A ‘Lethal Threat’: Why the Far Right Sees More Scrutiny Than the Left

According to an article in the Military Times on August 24th, 2023...

Fifty years ago, far-left movements posed the biggest domestic terrorism threat to the United States, with some environmental, communist and animal rights groups taking credit for bombings, arson and vandalism at businesses and federal buildings across the country. But terrorism carried out by right-wing actors eclipsed that of leftist movements in the 1990s... and now, government agencies and scholars across the political spectrum agree that far-right movements have caused most of the political violence in the U.S. over the past few years – and present the most dangerous threat today.

The idea that far-right extremism poses a threat to the country has been contested by political pundits and some Republican lawmakers, who have attempted to minimize far-right violence and argued that far-left ideologies should receive more focus from law enforcement. But to even compare far-right and far-left movements in the U.S. today is a false equivalency because of the rate at which far-right violence outpaces the far left, said Miller-Idriss – analysis seconded by Liz Yates, a researcher at the immigration advocacy organization Human Rights First.

Thomas Spoehr, a scholar with the conservative Heritage Foundation who’s argued against “wokeness” in the military, agreed that right-wing extremism is more prevalent than other ideologies, though he believes the issue of extremism overall is taking up too many government resources.

The numbers are hard to argue with. Right-wing ideologies were behind a majority of the nearly 600 domestic terror attacks that occurred from 2010 through 2021, according to data shared with Military Times by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank based in Washington, D.C. During that period, right-wing extremists were charged with 353 plots or attacks that caused 147 deaths, the data show. In the same time frame, far-left extremists carried out 126 plots or attacks, killing 23 people. The rest of the political violence during those years was committed by jihadist groups and ethnonationalists, which included antisemitic and Jewish extremists and Cuban exiles, among others.

Read the complete article here: (https://www.militarytimes.com/flashpoints/extremism-disinformation/2023/08/24/a-lethal-threat-why-the-far-right-sees-more-scrutiny-than-the-left/)

As street medics we may need to provide care to victims of right-wing violence, and we may be targeted ourselves by right-wing extremists. Police also tend to stand with right-wing activists and against left-wing activists. In the above photo, we see police at a anti-war demonstration outside a gate at Joint Base Lewis-McChord standing with the pro-war group (note that the police are all facing the anti-war protesters, and have the pro-war protesters behind them).

Police Respond Differently When It’s a Left-Wing Protest, study finds... (https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/15/us/protest-disparity-study-trnd/index.html)

“The right-leaning protesters will say police used force against Black Lives Matter and not them because they are on the ‘right’ side, the same side – they ‘back the blue,’ they are pro-police,” said Ed Maguire, a criminal justice professor at Arizona State University. “The left-leaning protesters believe the same thing: that the police are on the side politically of the right... What we saw with the Black Lives Matter protests was a really massive over-response, and what we saw at the Capitol was a similarly massive under-response,” he said.

Left-leaning protesters are significantly more likely to be arrested than right-leaning ones, according to a 2020 study from Lesley Wood, an associate professor of sociology at York University in Toronto. Wood studied media reports of arrests at 64 demonstrations in the United States in 2017 and 2018.


JBLM DES Protection Division Still Illegally Spying On You (https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2022/01/03/18847078.php) There is no doubt that right-wing protesters and activists pose a greater threat of violence in our communities than do left-wing protesters and activists, but it is also clear that left-wing activities - even completely peaceful events like the 'Vigil for Democracy' in opposition to the January 6th violence in Washington, DC - are likely to be the focus of illegal government surveillance and targeting.