US justice department removes study finding far-right extremists commit ‘far more’ violence
Report finding rightwing extremists have killed more Americans than other domestic terrorist groups vanished from DoJ website
The US justice department has scrubbed a study from its website concluding that far-right extremists have killed far more Americans than any other domestic terrorist group, just days after a gunman fatally shot the prominent conservative activist Charlie Kirk
The report, now archived, titled What NIJ Research Tells Us About Domestic Terrorism, vanished from the Department of Justice website between 11 and 12 September, according to Jason Paladino an independent investigative reporter who first wrote the story. Kirk, the 31-year-old Turning Point USA founder and Trump ally, was gunned down while speaking at Utah Valley University on 10 September.
The vanished study opened with: “Since 1990, far-right extremists have committed far more ideologically motivated homicides than far-left or radical Islamist extremists, including 227 events that took more than 520 lives. In this same period, far-left extremists committed 42 ideologically motivated attacks that took 78 lives.”
The National Institute of Justice study, which was based on research spanning three decades, represented one of the most comprehensive government assessments of domestic terrorism patterns. It found that “militant, nationalistic, white supremacist violent extremism has increased in the United States” and that “the number of far-right attacks continues to outpace all other types of terrorism and domestic violent extremism”.
But the findings align with independent research from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, which analyzed 893 terrorist plots between 1994 and 2020. That study concluded: “Rightwing attacks and plots account for the majority of all terrorist incidents in the United States since 1994.”
In congressional testimony in 2023, Heidi Beirich, the executive vice-president of Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, told lawmakers as an expert witness that “data on acts of political violence clearly shows that it is the far right that is driving terrorism in the US, including targeting and, in certain cases, murdering law enforcement”.
“That is not to say there is no violence from far-left actors,” she continued, “it is just simply not on the scale or as deadly as what is coming from far-right actors.”
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[url]https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/17/justice-department-study-far-right-extremist-violence[/url]
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Report finding rightwing extremists have killed more Americans than other domestic terrorist groups vanished from DoJ website
The US justice department has scrubbed a study from its website concluding that far-right extremists have killed far more Americans than any other domestic terrorist group, just days after a gunman fatally shot the prominent conservative activist Charlie Kirk
The report, now archived, titled What NIJ Research Tells Us About Domestic Terrorism, vanished from the Department of Justice website between 11 and 12 September, according to Jason Paladino an independent investigative reporter who first wrote the story. Kirk, the 31-year-old Turning Point USA founder and Trump ally, was gunned down while speaking at Utah Valley University on 10 September.
The vanished study opened with: “Since 1990, far-right extremists have committed far more ideologically motivated homicides than far-left or radical Islamist extremists, including 227 events that took more than 520 lives. In this same period, far-left extremists committed 42 ideologically motivated attacks that took 78 lives.”
The National Institute of Justice study, which was based on research spanning three decades, represented one of the most comprehensive government assessments of domestic terrorism patterns. It found that “militant, nationalistic, white supremacist violent extremism has increased in the United States” and that “the number of far-right attacks continues to outpace all other types of terrorism and domestic violent extremism”.
But the findings align with independent research from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, which analyzed 893 terrorist plots between 1994 and 2020. That study concluded: “Rightwing attacks and plots account for the majority of all terrorist incidents in the United States since 1994.”
In congressional testimony in 2023, Heidi Beirich, the executive vice-president of Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, told lawmakers as an expert witness that “data on acts of political violence clearly shows that it is the far right that is driving terrorism in the US, including targeting and, in certain cases, murdering law enforcement”.
“That is not to say there is no violence from far-left actors,” she continued, “it is just simply not on the scale or as deadly as what is coming from far-right actors.”
?
[url]https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/17/justice-department-study-far-right-extremist-violence[/url]
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