-
Starting today August 7th, 2024, in order to post in the Married Couples, Courting Couples, or Singles forums, you will not be allowed to post if you have your Marital status designated as private. Announcements will be made in the respective forums as well but please note that if yours is currently listed as Private, you will need to submit a ticket in the Support Area to have yours changed.
-
CF has always been a site that welcomes people from different backgrounds and beliefs to participate in discussion and even debate. That is the nature of its ministry. In view of recent events emotions are running very high. We need to remind people of some basic principles in debating on this site. We need to be civil when we express differences in opinion. No personal attacks. Avoid you, your statements. Don't characterize an entire political party with comparisons to Fascism or Communism or other extreme movements that committed atrocities. CF is not the place for broad brush or blanket statements about groups and political parties. Put the broad brushes and blankets away when you come to CF, better yet, put them in the incinerator. Debate had no place for them. We need to remember that people that commit acts of violence represent themselves or a small extreme faction.
Upvote
0
Upvote
0
Upvote
0
Upvote
0
Upvote
0
Upvote
0
Left-Wing Terrorism Is on the Rise
- By Larniavc
- American Politics
- 87 Replies
Has it dawned on you that if you ‘know’ something is true but what you think is true isn’t actually showing up it might be because what you think you know is incorrect?
The evidence from actual research suggests that the position you hold is incorrect.
“Our primary predictor was a mutually exclusive categorical variable and included individuals who were identified as committed to Islamist, right-wing, or left-wing causes. Examples of groups supporting Islamist ideology included al-Qaeda and Hezbollah; examples of groups supporting right-wing ideology included the Ku Klux Klan and the National Alliance; and examples of groups supporting left-wing ideology included the Animal Liberation Front and the Weather Underground. Right-wing supporters represented 59%, left-wing 23%, and Islamist 18% of the sample. We created two dummy-coded variables with far-right ideology as the reference category.”
“First, data on extremists in the United States showed that left-wing radicals were less likely to use violence than right-wing and Islamist radicals. Second, using worldwide data we found that in comparison to right-wing and Islamist groups, attacks motivated by left-wing groups were less deadly. These substantive conclusions were not affected by the inclusion of a set of control variables. Thus, the main findings appear to be robust across levels of analysis (i.e., individuals, groups) and geographical scope of the data.
Our results are in line with past research showing that conservative ideology—represented in our datasets by both right-wing and Islamist causes—is positively related to violent political behavior. These results support the view that left-wing and right-wing extremists are not equivalent when it comes to the use of violence (48; see also [49] for related findings on the victims of hate crimes in the United States). Whereas our findings are not inconsistent with the idea that individuals espousing different ideologies may feel equally negative toward worldview-threatening others (50), they suggest that the social consequences of extreme right-wing hostility may be more harmful than those caused by the far left (see [50] for a similar point).
At the same time, available data leave us agnostic as to the exact causal process between these variables. It could be that characteristics of individuals who are drawn to right-wing causes predispose them to greater aggressiveness. Such a hypothesis would be in line with past research on the psychological makeup of conservatives versus liberals (5). It is also possible that it is rather the characteristics of the cause that drive the use of violence. For example, it could be that right-wing causes are associated with stronger moral convictions or a greater sense of threat among their followers, which makes their adherents willing to use more extreme measures to attain their cause. Finally, the content of the political cause (e.g., hierarchy-enhancing vs. hierarchy-attenuating) may interact with individual characteristics (e.g., value of equality vs. dominance) and result in varying levels of violence. Future research could investigate the exact mechanisms behind the relationships identified in our data.”
A comparison of political violence by left-wing, right-wing, and Islamist extremists in the United States and the world - PMC
Following the 9/11 attacks, there were large increases in Islamist terrorism driven especially by al-Qaeda, ISIS, and their affiliates. More recently, we have seen an upsurge in right-wing political extremism in countries around the world. Despite ...
pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Upvote
0
Upvote
0
