Americans see left and right violence as equal issues. The data doesn’t.

In the United States, there is a wide gap between right-wing violence and leftist violence in the United States-and that does not align with what many Americans believe.

A Yougov The survey published Wednesday evening noted that the Americans are almost uniformly divided on this side, 31% say that leftist violence is a larger problem, 33% say that right -wing violence is, and 36% were not sure. The partisan fracture was clear – third parties of the Republicans blamed the left, while 62% of the Democrats expressed more concern from the right.

However, data on political violence show a much more unbalanced situation.

A 2021 study Published in the journal Criminology, Criminal Justice, Law & Society analyzed the ideologically motivated extremist murders from 1990 to 2020. The results were clear: only 42 homicide incidents with political motivation, or 15.6% of all incidents involved Farles extremists. On the other hand, extreme right extremists were responsible for 227 incidents – 84.4% of the total.

“A homicide with ideological motivation on the far right has occurred at least once a year since 1990,” wrote the authors of the study. “In comparison, homicides with the ideological motivation of Far Left were only present for 17 years of the period of 31 years of the current analysis.”

And this model of far -right violence has not slowed down since 2020, the last year included in study data.

For example, the study did not include January 6, 2021, attack on the American Capitol, for which President Donald Trump later Pardoned his supporters. And in October 2022, a attacker interrupted The house of the former speaker of the Nancy Pelosi Chamber and attacked her husband, Paul Pelosi, with a hammer. Earlier this year, the residence of the Governor of Pennsylvania Josh Shapiro was set on fire While his family was sleeping inside. Then in June, a shooter target The Democratic legislators of Minnesota, killing the president of the State Chamber, Melissa Hortman and her husband, and the senator of the state injuring John Hoffman and his wife inside their home.

The violence on the right is not only persistent – it accelerates. However, many eminent officials, including the president, have minimized it or even excused him. THE kill Conservative activist Charlie Kirk has Extremely embraced voices To call for reprisals of “war” against the left, even if Trump supervises the right -wing radicals as well intentional.

“I’m going to tell you something that will cause me trouble, but I don’t care. said. “Left radicals are the problem.”

This story does not hold. The aforementioned study shows a clear thing: the extreme right has been the engine of murders with ideological motivation for decades. And this is not the only research to draw this conclusion.

A 2022 study published by The much appreciated scientific journal PNAS noted that the right -wing extremists are more likely to engage in political violence than their left -wing counterparts. The researchers have linked this risk to the personality traits often associated with the right ideology, such as closing of mind, dogmatism and increased need for control and certainty, which can all intensify biases and group hostility towards foreigners.

On the other hand, the study revealed that individuals on the left tend to mark more on opening and tolerance to ambiguity and are less likely to support social domination – factors which are in correlation with a lower risk of using violence. Other studies have even identified a “gap of empathy” between the liberals and the conservatives, which can help to explain the frequency of the far -right attacks.

Even federal agencies have sounded the alarm. At the beginning of January, the Ministry of Justice warned that the militant violence white-supremacist and nationalist continues to increase. Since 1990, far -right extremists have carried out more than 520 murders, against only 78 extremists from the far left. An assessment of threats from the Ministry of Internal Security reported the grievances of immigration, the electoral denial and even the pandemic stress that the probable engines of the attacks in the years to come.

So, what explains why the public is divided on the question of whether violence on the left or right is more a problem?

Part of this ditch can arise from the way the incidents are presented. Violence against right -wing figures is often supposed to come from the left, but this is not always the case. The two potential murders of Trump last year had complex political history: one was one registered republican But donated to a liberal group, and the other was a Voter Trump 2016 who turned against him and whose registration of the most recent voters has not been affiliated with any party.

The violence on the left, although much less common, has increased in recent years. The study of criminology of 2021 revealed that “far -left violence has increased in the past five years” and that “while extremely right extremists are responsible for a higher frequency of incidents, extremists of the far left kill more often more than one individual”. But researchers warn that in good social and political conditions, the threat could grow far beyond its historical base – a reason why they call for data -based strategies to fight domestic extremism through the spectrum.

For the moment, the greatest danger is obvious. Right violence is not a relic of the past – it is an active and more important threat. Experts warn that continuous discussions of the “stolen elections”, of the “invasions” of immigrants, and revenge attach a fire more, which means that the next attack is not a question if but when. The real question is whether the country will react before more lives are lost.