I & I Editorial BoardFor years, we were told by government officials and outside “experts” that the terrorists in our midst were mostly right-wing fanatics – a list that under the Biden administration came to include parents who spoke up at local school board meetings and Catholics who like the Latin mass.
But even the left is now admitting what everyone else already knows.
Namely, that despite their constant bleating about tolerance and peace, it’s leftists who pose the greatest threat to Americans.
This week, the Trump-hating Atlantic magazine published an article titled “Left-Wing Terrorism Is on the Rise,” written by scholars at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).
“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.”
By early July, “far-left extremists had already been responsible for five terrorist attacks and plots, putting 2025 on pace to be the left’s most violent year in more than three decades.”
And their list doesn’t include the killer who slaughtered two children in a Minneapolis church, the gunman who shot up ABC10 in Sacramento, the assassination of Charlie Kirk, the killing in a New Hampshire restaurant by a gunman who shouted “free Palestine,” or the attempted assassination of ICE agents in Dallas by a shooter who engraved bullet casings with “Anti-ICE” (but who ended up killing an illegal immigrant). All of these political attacks were committed by leftists — in just the past month.
It’s likely even worse and much more lopsided than that.
We don’t know what the CSIS authors are counting as “left wing” or “right wing” terrorist attacks, but our guess is that – based on other such assessments – they have downplayed the former and exaggerated the latter. Does CSIS include the 2020 BLM riots or the pro-Hamas campus sieges or the multitude of Antifa attacks as left-wing terrorism?
A widely cited report from the Anti-Defamation League claimed that three-quarters of “extremist” killings from 2015 to 2024 were carried out by right-wingers. But a closer look found that the ADL stretched the meaning of “right wing” to the point of absurdity to increase those numbers, while ignoring some even obvious left-wing killings – such as the assassination of the UnitedHealthcare CEO by an overtly leftist (alleged) attacker.
A recent paper published by the libertarian Cato Institute made the same mistake. For example, the Cato paper counts Peyton Gendron, who murdered 10 people in a Buffalo supermarket and whose manifesto described himself as an “eco-fascist national socialist,” as “right-wing.”
The Cato report also “omitted genuine left-wing killers from his list entirely, including the Waukesha Christmas parade attacker who drove his truck through a crowd in 2021, killing six people,” notes PJ Media. And it failed to count any of the Black Lives Matter violence of the 2020s as “left wing.”
Yet, even with these caveats, the CSIS report found a sharp rise in left-wing terrorist attacks — which should come as no surprise to anyone.
For years, we’ve been pointing out polls that show that those on the left are far more likely to say violence is an acceptable form of political expression. (See, for example, “ Will Left’s Violent Tendencies Lead To U.S. Breakup Or Dictatorship?” March 16, 2021, or “Left-Wing Rage: Don’t Pretend It Doesn’t Exist,” Aug. 18, 2023.)
For most of the past decade, Democrats, the mainstream media, and academia have provided a steady stream of strident and increasingly radicalized language to describe Republicans and conservatives. A new report from the Capital Research Center finds that George Soros’ Open Society Foundations funneled more than $80 million to groups “tied to terrorism or extremist violence.”
They called Trump a fascist. They called Charlie Kirk a fascist. They called ICE officials fascists. Heck, they called anyone they disagreed with a fascist. Over and over and over and over again. Worse, they actively encouraged attacks and celebrated assassins.
How hard is it to believe that all this talk is motivating their fellow leftists to take direct and violent action? These days, it’s not hard at all.
How likely is it that they will admit their culpability and tone down their rhetoric? What’s a snowball’s chance in Hell?
–Written by the I&I Editorial Board
The leftists running our schools have radicalized students to hate the right with an intensity and a purity that has not been seen since the 1960s. These seeds of hatred have been cultivated carefully for years, and a bitter harvest is now happening in America. The Grim Reaper is conducting the harvest.
The three most prominent political assassins in recent American history were all excellent students with sharp intellects. Tyler Robinson, the accused assassin of Charlie Kirk, scored in the 99th percentile on his ACT college admissions tests. Luigi Mangione, the accused assassin of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, was the valedictorian of his high school class and graduated cum laude with twin Bachelor of Science in Engineering and Master of Science in Engineering degrees from an Ivy League university. Thomas Crooks, who tried to assassinate Trump, and killed one person and injured three, earned a score of 1530 out of 1600 on the SAT, placing him in the 99th percentile.
They were top-notch products of the American educational system – and therein lies the problem. They learned the wrong lessons far too well. Our nation’s teachers weaponized these kids and turned them into killers. One of the killers is dead, and the other two are facing the death penalty.
Sometimes you should not listen to your teachers.
More on this is at substack, search for “Why are our schools turning our best students into killers?”. Keep the quotes when you cut-and-paste the title of the article.
I never realized that “the most prominent left terrorists” did so well scholastically.
It just gives more proof to the horrid morality and ethics taught by our “the ends justifies the mean” school system.
The omissions by the Cato paper were not mistakes. It was intentional.
Comments seem to indicate we think the American school system is rather unique as a brain washing machine. Trust that it is unique only in that it is American. Hate (of Jews) and teaching violence against them, and their western partners, is very much part of the curriculum in Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, UNRWA schools, UK Islamic schools, probably our own Muslim communities schools, although those are not yet fully identified and just suspected. What is documented in American schools is praise of alphabet people against a backdrop of America-bashing, in general. Woebetide the young, white, hetero school boy, suspected bastion of racism, sexism, imperialism, but a potential bankroll for reparations. Regarding other countries, does anyone believe China teaches its students to despise China because of its past or because of its more recent prosperity? Does anyone believe Jordanian college kids demonstrate with impunity against the King or that the Columbian president would dare incite insurrection amongst the Jordanian military, shouting on the streets of Amman, and not pay a heavy price? Something more than having his Visa yanked? What is unique about America is what people get away with while they attack it.