By Amber Duke

Copyright dailycaller

Hey y’all, welcome back to Unfit to Print.

Another special edition coming at ya today. You know what they say — there’s lies, damn lies, and statistics.

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THE LIBERTARIANS ARE AT IT AGAIN

There are two “studies” floating around right now claiming that right-wing political violence is much more prevalent than left-wing political violence.

The intention, of course, is to nullify the conservative reaction to the assassination of Charlie Kirk, namely, that left-wing political violence and its celebration are a serious issue.

One of the studies being cited is from the Anti-Defamation League. My friend Ryan Girdusky did an excellent breakdown of its methods in his newsletter, the National Populist. In short, they lump white nationalist inter-gang killings, domestic violence, and other non-ideologically motivated murders into its “right-wing political violence” category. You can read the full thing here. I highly recommend it.

The other study I want to look at is by a Cato wonk. Alex Nowrasteh is the vice president of economic and social policy for the libertarian think tank. He has a Substack with David Bier, Cato’s director of immigration studies.

(Note: Cato and Nowrasteh are behind another suspect study claiming illegal immigrants commit less crime than native-born Americans).

Nowrasteh says in his Substack post on political violence, “Politically motivated violence is not a major problem and left-wing terrorists are not the worst.”

Alright, so let’s dive into the list Nowrasteh has compiled.

First, a note on methodology: Nowrasteh claims he “focuses on politically motivated terrorists who have murdered at least one person in their attacks.”

For the sake of time (and my own sanity), we’ll take on the cases Nowrasteh’s identified between 2015-2025, the last ten years. This is mostly an arbitrary cutoff and so if I magically get more time in my days, I will do the full list.

There are 57 total “politically motivated terrorist killers” identified in this time frame.

13 of them are cited as Islamists, foreign nationalists, or unknown/other.

That leaves 27 right-wing terrorist killers and 17 left-wing terrorist killers, per Norwrasteh’s count.

We will first go through the right-wing killers to see if they are properly categorized. Properly categorized killers will be highlighted in bold. Improperly categorized killers will be underlined.

I will highlight some killers as “questionable” in italics, meaning the motive either wasn’t confirmed or is more subjective.

“Right-wing terrorist killers”

Dylann Roof — properly categorized John Russell “Rusty” Houser — Houser was described as having right-wing political positions, but there is no conclusive evidence that they were a motivation in his decision to shoot up a Lafayette movie theater. As CNN reports, Houser had severe mental health problems in the years leading up to the shooting and “Why Houser chose the city or what he was doing there remains a mystery.” Former Columbus mayor Bobby Peters said of Houser, “If you look at the whole pattern he had all these dreams and they kept falling apart and it comes to a situation like this.” There is speculation that he targeted a movie by Amy Schumer because of his misogynistic views, but police never confirmed this. Robert Lewis Dear — properly categorized James Harris Jackson — This one is a bit complicated. Jackson, who stabbed a black man to death with a sword, reportedly hated black people from a young age despite growing up in a liberal family that supported integration. Nonetheless, he voted for Barack Obama in 2012 because he did not like Sarah Palin. Because he later started getting involved in far-right YouTube and message boards and liked Donald Trump ahead of the killing, I’m calling this one properly categorized. Jeremy Joseph Christian — properly categorized James Alex Fields, Jr. — properly categorized Matthew Edward Riehl — Riehl, who served as a combat medic in the Iraq War, was reported to be suffering from PTSD and psychotic episodes. He had stopped taking his medication before the shooting. Riehl livestreamed the shooting to Periscope, during which he said he “would not hurt anyone except to defend himself.” Online posts he made before the shooting were described as “rambling” and “nonsensical.” He made several online posts complaining about local law enforcement officials before his rampage. Samuel Woodward — Woodward was raised Catholic and was struggling with his sexuality. He had expressed anti-gay sentiments but then decided to meet up with a gay man he met online. When the gay man kissed him, Woodward became enraged and killed him. Homophobic, sure. Right-wing political violence? No. Gregory A. Bush — Bush was motivated by a hatred of black people in killing two black shoppers at a Kroger in Kentucky. There is no public evidence that he was politically motivated. He did not like Obama, but because he was black — not because he was a Democrat. The case was classified as a hate crime. Bush also had a history of schizophrenia. Robert D. Bowers — properly categorized Scott Paul Beierle — properly categorized Anthony Comello — Anthony’s attorney presented a pretty fantastical defense at trial, claiming he was radicalized by QAnon and therefore should not be held accountable for killing a prominent mob boss. Comello played into the bit by writing pro-Trump messages on his hands in the courtroom. He was supposedly trying to take down the “elite cabal.” However, police said that Comello didn’t kill the mob boss over his online radicalization — rather, he was upset that the mob boss didn’t want Comello to date his niece. There were other versions of what Comello said happened when confessing to police, including that he had been blackmailed to carry out the hit by people who said they would reveal that he had HIV. There are too many competing theories to say this was politically motivated and court records related to his sentencing were not made available to the public due to concerns over the mob threatening Comello. John T. Earnest — properly categorized William Santino Legan — properly categorized Patrick Crusius — properly categorized Steven Carrillo — properly categorized Robert Justus — properly categorized Roy Den Hollander — properly categorized Robert Aaron Long — Long went on a shooting spree at Asian “massage parlors,” because he was angry over his sex addiction and how it conflicted with his religious beliefs. Nathan Allen — Allen stole a box truck, crashed, and then targeted two black people, killing them. He had written anti-black and pro-white screeds. He was not publicly reported to be involved in any white supremacist groups and there is no other public evidence of his political beliefs. This is better classified as a hate crime. Payton S. Gendron — properly categorized Benjamin Jeffrey Smith — properly categorized Anderson Lee Aldrich — properly categorized Mauricio Martinez Garcia — properly categorized Ryan Christopher Palmeter — properly categorized Solomon Sahmad Charlie Henderson — properly categorized Vance Boelter — Boelter was reportedly a registered Republican and held pro-life views, but was previously a longtime Democrat and a state government appointee of Gov. Tim Walz. His writings indicated he believed he was carrying out the assassination of state Democratic lawmakers on behalf of Walz to clear his path to becoming a Democratic nominee for senator.

If we’re being generous, that puts the final tally at 21 right-wing terrorist killers to 17 terrorist killers as opposed to 27:17. If we’re being less generous, it’s closer to 19:17. A pretty negligible difference.

But then we have to also consider that Nowrasteh left some left-wing terrorist killers off his list.

The Waukesha killer in 2021 who drove his truck through a Christmas parade had a litany of anti-white social media posts, supported Black Lives Matter, and rapped against Donald Trump. A local BLM chapter raised money for his bail. Jessica Doty-Whitaker was shot and killed by BLM protesters after she or someone she was with declared “all lives matter.” Her case remains unsolved. An anti-natalist bombed an IVF clinic in 2025, killing one person

That would nudge the left-wing category over the right-wing category.

Of course, the other issue with Nowratseh’s list is that it only counts killings, so we miss highly notable political violence like the two assassination attempts on Trump, the 2017 Republican baseball shooting, the attempted stabbing of Lee Zeldin, a neighbor attacking Sen. Rand Paul, the attempted assassination of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, a bomb planted under a Fox News van that failed to detonate, and others.

Nowrasteh’s list is noticeably better than the ADL’s, but it still shows the subjective nature of determining whether violence is motivated by politics. These studies inevitably depend heavily on methodology and the bias of the reviewer. At the very least, we know claims that right-wing violence is more frequent than left-wing violence are suspect, at best.