We hear it over and over again. Right-wing violence is far more common than left-wing violence. There are even numbers to prove it. Actually, the numbers don't even come close to proving it.
Among the problems is that the left-right political spectrum is flawed an arbitrary. This spectrum shows the extreme version of big and oppressive government as an absence of government. Similarly, the extreme version of small government and personal responsibility is supposed to be totalitarianism.
One of the key differentiations being used in comparing extremism is in if it's majority extremism or minority extremism. In other words, white supremacy is considered to be far right while black supremacy is considered to be far left.
There's a "seems like" component to this since white racists are more likely to be right-wing and black racists are more likely to be left-wing. Because non-conforming racists of these two varieties can embrace left-wing or right-wing ideology, these classifications could be viewed as arbitrary.
This is one of the big problems with comparing violence from the two sides. There's far more subjectivity than most people realize. A lot of the subjectivity is in dividing left-wing violence from right-wing violence. For example, what if you have someone who has loyally voted Democrat engaging in homophobic violence? More than likely, they would go with the motive, but can you really call someone like that a right-winger?
Another subjective component is on classifying violence. There are a lot of non-lethal violent attacks. Do we count a punch in the face the same as murder? How about murder versus a bombing? How about an attempted mass-murder attempt versus and unsuccessful mass-murder attempt? Can you honestly say that someone is less violent just because he or she failed?
A lot of people go for the numbers for murder, but individual incidents can skew the totals. For example, a lot of people like to include the Oklahoma City bombing as an example of right-wing violence, although I'm honestly not convinced that Waco qualified as a legitimate right-wing motive. 168 were killed in that one attack. For some measures, this accounts for over half of the death being reported from right-wing extremists.
Among the issues with this discussion is that the Southern Poverty Law Center has become the strongest voice on hate. The Southern Poverty Law Center is far from neutral. They have insisted that Antifa and Black Lives Matter (I'm referring to the organization here, not the movement) are not hate groups. For Antifa, it's because their brand of hate doesn't qualify as hate. For Black Lives Matter, it's because you can explain their name in a manner that does not indicate hate. We just have to ignore that they have supported violence on the basis of race. If that's not bad enough, I have read things from them on multiple occasions when they have cited stats from Obama's presidency and blamed Trump.
A lot of times, subjectivity is being compounded. If those compiling the data are biased, this can skew the numbers. If biased media sources are providing their interpretation of these numbers, that can also skew the numbers. It's worse if it's biased interpretation from biased sources.
The reason that I'm bringing this up is because people are using these questionable stats to defend the violence from Antifa. The narrative is that Antifa is responsible for less violence than the entirety of right-wing violence. This is an absurd comparison. A lot of liberals also point to the fact that Antifa hasn't been tied to a single murder.
This leads to another issue. Antifa is a loose organization. The violent attackers associated with Antifa are generally not members of Antifa. This helps liberals escape from the truth. The shooter in Dayton openly backed Antifa. The media tried to bury this fact. We also know the shooter in Portland was connected to Antifa. There's no way of knowing who else might have been influenced by Antifa. Although the motive of the Dayton shooting remains uncertain, one thing is very clear. Whenever someone claims that no murders have been tied to Antifa, they are lying to you.
Ultimately, it shouldn't matter which side is more violent. Violence is wrong regardless of whether it comes from the arbitrary left or the arbitrary right. I'm not writing this to defend violence from the arbitrary right. I'm writing because I'm sick of liberals defending violence on the grounds that flimsy evidence shows that violence is supposedly more common on the other side.
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