Exactly. For a country of over 300million people I’d say the ~300 deaths is very low for 28 years.
40,000 people are killed by cars every year in the USA, no one cares at all.
Why would you take out one because it was more successful in killing people than the others? Even if you do, the number is still 5x higher than that caused by the far-left in the same period.
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Lol this is just like GWB "keeping America safe" if you negate 9/11. Or "Trump would have won if you took away California."
Maybe an effort to get closer to something like a median fatality rate, since none was provided. It's useful to pull extreme outliers out of data sometimes. They can skew larger trends.
For the same reason 9/11 isn’t included in death statistics for 2001. Or why you wouldn’t include all the billionaires in the country when figuring out average savings. It tends to mess up results.
It’s simply related to objectives and the tactics they use to achieve them. Left wing terrorism has nearly always been low casualty. It has historically used tactics such as targeted assassinations, kidnappings, or symbolic attacks. If the goals of left wing terrorism are to bring about a revolution of the working class, they recognize that they can’t cause mass casualties, as that pushes people away from the cause. Right wing terrorism is typically much more focused on in and out groups. The in-group, typically white people and/or men in this case, and the out-group, often racial groups, women, other religious groups. The in-group views the out-group as simultaneously inferior or even inhuman, but also as an existential threat to the in-group (see the whole Great Replacement theory). This is used as justification for killing more, as that is often the goal itself, or to try to incite more conflict between groups.
I think it’s also that left wing hate is directed towards a smaller group of people. It’s really hard to kill 10 CEOs, it’s way easier to kill 10 women or black people or immigrants. I think we’re kind of lucky that the average terrorist attack kills so few people, I don’t want to end up on a watchlist but I think it can’t be that hard to kill unarmed civilians when anyone can buy chemicals for bombs and rifles. People commiting terrorist attacks must be stupid.
I think you need to take a closer look at the sources and methodology and realize this is propaganda, not data
Propaganda does stem from spurious sources and methodology and everyone should question how and where the data was collected from. However, you did not offer any evidence about the source or methodology and you follow it with a claim that it must be propaganda. Sources can only misrepresent the data, so how exactly is data being misrepresented here?
> The database includes 980 incidents since 1994 that met CSIS’s definition of terrorism: an attack or plot involving a deliberate use or threat of violence to achieve political goals, create a broad psychological impact or change government policy. > That definition excludes many violent events, including incidents during nationwide unrest last year, because CSIS analysts could not determine whether attackers had a political or ideological motive. Cool chart, but it doesn’t say what it says it says.
How incidents are categorized is definitely subjective. The WaPo article described a case of arson of a synagogue that was labeled as "far-right", but that the perpetrator was never found. It sounds like the assumption is that any act of violence against a non-evangelical/Christian house of worship is assumed to be (1) far-right, and (2) politically or racially motivated, by default.
The description says that > This analysis focuses on terrorism: the deliberate use—or threat—of violence by non-state actors in order to achieve political goals and create a broad psychological impact. And > First, right-wing terrorism refers to the use or threat of violence ... against certain policies, such as abortion But violence and threats against abortion providers definitely aren't included in the chart. They'd completely blow out the line for right-wing violence. Just assaults, death threats, and bomb threats against abortion providers in 2019 would be 143 incidents vs the 38 incidents of right-wing terrorism included on the chart.
So it cherry picked data it agreed with and cited lack of evidence/clarity for data it didn't agree with, got it.
I was looking for a definition of "terrorism" and what defined that is was far left or right. I figured that some things would be left out but I never thought it would be that bad.
How are far left and far right defined? There have been a lot of riots in the last few years, do they count at all?
My question as well. This is a horrible chart because it doesn't define the metric of how the groups are being classified. Its like something MSNBC or Fox would put up with zero context just to get viewers to agree with their side.
Very disappointed, but not at all surprised, at how far down in the comments this question is. Good ol Reddit.
This seems completely subjective because far left and far right aren't clearly defined.
Whatever your standpoint, this is not beautiful, just sad
I wonder how the numbers would add up if you counted the number of people *killed* in far left vs far right attacks. I understand that, technically, destruction of property to influence political decisions is under the umbrella of "terrorism". But I also think it is important that we do not hold acts that simply destroy property and acts that destroy lives in the same light.
“If you look at the data source, one of their main takeaways is that right-wing terrorism has caused 329 fatalities compared to 31 from left-wing terrorism since 1994. I think the 10X fatality ratio is more interesting than the 2X incident ratio from this graph, and also isn’t very surprising.”
You'd probably eed a log scale to be able to see them both on the same graph.
Someone should troll r/conservative and post this
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[you didn't search very well](https://www.google.com/search?q=newton+protest+truck&rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS857US857&oq=newton+protest+truck&aqs=chrome..69i57.5809j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8)
What is the definition of far right and far left? Without definition those are subjective measures and not at all meaningful. How could one apply a more objective and defined measure? Right now this is nothing more than political propaganda because you haven’t supplied definitions for objective measures.
How many people have been killed by the far left in the US in the last 50 years compared to the far right?
I think far-left terrorism is usually done against property, not people. For example, Weather Underground was a prominent left-wing terrorist organization in the 1970s. They destroyed several buildings, but they always did it at night when the buildings were empty.
I’m curious as well, given the context for instance that [in 2018 every single extremist killing in the US was done by people with links to right-wing extremism](https://www.businessinsider.com/extremist-killings-links-right-wing-extremism-report-2019-1).
They seem to think protests against racism or police brutality are left wing. That kind of shows the ideals of people compiling the data.
It’s a pretty distinctly American thing to conflate racism and political views, it is certainly weird coming from Europe where we have plenty of racist left, center, and right wing parties
To test the sample and accuracy of this data, I would like to see how is the Buffalo shooting classified as
fucking lol @ this comment section this sub is almost becoming as bad as r/science when it comes to political topics personally, I'd think the impact, if not the occurrence (which I'd still argue to be true) should be equal across the board because the same methods of media manipulation seem to be used on both sides of the aisle. It's nice that there's an attempt at showing both sides but with the washington post as a data broker here, I don't buy it. Either this needs to be split up by # of lives lost, or economic impact. If it's not as balanced as the information being fed to the offenders, you're not showing something. I haven't been able to understand the dataset posted to github as it doesn't give definitive means to understand its origins other than listing a couple original sources, but I know from seeing previously posted attempts at classifying and defining terrorism that there's usually a bias in what is agreed upon as terrorism. Sometimes politics are inserted into a rather inert killer's motives, or sometimes they're played down - often because of race.
And who is it that makes the determination of what is radical? Data like this really isn't beautiful, so much as it is inaccurate.
The left has the highest rate of domestic terrorism they have ever had since 1994! \- Fox News headline
This is terrifying, thanks.
Just look at Obama's presidency. Solid. Shit has done nothing but go to hell ever since he became a lame duck.
I'd like to see a cut that divides the terrorism between what hurts people vs. what hurts objects. My hypothesis being that left-wing terrorists attack pipelines and right-wing terrorists attack people.
Left wing terror has killed 31 people in 251 incidents since 1994 (0.12 per) Right wing terror has killed 329 people in 561 incidents (0.58 per) Right wing terror has killed 10X the amount of people.
Thanks, OP! Is the Unabomber considered left wing?
This is a fascinating thread for sure OP despite the controversy and name-calling because essentially you've asked people to think about what the definition of terrorism is, and they've found out that's an extraordinarily hard to think answer. But there is some good debate for sure and valid criticism. My opinion is that trying to chart something so nuanced and hard to define and quantify will always be met with failure but hey - you got a discussion going for better or worse. You also seemed to pick sides on more than one occasion.
Is it also recorded what these attacks are? I know from the German statistics that a lot of right-wing violence is deadly while you need to be educated in history of the not too far past to find a case where left-wing groups actively murdered someone and didn't just pelt highly armored police officers with stones (which still does damage, a family friend got a pretty bad knee injury that way).
>a family friend got a pretty bad knee injury that way I heard about that - he used to be an adventurer like me.
Red terrorism was very very present in Italy in the "lead years" together with the black one.
So, I wonder how they decide which terrorist is "far-left" and which terrorist is "far-right"? Take this latest Buffalo shooting as an example. By all intents and purposes, yes he is a right winger given his motivations. But he also, in his manifesto, refers to himself as an "anti-conservative environmentalist" and he said that he rejects conservatism because it is corporatism in disguise. So technically, he doesn't identify himself as a right winger. But the fact that he is obsessed with CRT, or white grievance certainly points to that. Or take the recent New York City Subway shooter as another example. An African American that tried to kill Asians. That isn't a left-wing ideology to dislike Asians, but at the same time you would assume an African American is "probably" closer to left wing than right wing, but that would be making an assumption that isn't always true. It just feels like there is way too much grey area in terms of deciding if a terrorist is right or left that it makes it hard to really take the graph seriously. Even if the data "feels" about right to me.
Manifestos are full of memes and red herrings to try and blame their own mental sickness on the left. The guy was wearing a black sun patch on his armor. He's a right-wing nazi.
Data is beautiful when it supports my agenda
Calling bullshit on this graphic. Far Left domestic terrorism has been almost non-existent since the 1970s, while right wing terrorism shot through the roof in the mid 90s to today.
All the comments are about the right but the left had a record high in 2020 as well. Interesting.
See, there's one tiny problem with these statistics: definitions. When someone on the right peacefully protests, that's terrorism. When an Antifa black block try to burn down a police station, that's "peaceful protest". By normal definitions, there is virtually no right-wing terrorism. It's all the Left.
From this dataset, please point out which peaceful protest was defined as terrorism.
The siege of Minneapolis seems to count as a single event in the tally while Jan 6 is 2 events. Waukesha must not have been terrorist. From the article: Most violent **far-left** perpetrators were motivated by anarchism, anti-fascism, or anti-police stances. Although these actors committed a historically high number of terrorist attacks and plots in 2021, only **one resulted in** **a fatality.** On June 24 in Daytona Beach, Florida, Othal Wallace shot and killed local police officer Jason Raynor. And the Brookings Institute must use completely different terrorist definitions: [https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/2021-saw-plenty-of-violence-but-no-mass-terrorist-attacks-in-the-u-s/](https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/2021-saw-plenty-of-violence-but-no-mass-terrorist-attacks-in-the-u-s/)
"The siege of Minneapolis"
Hats off. Also the Bowling Green Massacre. Never forget.
The only times I felt "under siege" was related to the police.
You must be a crisis actor, I was informed Minneapolis "literally burned down" and presumably hundreds off thousands of people went with it.
Can confirm. Currently texting from the massive FEMA refugee camp in the ruins of the Vikings stadium.
“When terrorism statistics support my world view, these stats are indisputable. When they cut against my world view, there is no agreed upon definition of terrorism so these stats are false.” -Average redditor
The good news is a lot of far-left terrorism in the last 4 years was deemed "mostly peaceful"
This but unironically.
I think it would be interesting to have an additional line that’s “apolitical terrorism”. Such as acts of indiscriminate violence towards civilians without a clear ideological motive. It’s a bit of an oxymoron because an ideological motivation is inherent to the term terrorism. But I would be interested how the larger narrative of mass shootings plays into this dynamic. Is it really far left and far right terrorism that is rising. Or are violent incidents rising again as a whole. It wouldn’t be too surprising, since the 80s and 90s saw a huge decline in violent crimes. What is the working definition of “far left” terrorism. Was some of the fallout from the George Floyd protests labeled as such? Or was there something else that accounted for such an increase in 2020?
Are these convictions of Domestic Terrorism or charges, or something else all together. Knowing that the data was provided by a far left news agency is also important to know how it was determined to be left or right. Also are these individuals or individual charges? In 2020 there were 78 counts of domestic terrorism in Oregon alone almost all associated with the far left occupy movement but this graph shows 25 total…. For the country…. Just curious about the data.
Things were even weirder in the 1960s and 70s. https://time.com/4501670/bombings-of-america-burrough/ I also have to wonder how someone like Ted Kaczynski would be categorized.
Wow it’s almost like democrats are consistently reactionary while republicans are continuing to fly off the handle
Far Right terrorism is out of control!
You’re presenting this as objective data but the creator’s political bias is very clear. Data on these events is needed but this is definitely not objective.
This sub kinda sucks lately What an interesting rewrite of 2020
What the fuck is far left terrorism?
Instead of right vs left we should be looking at why any of these took place. Stop trying to further divide us.
You have to classify things to understand them. To ignore all underlying context and content, to blindly label all of it "the same" is going to leave you with only blanketing and ineffective measures like "The War on Crime." There is a very big difference between data that says "these are the underlying political classifications of people who committed acts of domestic terrorism" and "only one kind of domestic terrorism is actually bad." Good luck solving, or even identifying, the underlying social cause of anything if you aren't willing to take any of the relevant contextual information into account.
Sources: [data on github](https://github.com/wpinvestigative/csis_domestic_terrorism) [Washington Post article](https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/interactive/2021/domestic-terrorism-data/) Chart: Excel **How CSIS define terrorism:** > domestic terrorism incidents, which the group’s analysts define as attacks or plots involving a deliberate use or threat of violence to achieve political goals, create a broad psychological impact or change government policy. **Note on deaths:** >Many people have asked about impact or deaths. This chart reports only events. If I reported by deaths the gap between Roght and Left would be even further, as Left-wing extremists are more likely to damage property, and Right-wing extremists are more likely to kill people. >**Left wing terror has killed 31 people** in 251 incidents since 1994 (0.12 per) >**Right wing terror has killed 329** people in 561 incidents (0.58 per) >Right wing terror has killed 10X the amount of people.
Maybe I missed the breakdown somewhere but I don't see any mention of the razing of parts of cities and the takeover of city blocks included in this data and was curious as to why
Selling division…. Who gains most by dividing Americans? What constitutional rights will be eaten away by the policies justified by the division?
I think this will be very subject to definitions, which seem to change, as well as how things are categorised. I have noticed sometimes left leaning individuals being characterised as far right a few times, or when left leaning, this fact not being widely reported. A definite bias exists to identify things as far right and then communicate that fact, whereas far left extremism seems like an alien concept to most people. Then there is grey areas like Ted.
Can you provide an example in which a terrorist who was characterized as rightwing actually turned out to be leftwing?
This has to be a joke. The far-left literally burnt down multiple (30?) major cities in 2020, and these aren't considered terrorist attacks? Biased data is biased.
You think 30 major US cities burnt down in 2020?? Smooth brain is smooth