At the Washington Times: Is the right primarily responsible for violence?

Nov 9, 2018 | Featured

Dr. John Lott has a new piece at the Washington Times on these claims that violence is primarily perpetrated by those on the political right. The piece starts this way:

The media is intent on blaming President Trump and Republicans for any violence. They accuse Republicans of stoking the violence and claim that “right-wingers” have been more violent than their counterparts on the left.

Both sides want to claim that they are the ones who have been wronged. Democrats point to pipe bombs sent to Democrats. Republicans point to members of the Trump administration and even senators who have been accosted at restaurants. Then there are the ricin letters, the shootings and the fires at party offices.

The media doesn’t view the scales as balanced. Washington Post columnist Max Boot makes a common claim: “Right-wing terrorism has become far more commonplace — and, since 9/11, far more deadly — than Islamist terrorism in America.” Likewise, CNN’s Don Lemon noted last week: “the biggest terror threat in this country is white men, most of them radicalized to the right, and we have to start doing something about them.” And, of course, the media has spent a great deal of time claiming that Mr. Trump and other Republicans have stirred up this violence.

Mr. Boot blames Mr. Trump for stoking the anger that led to the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre by “denouncing ‘globalists’ such as Jewish financier George Soros.” He notes that Republican House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California wrote a tweet criticizing George Soros, Tom Steyer and Michael Bloomberg for each spending many tens of millions of dollars in trying to “BUY this election.” Mr. Boot points out that “Soros and Bloomberg are Jewish; Steyer is an Episcopalian whose father was.

But there is another problem with the media’s narrative. “Right-wingers” don’t commit terrorism at an usually high rate, compared to other groups.

The United States is well below the world average in mass public shootings, and those that do occur rarely appear to be motivated by religion or politics. At least, these beliefs are rarely significant enough to be mentioned in news coverage of attacks.

The Crime Prevention Research Center, of which I am president, looked at the political and religious views that were mentioned in the news media of all U.S. mass public shootings from 1998 to now. Following what was the FBI’s traditional definition, we only count cases where four or more people were killed in the course of a single incident at a public place. It also cannot involve some other type of crime such as a gang fight or a robbery. For 68 percent of the shooters, media accounts never mentioned the religious affiliation of the killer. Seventy-two percent of killers’ political affiliations were never mentioned.

It is hard to see any pattern of political beliefs. Three percent were identified as conservative or Republican, and 3 percent as liberal or Democrat. Another 3 percent were deemed “right-wingers,” and 1 percent as left-wingers.

Islamic extremists are one group that stands out. They have carried out 10 percent of mass public shootings in the United States.

Islamic extremists were even more likely to perpetrate vehicle attacks or bombings.

Worldwide between January 2000 and April 2018, radical Muslims committed 83 percent of mass killings with vehicles. Including vehicle attacks with fewer than four fatalities, the percentage drops to 73 percent. . . .

The rest of the piece is available here.

johnrlott

4 Comments

  1. Doug Huffman

    The Washington Times is the last of the traditional news medial that I even try to read, and their coding becomes ever more inconvenient. I look at it everyday while searching for some good and non-threatening news. I am reading this, your op-ed, on your CPRC site after not being able to find it at TWT.

    Perhaps reconsider your book with TWT?

  2. Jim Fontana

    Are mass shootings the only evidence of violence? Are not riots, beatings, damage to property manifestations of violence? Why are the actions of BLM and Antifa not called out in this discussion? And when they are, do they then not swing the blame for growing political violence firmly in the hands of the polity left?

    • johnrlott

      Of course, you are right that there are many types of violence.

  3. Alta

    Thank you for the wonderful article

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