Are Leftists Coming For You? Here's What the Data Says About Political Violence

Who's responsible for the rise in hate, division and political violence? The data is clear.

(Photo: FBI)

Wraparound shades. A non-Yankee’s fitted cap. A Black, long-sleeve shirt with a bald eagle flying in front of an American flag.

Depending on your political affiliation, that outfit sounds like the stereotypical starter kit for someone at a Charlie Kirk rally in Utah or an America-hating armed antifa leftist trying to blend in with God-fearing patriots. But to federal law enforcement officials trying to apprehend the person responsible for the fatal shooting of Charlie Kirk, it describes a “person of interest.”

No one knows who killed far-right political activist Charlie Kirk. State and local authorities don’t even know why someone shot Kirk during an appearance at Utah Valley University. But as the FBI turns to the public for help finding the person suspected of killing the conservative provocateur, the absence of clues, facts or information hasn’t prevented anyone from weighing in.

“I want to be clear that this is a political assassination,” Utah Gov. Spencer Cox said during a press conference shortly after the public execution. Apparently deputized by the organization he publicly salutes, noted criminologist Elon Musk blamed the slaying on members of the “party of murder.” It took left-leaning social media users minutes to manufacture a conspiracy theory involving Kirk, the Epstein files, the CIA and, of course, the Jews.

Never one to shy away from controversy, conspiracies or unfounded speculation, Donald Trump decided to get in on the action. Armed with the same information as online conspiracy theorists, Trump addressed the nation from the Oval Office desk that once held the crack that his predecessor used as the pretext for mass incarceration and racial sentencing disparities. But instead of tamping down the incendiary rhetoric or pleading for help to find the culprit who killed his political ally, the chief executive of the United States opted for vengeance and baseless conjecture.

“My administration will find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity and to other political violence, including the organizations that fund it and support it, as well as those who go after our judges, law enforcement officials and everyone else who brings order to our country,” Trump said without a scintilla of evidence.” From the attack on my life in Butler, Pennsylvania, last year, which killed a husband and father, to the attacks on ICE agents, to the vicious murder of a health care executive in the streets of New York, to the shooting of House Majority Leader Steve Scalise and three others, radical left political violence has hurt too many innocent people and taken too many lives.”

Some remember Kirk for characterizing George Floyd as a “scumbag,” calling for child-friendly public executions and stoning homosexuals. Despite advocating for “politicizing senseless murder,” others like Ezra Klein have lauded the late Turning Points USA co-founder in death for “practicing politics the right way.” But instead of wading into the online morass over how Kirk should be remembered, we decided to fact-check Trump’s hunch-based hypothesis.

Is the left stoking political violence? Is Musk up to his old racist tricks, or does he actually know what he’s talking about this time? Again, we don’t know who killed Charlie Kirk or why they did it. But if he is the latest casualty of political violence, then combating this growing epidemic requires facts and evidence.

To find out the truth, we used data from two sources:

1. The Prosecution Project: An open-source research platform “tracking and providing an analysis of felony criminal cases involving illegal political violence occurring since 1990.”

2. FBI Hate Crime Statistics: Although political violence is different from hate crimes, the numerous claims of anti-white and anti-Christian violence deserve exploring.

We only counted arrests, indictments or convictions since 2015. When multiple perpetrators were involved in a single event, we treated the incident as a single occurrence but counted each accused perpetrator. To avoid unfairly weighting the sample, we excluded the people charged in the Jan. 6, 2021 attempted coup and treated the attack on the Capitol as a single incident. For the sake of our coverage, we only considered cases that occurred within the United States. And since some hate crimes are also politically motivated, we kept the two distinct datasets separate.

Here’s what we found.

Do we have a problem with political violence?

According to the FBI statistics, bias-related incidents have nearly doubled over the past decade, reaching an all-time high in 2023. Similarly, acts of political violence have also quadrupled since Donald Trump entered the political arena. While it is irresponsible to blame any single individual for this phenomenon, the data shows that the categories for racial bias and anti-LBGTQ are almost solely responsible for the MAGA era’s increase in hate crimes.

ContrabandCamp/DataWrapper

ContrabandCamp/DataWrapper

Who’s committing the violence?

According to the numbers, the typical act of political violence or a hate crime is committed by a right-leaning, 42-year-old white male.

Over the past decade, whites have committed 57% violent hate crimes and 56% of political violence in cases where the offender is known. Black Americans are overrepresented in property-related hate crimes, but government data shows whites are overrepresented in assaults and acts of intimidation. Interestingly, white perpetrators of political violence are more likely to be arrested and indicted, but are the least likely to be convicted.

When we mapped the violence geographically, we didn’t find a correlation between political violence in red vs. blue states. However, adjusting for population reveals that the state of Georgia, for some reason, is an outlier when it comes to acts of political violence, while Alabama surprisingly had the lowest rate of incidents per capita (.31 per 100,000 residents). New Jersey ran away with the title for hate crimes per capita. In fact, Garden State residents are three times more likely to be a victim of a hate crime than a murder.

Despite the claims of Elon Musk, political violence is one arena where trans athletes are apparently not interested in competing.

In 2022, about 5% of Pew Research respondents identified as transgender or non-binary, dismantling the insinuation by Musk and others that trans people are disproportionately responsible for mass shootings. In fact, according to the FBI and The Prosecution Project, LGBTQ people are about 21 times more likely to be on the receiving end of violence than perpetrators.

Even Grok knows this.

Why has this violence increased?

It is possible that video games, mental health and the proliferation of guns are responsible for the rise in hate and political attacks. But, according to the statistical evidence, the ideology of the perpetrators is clear. Right-wing extremism, white supremacy and racial bias are causing the increase in violent attacks.

Although Black Americans make up less than 13% of the population, the FBI data shows anti-Black violence is responsible for 29% of hate crimes. Meanwhile, 9% of hate crimes are due to anti-white bias. Whites were three times more likely to commit a hate crime than to be the victim of one. The inverse was true for every other racial and ethnic group. We also found that “Rightist, identity-focused” crimes have topped the political violence charts every year since 2020.

And Evangelicals can stop worrying about carrying the cross of anti-Christian bias. Of the 100,331 hate crimes we examined, 1,026 (about 1.02%) were caused by anti-Protestant or “anti-other Christian” bias.

About 63% of U.S. adults identified as Christians in 2025.

America still has a problem, though.

We could not find any evidence of a war on white people, Christians, conservatives or MAGAmericans. But that doesn’t mean America doesn’t have a problem. Not only do the numbers reflect a rise in hate and political division, but the raw data also shows it is getting worse.

To be fair, reality is an ineffective remedy for racism and prejudice. In the Confirmation Bias Cinematic Universe, anything can serve as the pretext for hate, lynching and political action. Now that Musk controls the algorithm and the president has already declared war on a thing that doesn’t exist, the literal truth might not be persuasive enough.

Still, despite how you might feel about Kirk, his message or the alleged lone assassin who killed him, the truth is still important. Facts still matter.

Until they don’t.