Updated at 2:30 p.m. ET on September 25, 2025
No matter how hard ideologues try to exclusively blame their political foes for acts of political violence, the truth is that violent extremists today emerge from across the political spectrum. We have studied this problem and believe that our data can help illuminate an issue too often defined by partisan finger-pointing. As part of a study to be published this week by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, we compiled and analyzed a data set of 750 attacks and plots in the United States from January 1, 1994, to July 4, 2025. Our research focuses only on incidents of terrorism, which we define as attacks or plots by a nonstate actor attempting to achieve a political end and exert a psychological influence on a broad population. Among other details, the data set includes the types of weapons used, the intended targets, the number of fatalities, and the ideology of the perpetrators.
We found that left-wing terrorism has increased since President Donald Trump’s rise to political prominence in 2016. Indeed, 2025 marks the first time in more than 30 years that left-wing attacks outnumber those from the far right. Despite its recent increase, however, left-wing terrorism is not nearly as common today as it was in the 1960s
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