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The media pushing this kind of analysis mostly misses the point. You could easily point out differences in base rates, gross issues with misreporting, whatever.
The fundamental problem is that most modern right wing violence is an accident of ideology committed by a fringe with little support. Condemnations are widespread, the people engaging it have been mostly grossly mentally ill, no leading figures are calling for it, no mainstream institutions are calling for it or supporting it (at least up until current events).
In contrast modern left wing violence is demanded and supported by mainstream institutions both directly and by implication. Histrionic rhetoric like "they are going to put us in camps" "literally Hitler" and so on are mainstream positions that are asserted publicly (including at work in some places) that demand and rationalize violent action. Sometimes it's even more direct than that "bash the fash" for instance.
It's a miracle that we haven't had more of it, although that time is likely ended now - and we've already quite a lot, much of which was violence at protest actions is unlikely to be adequately captured in the data.
Usually the response of the left to this sort of criticism is "well X fringe red tribe figure said Y" or "well Trump's rhetoric is divisive because blah blah."
No, no that is not the same as what the left is saying - it's mainstream, blunt, pervasive in multiple domains and in blue tribe milieus almost completely unopposed.
I appreciate the effort to do a data driven approach but it is pointless, and buys into the left's frame, totally missing the heart of the issue and would be required to find solutions.
This is mostly due to the violence as a dial versus violence as a switch view- ask an average red triber and he'll tell you of course the second amendment is there for political violence, it's just not that bad yet to take the gloves off.
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The claim here is obviously false. There is plenty of institutonal and cultural support for violence among the right. Take, for example, conservative fascination with firearms as a political tool. Or greater suport for state sanctioned killing to achieve policy goals, like the death penalty. And, while this is less true now but was certainly true in the very recent past that conservatives were very likey to prioritize violence as a solution to foreign policy as well ("turn the whole country to glass").
The acceptance of violence, or the tendency to see the use physical force as a acceptable or effective solution to problems, seems to be so pervasive among the right that it has become "baked in" to the point where it doesn't even register, like a fish in water.
I am not claiming that the left does not have problems with violence, it clearly does (especially and perhaps exclusively the woke illiberal left), but this thing I keep seeing where conservatives are casting themselves as constitutionally cherubic peaceniks against the bloodthirsty violent and demonic left is just flatly wrong.
What I notice is that when conservatives talk about using firearms to defend from an oppressive government, they don't actually tend to call for people to actually go do that. In general, I would classify almost all of them as LARPers, who fancy themselves heroes in a fantasy. That doesn't make them violent revolutionaries.
I see acceptance of violence against individuals in self defense, or as legal retribution, but again, neither of these make one a violent revolutionary.
Killing political opponents as a way to get your policies enacted is very different from violence being part of the policy itself.
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One could model this as the right having an interest in violence that they rarely if ever indulge, and the left blinkering their jaundiced eye to carefully ignore a higher rate of violence and destruction. The right barks, the left bites, as it were; matching relative tastes in dogs and what should be done about pitbulls.
Such a model is a little too self-serving and pat, of course. And yet, I can't shake the grain of truth in it.
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I don't agree with the rest of what you are saying but you are missing the point. Any mismatch or parity on violence in the political realm is completely overshadowed by everything else.
Traditional politics is a small portion of most people's interaction with the world.
Media, education, social media, and corporate employment are all very aggressive with pushing "silence is violence" "the personal is the political" "speech is violence" "they are going to put you in camps" "they are literally Nazis" and so on.
These things have nearly zero pushback and are firmly water for the vast majority of Americans.
I have to work very hard on Reddit, on Facebook, on TV shows to find the most mild of conservative views but I am going to see left wing violent extremism on the same unless I work very hard not to.
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The reason the left isn't assassinating Tommy Robinson in the UK is because they can have him arrested and imprisoned instead.
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Trump literally pardoned people who beat up cops
Some of them had a history of rape, manslaughter, possession of child porn, didn't matter. If a rapist beat up a cop, he was still pardoned
Domestic abuser with history of attacking cops throws a bomb? Acceptable behavior apparently.
Most Jan 6th protestors were peaceful and were never even arrested yet alone convicted, that is true. It's true of basically every group, something I've said since forever. Most people are peaceful.
But not every single one. Why pardon rapist cop beaters? That's the exact opposite of condemnation.
My understanding is that the Trump pardons for Jan 6th are based on the (IMO correct) belief that this was a political persecution, where people were persecuted for non-crimes, and those that actually committed crimes were usually given excessive sentences. Many people who were pardoned did serve time, so it's not like they weren't punished.
I feel that it is a mistake to interpret a blanket clemency as individual pardons, where only the specifics of the case matter, rather than the desire to rebuke the establishment in general.
Even if it's correct that some crimes were unfairly prosecuted, assaulting cops on video is a genuine crime deserving of long punishment. Unless there's proof that they went past legal guidelines in sentencing, it's just letting cop beaters off early because what, other people didn't beat up cops?
This is even worse than guilty by association IMO, it's innocent by association where you can drag a cop around and tase him to he passes out and it's fine even as an individual as long as you can claim a peaceful neighbor was treated unfairly.
He was not forced to do a blanket clemency that covered violent crimes. The campaign even said before election that violent criminals would not be released.
Even Vance agreed it's obvious that violent criminals should not be sent into the general public. Yet what happened? Cop beaters with long rap sheets were freed. It sends a message that if you do violent crime in the name of the president, he'll be soft on it.
It is a crime, but did the perpetrators actually serve less time than others who have beaten up someone? I don't really agree that abuse of cops should result in much longer sentences, since cops themselves are protected from prosecution to an absurd degree and cops often violate people's rights, so then also give extra high punishment for assault on cops, makes the injustices in the way the police interacts with the populace, even greater.
Besides, I think that equal crimes should result in equal punishments, not that perpetrators get off much easier if they abuse the 'right' people.
The problem is that when there is a legal 'conspiracy*', the process we have to determine that what the actual proper sentence is, is broken, so it is not reasonable to expect justice on the individual level. There is no parallel justice system that is free from these immense biases and that can determine an actually fair sentence. And Trump does not have the ability to change sentences.
It is an established legal principle that legal injustices can result in sentences that are not actually fair in the individual case, like people going free over illegally gathered evidence that does actually prove the guilt of the person. In those cases, we value the long term view more, where we accept an injustice in an individual case to maintain global standards in the prosecution of people. We draw a line in the sand that we will not allow it.
So I see nothing wrong with Trump drawing a line in the sand against political persecutions.
* Really just collective bias.
Vance is not the president. Get back to me when Vance is president and something similar happens.
No, it sends the message that if the legal system commits political persecutions, politicians are going to intervene (of course).
Also, the claim that these people committed violence 'in the name of the president' is not a framing that I accept as fact. Trump did not call for violence.
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I will copy my response to the other guy-
"I don't agree with the rest of what you are saying but you are missing the point. Any mismatch or parity on violence in the political realm is completely overshadowed by everything else.
Traditional politics is a small portion of most people's interaction with the world.
Media, education, social media, and corporate employment are all very aggressive with pushing "silence is violence" "the personal is the political" "speech is violence" "they are going to put you in camps" "they are literally Nazis" and so on.
These things have nearly zero pushback and are firmly water for the vast majority of Americans.
I have to work very hard on Reddit, on Facebook, on TV shows to find the most mild of conservative views but I am going to see left wing violent extremism on the same unless I work very hard not to."
Yeah stuff like "This is CIVIL WAR" and "They want you dead!" and "the left is domestic terrorists!" is not receiving much pushback on social media, I'll agree with that. Our rhetoric across the aisle is hyperbolic and charged.
But despite that, we can count the number of explicitly political attacks on our fingers. People are more likely to say they support political violence when they think the "other side" does but it doesn't seem to translate much into anything real. After all talk is cheap, extremely cheap. They're all just being edgelords.
No, we can't. You have no idea how many buildings actually got burned down during the Floyd riots. You have no idea how many windows got a brick through them. You have no idea how many cars were torched or totaled. You have no idea how many people were beaten, nor how badly. Now multiply those unknowns by every other incident of organized leftist street violence, from the Battle of Berkeley on down.
We had at least two billion dollars worth of insurance claims, with no attempt I've ever seen to calculate the necessarily higher uninsurable economic damage.:
Throughout these incidents, the vast majority of that violence never involved an arrest, because over and over again the police stood down and watched people be victimized by organized gangs of thugs, often in broad daylight. On the rare occasion where arrests were made, prosecution was doubtful. When prosecution did occur, fellow thugs have been known to congregate in the courtroom, menacing the jury, and shockingly enough their comrades are found not guilty.
This person's opinion, that people like me need to be killed, is not in any meaningful sense "fringe". I would probably be fired for disagreeing with it publicly prior to the Kirk shooting. You are correct that we have not had large numbers of political murders. These people are trying to change that, and if they succeed, nothing you value will survive.
That's true we don't know how much damage was caused there and by how many people. We also don't know how many, if any, are only politically motivated crimes, and not the actions of typical criminal behavior exploiting large crowds to hide in, or false flags like this or this.
Out of an estimated 16-24 million people participating, the idea that the only people in the crowds are supporters is highly unlikely. But even if they were, 16-24 million is a huge number! Even a fraction of a fraction (a very small percentage) people committing crime would be able to do a fair bit of damage.
Random chest thumping social media accounts from leftists trying to signal how cool they are is just as meaningless as the chest thumping from the right currently calling for "civil war" or for killing judges. It's posturing by edgelords who thinks it makes them look cool, but they don't have an actual violent bone in them.
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Again. If I go about my day minding my own business attempting to avoid politics, or if I engage with politics but don't specifically seek out the few right leaning spaces I know about then I will see no right leaning extremism (unless it is signal boosted by the left as criticism of the right).
I will see tons of left leaning political extremism.
I've spent the last decade having left wing extremism up to and including actual advocacy for domestic terrorism shoved down my throat even while actively trying to avoid it and watched the places I know that are apolitical or the most inoffensive of right leaning slowly wither and die or be outright destroyed.
Ignoring this is a critical failure of objectivity and should trigger significant introspection.
We didn't get here because of the screaming minority on the left we got here because of the people who should have known better shoved their heads in the sand and stated things like "it's just a few kids on college campuses" until it became a pervasive and dangerous problem.
Plenty of people here have been shouting for years that minimizing and playing games was going to make this problem worse. It's worse now. Do something different unless you want it to continue to get worse.
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