Political murder in the US and the left's "responsibility": here's what the data says

On September 10, Charlie Kirk, a right-wing activist and orator, was shot and killed while giving a speech at a Utah university. A suspect is in custody but refuses to speak , so the killer's motive remains a presumptive one, deduced by the media and politicians digging into the 22-year-old's past. He reportedly confessed to the murder to acquaintances online in a video game chat room. The state of Utah will seek the death penalty for him, as President Trump immediately threatened.

At Kirk's memorial in Arizona, the president also said that left-wing radicals should be treated like terrorists and blamed the murder on the rhetoric of the "radical left." Recall that on January 6, 2021, minutes after Trump delivered a fiery speech filled with widely proven false claims and a call to his supporters to march on the U.S. Capitol and "fight like hell," thousands of people stormed the sacred site of US institutions while Congress was meeting to certify former Democratic Vice President Joe Biden as the winner of the 2020 presidential election. Filmed live on television, the rioters attacked the Capitol and broke into the Senate chamber. Five people died and 140 police officers were injured before the insurrection was quelled.

In the US, and also in Italy, a broad debate has erupted over which forms of violence are considered political, and especially over assigning ideological labels to aggressors or victims. But what do the data say? Are there studies that can demonstrate a correlation, a trend, between political violence and a certain ideology? The answer is yes, they exist, and they are from accredited and authoritative institutions and universities, although some skeptics might argue that they are still biased.

First, it should be noted that there is no unequivocal definition of political violence or federal database. The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), a respected research organization that processes data for the UN, the European Union, and ministerial offices around the world, defines political violence as the use of force with political aims or effects. According to its calculations, 37 people have been killed in such attacks in America this year, and 373 since 2020. The incidents it classifies as political range from a July shooting in downtown Manhattan, when a man killed four people at the NFL headquarters, to more direct attacks, such as the fatal shooting of two staff members at the Israeli Embassy in Washington.

Attacks that randomly target groups or individuals, such as the 2022 mass shooting at a Buffalo supermarket, are the most common. Between 2020 and 2025, the government was the second most frequent target. According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a Washington think tank, after a lull in the early 2000s, terrorist attacks and plots against government targets, including politicians and government employees, are on the rise again. Those motivated by partisan political beliefs totaled 25 between 2016 and 2025, compared to just two incidents in the previous 22 years.

The Prosecution Project , led by Michael Loadenthal of the University of Cincinnati , analyzes cases of serious crimes involving political violence to identify the most prevalent ideologies. The project examines criminal complaints, indictments, and court records, looking for crimes that aim to "achieve sociopolitical change or communicate" to an external audience, says Loadenthal. The Economist magazine reported this week.

The data shows that extremists, both left-wing and right-wing, commit acts of violence, although most incidents appear to originate from right-wing attackers . The data, however, does not reflect the severity of the crime or the number of victims.

In 2001, for example, there were more cases of right-wing violence than attacks by Islamists, despite al-Qaeda's September 11 attacks killing nearly 3,000 people that year.

A study by Celinet Duran of the State University of New York at Oswego examined political violence between 1990 and 2020. It found that attacks by the far right were much more frequent and deadly than those by the far left, although left-wing violence increased throughout the study period.

A study by the Anti-Defamation League , a leading advocacy group that fights against hate speech worldwide and "to stop the defamation of the Jewish people and ensure justice and fair treatment for all," shows that 76% of extremism-related murders in the last decade were committed by right-wingers . Such counts, however, depend on how extremism is defined and how the ideology is attributed.

The ADL uses public documents such as media reports and police reports to calculate the figures. However, it must be said that those who commit violence often leave a confusing trail of resentments that defy easy classification, and some are clearly mentally ill.

According to the Cato Institute, a Washington-based liberal think tank, 83% of those murdered for hate crimes in the US since 1975 were killed by the September 11 terrorists. The Oklahoma City bombing accounts for about another 5%. Those murdered since 2020 represent just 2%.

Terrorists inspired by Islamist ideology have been responsible for 87% of people murdered in attacks on U.S. soil since 1975. Right-wing ideology is the second most common motivating factor, accounting for 391 murders and 11% of the total. The definition of right-wing terrorists includes those motivated by white supremacy, anti-abortion beliefs, involuntary celibacy, and other right-wing ideologies.

Left-wing terrorists killed 65 people, or about 2 percent of the total.

What is happening in these hours in the public debate is a polarization on the ideological basis of the terrible murder of an activist close to President Trump, a polarization forced by public statements from high-ranking institutional representatives, including in Italy by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni , and therefore immediately bounced to the top of the media agenda.

It's clear that this dynamic hasn't developed in other circumstances, when Democratic representatives have been targeted. Such was the case with the June 14 assassination of Minnesota Democratic state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband .

The same assassin had shot and wounded Democratic State Senator John Hoffman and his wife in their home. A list found in the gunman's abandoned car largely included the names of Democrats and figures associated with Planned Parenthood or the abortion rights movement, including Representative Ilhan Omar and Senator Tina Smith .

On April 13, 2025, Democratic Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro , along with his wife, four children, two dogs, and another family, were forced to flee after someone threw a Molotov cocktail into his residence.

On October 28, 2022 , a man with a list of people he believed were "systematically and deliberately" destroying American freedoms forced his way into the San Francisco home of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), intending to kidnap and harm her, authorities said. When she was not home, he attacked Pelosi's husband, Paul, with a hammer, fracturing his skull and knocking him unconscious.

As a Reuters study reports, while in the early 1970s, American political violence was most often perpetrated by left-wing radicals and focused primarily on the destruction of property, such as government buildings, much of today's political violence, by contrast, is directed against individuals, and most of the recorded deadly attacks were inspired by right-wing ideology. Of the 14 deadly political attacks since the 2021 Capitol attack, in which the perpetrator or suspect had a clear political leaning, 13 were right-wing attackers and one was left-wing.