Statistics on Politically-Motivated Violence in the United States

Militant, nationalistic, white supremacist violent extremism has increased in the United States. In fact, the number of far-right attacks continues to outpace all other types of terrorism and domestic violent extremism. Since 1990, far-right extremists have committed far more ideologically motivated homicides than far-left or radical Islamist extremists, including 227 events that took more than 520 lives.[1] In this same period, far-left extremists committed 42 ideologically motivated attacks that took 78 lives.[2] A recent threat assessment by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security concluded that domestic violent extremists are an acute threat and highlighted a probability that COVID-19 pandemic-related stressors, long-standing ideological grievances related to immigration, and narratives surrounding electoral fraud will continue to serve as a justification for violent actions.[3]

[note 1] Celinet Duran, “Far-Left Versus Far-Right Fatal Violence: An Empirical Assessment of the Prevalence of Ideologically Motivated Homicides in the United States,” Criminology, Criminal Justice, Law & Society 22 no. 2 (2021): 33-49; Joshua D. Freilich et al., “Introducing the United States Extremist Crime Database (ECDB),” Terrorism and Political Violence 26 no. 2 (2014): 372-384; and William Parkin, Joshua D. Freilich, and Steven Chermak, “Did Far-Right Extremist Violence Really Spike in 2017?” The Conversation, January 4, 2018.

[note 2] Duran, “Far-Left Versus Far-Right Fatal Violence”; Freilich et al., “Introducing the United States Extremist Crime Database (ECDB)”; and Parkin, Freilich, and Chermak, “Did Far-Right Extremist Violence Really Spike in 2017?”

[note 3] U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Homeland Threat Assessment: October 2020, Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Homeland Security, 2020, 4.