Left-wing terrorists were behind more domestic attacks in the US than right-wingers for the first time since 1994, a new study claimed.
Analysis from the Center for Strategic and International Studies showed there were five left-wing terror attacks up to July 4.
There was one right-wing attack in the same period – the murder of Minnesota state lawmaker Melissa Hortman and her husband in June.
Right-wing extremists were responsible for the vast majority of domestic terror attacks and foiled or aborted plots in the past 30 years, followed by Islamic jihadis.
But that trend has reversed in the past few years as right-wing and Islamic attacks fell sharply and left-wing ones had a modest rise.
Should the pace of far-left attacks continue, 2025 would have the most from that side in more than 30 years – though still far short of the far-right’s worst years.
Left-wing culprits carried out eight attacks in both 2020 and 2022, while the high watermark for right-wing extremism was 33 in 1995, and 30 in 2017 and 2020.
Democratic State Representative Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark (pictured) were fatally shot on June 14 in their home
Forty-two per cent of all terrorist attacks and plots so far this year were by far-left perpetrators – it was never above 20 per cent in any other year since 1993.
The tallied political attacks do not include the murder of Charlie Kirk in Utah on September 10 as it was after the July 4 cutoff.
The political leanings and motivations of Kirk’s alleged assassin, Tyler Robinson, are still hotly debated by each side and he has refused to speak to investigators.
Also not included were the arson of Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro’s home, the murder of two Israeli Embassy workers in Washington DC, and the firebombing of a pro-Israel rally in Boulder, Colorado, that injured 15 demonstrators.
These were omitted because they were motivated by the Israel-Palestine conflict and not strictly attributable to left or right wing US politics.
CSIS said there were several reasons for the changing trends – most noticeably that right-wing extremists have little to be angry about.
‘This decline is striking, and explanations are speculative,’ it said.
‘One possibility is that many traditional grievances that violent right-wing extremists have espoused in the past – opposition to abortion, hostility to immigration, and suspicions of government agencies, among others – are now embraced by President Trump and his administration.’
However, it cautioned that the fall in far-right terrorism was ‘probably temporary’.
The CSIS report defined terrorism as attacks ‘with the intent to achieve political goals by creating a broad psychological impact’.
More to come.
The tallied political attacks do not include the murder of Charlie Kirk in Utah on September 10, allegedly by Tyler Robinson (pictured), as it was after the July 4 cutoff
