EDITORS' CORNER
Key Takeaways
- The article critiques claims that conservatives are more violent than leftist groups, arguing that analyses ignore violence by organizations such as Black Lives Matter and Antifa.
- It highlights how selective methodologies, like those used by the Cato Institute, can distort the understanding of political violence by focusing only on murder and excluding broader definitions of terrorism.
- Experts and commentators assert that left-wing violence is often downplayed or dismissed, while acts by others are easily categorized as right-wing violence, leading to biased conclusions.
- The article calls for more rigorous and unbiased studies on political violence that clearly define what constitutes left-wing and right-wing actions and terrorism.
OPINION – UPDATED
In the wake of the assassination of Charlie Kirk, the professional think tank class pushed a startling claim – actually, it’s conservatives who are more violent!
Cato Institute’s Alex Nowrasteh only counts murders and excludes the 9/11 terrorist attacks to get to the conclusion conservatives are more violent. He labels the 9/11 attacks as “Islamism,” not leftism. That might be fair to do, insofar as the single event would be an outlier that would account for 83 percent of all political murders.
But in only choosing murder, Nowrasteh discounts the criminal activity of Black Lives Matter, Antifa, and pro-abortion groups that attacked pro-life groups in the wake of the reversal of Roe v. Wade in 2022.
As any freshman political science major knows, the point of terrorism is not necessarily to kill as many people as possible, but to create as much fear, or terror, as possible.
An unnamed expert told Minding the Campus: “I think it’s a misunderstanding of terrorism to say that ‘most of the harm’ comes from death. Terrorism’s primary purpose is to cause widespread fear. Yes, that is usually caused by death, but it can also happen through unrest and property damage.”
Jared Gould, editor of MTC, added his own commentary, saying “there have been so many instances of left-wing motivated unrest and property destruction that, even if they don’t prove the left commits more violence overall, such an adjustment to the methodology substantially narrows the gap.”
Oddly, conservatives might get a better picture from a left-leaning professor’s research than that of a libertarian researcher.
The Prosecution Project is run by University of Cincinnati Professor Michael Loadenthal. His research set includes violence from the Black Lives Matter riots in 2020.
He told The Fix via email, “we’ve maintained what I believe to be the largest open-source record of these crimes available–more than 1,700 cases.”
The research set is not perfect – it appears to label antisemitic violence as coming from the Right, not the Left, even though the political Left is far more antisemitic.
There are other issues, as flagged by Ryan Girdusky, a political commentator. The project labels as right-violence murkier cases, including “Linda Mueller and two friends” who “were arrested for peacefully protesting outside of an abortion clinic in West Chester, PA. It also includes, in Girdusky’s words, “Four men from Dover, New York, who robbed residents and targeted them based on their race, specifically looking to rob Mexicans. All four of the robbers were black.”
“Left-wing violence isn’t violence, while anyone can be considered rightwing violence, even if it isn’t right-wing or particularly violent,” he wrote, summarizing the logic employed by the Prosecution Project.
Still, the Project is forthcoming in their dataset, making it easily available for scrutiny. Loadenthal also said some high-profile incidents are not included because the criminal cases are still pending. That includes Nicholas Roske, who allegedly attempted to assassinate Justice Brett Kavanaugh and Ryan Routh, who is being prosecuted for allegedly shooting at the president in Florida.
“Roske’s Case ID is 06152022_NJR, and Routh’s is 09242024_RWR. Both cases are under the ‘in progress’ tab,” Loadenthal told The Fix. He said researchers need to wait for the cases to complete and for a sentence, if any, to be rendered.
Some have accused Loadenthal of having anarchist and Antifa sympathies, based on his comments and activism. “My work has focused on the study of political violence and social movements for decades. I have frequently written about both anarchists and anti-fascists,” he told The Fix in response to a question about the accusations. “These movements were the subject of my Master’s thesis, my PhD dissertation, and my first book. All of these publications have been peer reviewed by panels of subject matter experts and publishers.”
While the biases of researchers can be worth noting, the actual methods used are what ultimately matters. A good study will be forthcoming with its dataset and explain the decisions made. No matter what study is being referenced, people should always dive deeper into the details before coming to a judgement about its reliability and applicability.
Editor’s note: The article has been updated to clarify Alex Nowrasteh excluded the 9/11 attacks from his analysis to conclude conservatives are more violent.
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