Trump Asks, ‘What About the Alt-Left?’ Here’s an Answer

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/15/us/politics/trump-alt-left-fact-check.html

By LINDA QIUAUG. 15, 2017

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overall, far-right extremist plots have been far more deadly than far-left plots (and Islamist plots eclipsed both) in the past 25 years, according to a breakdown of two terrorism databases by Alex Nowrasteh, an analyst at the libertarian Cato Institute.

White nationalists; militia movements; anti-Muslim attackers; I.R.S. building and abortion clinic bombers; and other right-wing groups were responsible for 12 times as many fatalities and 36 times as many injuries as communists; socialists; animal rights and environmental activists; anti-white- and Black Lives Matter-inspired attackers; and other left-wing groups.

Of the nearly 1,500 individuals in a University of Maryland study of radicalization from 1948 to 2013, 43 percent espoused far-right ideologies, compared to 21 percent for the far left. Far-right individuals were more likely to commit violence against people, while those on the far left were more likely to commit property damage.

“We find that the right groups and the jihadi groups are more violent than the left,” said Gary LaFree, one the researchers and the director of the University of Maryland’s National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism.

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