DOJ Deletes Study Showing Domestic Terrorists Are Most Often Right Wing

[JosephZ]

DOJ Quietly Deletes Study After Charlie Kirk's Death That Says Right-Wing Extremists Engage in 'Far More' Political Violence

The U.S. Department of Justice appears to have quietly removed information online regarding right-wing violence following the assassination of Charlie Kirk.

As of Friday, Sept. 12, a 2024 study titled “What NIJ Research Tells Us About Domestic Terrorism” no longer appears on the DOJ website under President Donald Trump's administration. However, it is still viewable as an archived post on Wayback Machine.

“Militant, nationalistic, white supremacist violent extremism has increased in the United States. In fact, the number of far-right attacks continues to outpace all other types of terrorism and domestic violent extremism,” the first two lines of the study read.


It doesn't fit their current narrative, so of course they would delete it.


What NIJ Research Tells Us About Domestic Terrorism

Militant, nationalistic, white supremacist violent extremism has increased in the United States. In fact, the number of far-right attacks continues to outpace all other types of terrorism and domestic violent extremism. 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. A recent threat assessment by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security concluded that domestic violent extremists are an acute threat and highlighted a probability that COVID-19 pandemic-related stressors, long-standing ideological grievances related to immigration, and narratives surrounding electoral fraud will continue to serve as a justification for violent actions.

 

[rambot]

Colour me "another day at the office".


This government is a naked propaganda machine that doesn't even need to try to hide it anymore.

 

[Aryeh Jay]

Not surprised that the Biden administration would have published that so close to an election.

 

[rambot]

Not surprised that the Biden administration would have published that so close to an election.

Me neither.

Good plan.

 

[essentialsaltes]

Back under Trump 1.0, Congress had been asking for information on domestic terrorism and wasn't getting it. But it got out eventually.

White supremacists responsible for 100% of racially motivated domestic terrorism in 2018

Previously, there were some statements by Wray that 'the majority' of racially motivated incidents involved white supremacy. It appears that white supremacists were actually responsible for all of them. Alleged white supremacists were responsible for all race-based domestic terrorism incidents...

www.christianforums.com

The document groups the 46 individuals allegedly involved in domestic terror incidents last year into three categories: “race-based extremists,” “anti-government extremists” and “single-issue extremists.” But the map also includes more detailed data within these categories and all 25 of the individuals classified as “race-based extremists” are identified as “white supremacists.”

see also [WaPo analysis covering 2015-2021]:

The rise of domestic extremism & terrorism in America

Domestic terrorism incidents have soared to new highs in the United States, driven chiefly by white-supremacist, anti-Muslim and anti-government extremists on the far right, according to a Washington Post analysis of data compiled by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The...

www.christianforums.com

Since 2015, right-wing extremists have been involved in 267 plots or attacks and 91 fatalities, the data shows. At the same time, attacks and plots ascribed to far-left views accounted for 66 incidents leading to 19 deaths.

 

[JosephZ]

Individuals [between 2016 and 2025] that actively participated in ideologically motivated operations/actions that resulted in casualties/injuries or death or clearly intended to result in casualties/injuries (but failed) or were charged with conspiracy to kill or injure but were interdicted in the plotting stage.

What is PIRUS?

PIRUS is a deidentified cross-sectional, quantitative dataset of individuals in the United States who radicalized to the point of violent or non-violent ideologically motivated criminal activity, or ideologically motivated association with a foreign or domestic extremist organization from 1948 until 2022.

What are the criteria for an individual to be included in the PIRUS dataset?

In order to be eligible for inclusion, each individual must meet at least one of the following five criteria:

• Arrested/Charged: The individual was arrested for committing an ideologically-motivated crime. This includes arrests or their equivalents outside the United States.
• Indicted: The individual was indicted for an ideologically motivated crime. This includes indictments or their equivalents outside the United States.
• Killed in Action: The individual was killed as a result of his/her ideological activities. This includes being killed during the commission of an attack, including suicide, being killed during an attempted arrest/detaining by security forces, being targeted by security forces (even if not the primary target), and being killed in an unmanned aerial vehicle strike.
• Member of Designated Terrorist Organization (DTO): The individual is or was a member of a terrorist organization designated by the United States Department of State. Note: "Member" is defined broadly. This includes official members, individuals that the US government or another government claimed were members of a DTO (even if the group itself did not acknowledge the membership), and individuals which credible media sources link to the group (but not those based on pure speculation). It also includes individuals who claim membership in a DTO even if the group itself did not acknowledge membership.
• Violent Extremist Group Association (VEGA): The individual is or was associated with an extremist organization whose leader(s) or founder(s) has/have been indicted for an ideologically motivated violent offense. Note: "Association" is defined broadly. This includes official membership, membership claimed by a government, and self-identified association (even if the group does not acknowledge it). It also includes active participation in group activities, such as protests and newsletter subscriptions. "Association" does not include less active participation in group activities, such as signing a petition or listening to a speaker from the group at a public event.

In addition, each individual must:

• have radicalized in the United States,
• have espoused or currently espouse ideological motives, and
• show evidence that his or her behaviors are/were linked to the ideological motives he or she espoused/espouses.

National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START). (2024). Profiles of Individual Radicalization in the United States [Data file]. Retrieved from (http://www.start.umd.edu/pirus)

 

[rambot]

Moorish Sovereign Citizen movement?
Huh....
Heinz, all kinds.....

 

[ThatRobGuy]

I can't get to the Wayback machine at the moment to read it (I'll have to try later)

But if memory serves, some of the main contentions with the previous published report were

1) the selective applications of terms which led to a statistical gerrymandering of sorts (packing and cracking)... packing everything associated with right-leaning voting patterns with "right wing", but then everything associated with left-leaning voting patterns gets cracked out into separate groups so that no one of those groups is ever going to be bigger than the "right wing"

2) categorization bias, when looking at types of killings, certain types get omitted from the equation despite having some major similarities. Roughly 2/3 of gangs are racially exclusive The National Gang Intelligence Center notes that “race and ethnicity remain primary factors in gang composition”. If a Latino-only gang kills a Black person (or vice versa), it get labelled "gang violence", however, if a White-only gang kills a a person of color, it gets chalked up as an extremist Hate Crime.

3) there's an association bias of sorts, I'm sure we all remember the 2020 debates. Biden asks Trump to condemn Proud Boys, when Trump asks Biden to do the same for Antifa, the response was along the lines of "Antifa's not a group, it's just an idea".


So it's a double-standard of sorts where any person who's right-leaning who does it, it's attributed to "right-wing violence", however, for the other side of the fence, unless the person is a member of an "officially recognized group", they're about to disavow and distance from it.

 

[rambot]

3) there's an association bias of sorts, I'm sure we all remember the 2020 debates. Biden asks Trump to condemn Proud Boys, when Trump asks Biden to do the same for Antifa, the response was along the lines of "Antifa's not a group, it's just an idea".


So it's a double-standard of sorts where any person who's right-leaning who does it, it's attributed to "right-wing violence", however, for the other side of the fence, unless the person is a member of an "officially recognized group", they're about to disavow and distance from it.

You can call it a double standard, but it's a factual statement.

Also, I've never really udnerstood what "Antifa" ACTUALLY is referring to....because it isn't a "group", right?

Are we talking about people who are anti-fascists? Cause I personally would say that I am DEFINITELY against fascism. Is the argument that "well, they misdefinied people as fascist".


I wouldn't feel comfortable condemning "anti-fascism" at all...CERTAINLY not as a concept. America, you'll recall was REALLY REALLY antifascists for a while...even though some folks still REALLY loved the facists.

 

[Colo Millz]

https://www.cato.org/blog/politically-motivated-violence-rare-united-states

 

[JosephZ]

So it's a double-standard of sorts where any person who's right-leaning who does it, it's attributed to "right-wing violence", however, for the other side of the fence, unless the person is a member of an "officially recognized group", they're about to disavow and distance from it.

While Antifa isn't listed as a standalone category in the PIRUS data I showed in post #6, their activities are included.

 

[Stopped_lurking]

Individuals [between 2016 and 2025] that actively participated in ideologically motivated operations/actions that resulted in casualties/injuries or death or clearly intended to result in casualties/injuries (but failed) or were charged with conspiracy to kill or injure but were interdicted in the plotting stage.

View attachment 370178

What is PIRUS?

PIRUS is a deidentified cross-sectional, quantitative dataset of individuals in the United States who radicalized to the point of violent or non-violent ideologically motivated criminal activity, or ideologically motivated association with a foreign or domestic extremist organization from 1948 until 2022.

What are the criteria for an individual to be included in the PIRUS dataset?

In order to be eligible for inclusion, each individual must meet at least one of the following five criteria:

• Arrested/Charged: The individual was arrested for committing an ideologically-motivated crime. This includes arrests or their equivalents outside the United States.
• Indicted: The individual was indicted for an ideologically motivated crime. This includes indictments or their equivalents outside the United States.
• Killed in Action: The individual was killed as a result of his/her ideological activities. This includes being killed during the commission of an attack, including suicide, being killed during an attempted arrest/detaining by security forces, being targeted by security forces (even if not the primary target), and being killed in an unmanned aerial vehicle strike.
• Member of Designated Terrorist Organization (DTO): The individual is or was a member of a terrorist organization designated by the United States Department of State. Note: "Member" is defined broadly. This includes official members, individuals that the US government or another government claimed were members of a DTO (even if the group itself did not acknowledge the membership), and individuals which credible media sources link to the group (but not those based on pure speculation). It also includes individuals who claim membership in a DTO even if the group itself did not acknowledge membership.
• Violent Extremist Group Association (VEGA): The individual is or was associated with an extremist organization whose leader(s) or founder(s) has/have been indicted for an ideologically motivated violent offense. Note: "Association" is defined broadly. This includes official membership, membership claimed by a government, and self-identified association (even if the group does not acknowledge it). It also includes active participation in group activities, such as protests and newsletter subscriptions. "Association" does not include less active participation in group activities, such as signing a petition or listening to a speaker from the group at a public event.

In addition, each individual must:

• have radicalized in the United States,
• have espoused or currently espouse ideological motives, and
• show evidence that his or her behaviors are/were linked to the ideological motives he or she espoused/espouses.

National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START). (2024). Profiles of Individual Radicalization in the United States [Data file]. Retrieved from (http://www.start.umd.edu/pirus)

Here are a peer reviewed study on the same dataset, perhaps not over the exact same time. https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2122593119

 

[JosephZ]

One category I don't see is "Trans Rights Activist / Extremist". I'm not surprised by most of the violence being White-supremacist, but I also wonder how much recent violence (especially Columbine-style shootings) have been either carried out or planned by people who feel they're fighting for Transgender rights / survival.

They would be classified under the single-issue category.

 

[Stopped_lurking]

I can't get to the Wayback machine at the moment to read it (I'll have to try later)

But if memory serves, some of the main contentions with the previous published report were

1) the selective applications of terms which led to a statistical gerrymandering of sorts (packing and cracking)... packing everything associated with right-leaning voting patterns with "right wing", but then everything associated with left-leaning voting patterns gets cracked out into separate groups so that no one of those groups is ever going to be bigger than the "right wing"

2) categorization bias, when looking at types of killings, certain types get omitted from the equation despite having some major similarities. Roughly 2/3 of gangs are racially exclusive The National Gang Intelligence Center notes that “race and ethnicity remain primary factors in gang composition”. If a Latino-only gang kills a Black person (or vice versa), it get labelled "gang violence", however, if a White-only gang kills a a person of color, it gets chalked up as an extremist Hate Crime.

3) there's an association bias of sorts, I'm sure we all remember the 2020 debates. Biden asks Trump to condemn Proud Boys, when Trump asks Biden to do the same for Antifa, the response was along the lines of "Antifa's not a group, it's just an idea".


So it's a double-standard of sorts where any person who's right-leaning who does it, it's attributed to "right-wing violence", however, for the other side of the fence, unless the person is a member of an "officially recognized group", they're about to disavow and distance from it.

1) That doesn't seem to be the case with the PIRUS dataset. You can see the sub-categories directly.
2) How would that change it do you mean? Racial ideological violence would still be right-wing, regardless if it's latino or black gangs doing it. How many of the white racially segregated gangs aren't racist?
3) Antifa isn't a single organisation like Proud Boys, which had a central leader and was more organised.

 

[essentialsaltes]

Moorish Sovereign Citizen movement?
Huh....
Heinz, all kinds.....

Yep

9 Moorish Sovereign Citizens Taken into Custody after Traffic Stop Leads to Armed Standoff

All Suspects Now in Custody Following Armed Standoff Off I-95 in Mass.: Police Heavily armed men with handguns and rifles "claiming to be from a group that does not recognize our laws" fled a traffic stop in Wakefield, police said All remaining suspects involved in an hours long armed standoff...

www.christianforums.com

 

[ThatRobGuy]

You can call it a double standard, but it's a factual statement.

Also, I've never really udnerstood what "Antifa" ACTUALLY is referring to....because it isn't a "group", right?

Are we talking about people who are anti-fascists? Cause I personally would say that I am DEFINITELY against fascism. Is the argument that "well, they misdefinied people as fascist".


I wouldn't feel comfortable condemning "anti-fascism" at all...CERTAINLY not as a concept. America, you'll recall was REALLY REALLY antifascists for a while...even though some folks still REALLY loved the facists.

Isn't that a bit of a semantics game they're playing?
If I started a group called "End Baby Seal Clubbing" and we went out vandalizing things and throwing bottles of urine at people during protests
"If you don't like my group, that must mean you support baby seal clubbing" wouldn't be a honest defense about the nature of our activities.

For one thing, they claim it's just an idea, and not a group, but they have a chapter structure and merchandising

Rose City Antifa

Homepage of Rose City Antifa.

rosecityantifa.org

https://torch-antifa.org/chapters/

(and they use communist iconography...which automatically shows they have other priorities. One can be against fascism without aligning with the other extreme)

And while they claim to be "decentralized and leaderless", when you read about their chapter rules and structures, it sounds like they operate similar to the Hells Angels, where they claim to be "separate autonomous chapters", but in reality, that's likely just a legal defense tactic so if one does something really crazy, it doesn't incriminate anyone from the other chapters.

In all likelihood, there probably is a central leader (or leader(s)), and it's likely whoever came up with the rules for chapter admissions, but, like the HA, there's probably a myriad of strategic reasons they don't let anyone peek behind that curtain.

 

[RileyG]

DOJ Quietly Deletes Study After Charlie Kirk's Death That Says Right-Wing Extremists Engage in 'Far More' Political Violence

The U.S. Department of Justice appears to have quietly removed information online regarding right-wing violence following the assassination of Charlie Kirk.

As of Friday, Sept. 12, a 2024 study titled “What NIJ Research Tells Us About Domestic Terrorism” no longer appears on the DOJ website under President Donald Trump's administration. However, it is still viewable as an archived post on Wayback Machine.

“Militant, nationalistic, white supremacist violent extremism has increased in the United States. In fact, the number of far-right attacks continues to outpace all other types of terrorism and domestic violent extremism,” the first two lines of the study read.


It doesn't fit their current narrative, so of course they would delete it.


What NIJ Research Tells Us About Domestic Terrorism

Militant, nationalistic, white supremacist violent extremism has increased in the United States. In fact, the number of far-right attacks continues to outpace all other types of terrorism and domestic violent extremism. 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. A recent threat assessment by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security concluded that domestic violent extremists are an acute threat and highlighted a probability that COVID-19 pandemic-related stressors, long-standing ideological grievances related to immigration, and narratives surrounding electoral fraud will continue to serve as a justification for violent actions.

Regardless, I’m tired of violence. Can everyone please get along?

 

[FireDragon76]

Moorish Sovereign Citizen movement?
Huh....
Heinz, all kinds.....

They are loosely related to the Nation of Islam, coming out of the same Black Nationalist/Conspiracy brew.

 

[ThatRobGuy]

That doesn't seem to be the case with the PIRUS dataset. You can see the sub-categories directly.

I can see the subcategories, but unfortunately it wants me to put in personal info in order to download the full dataset, so I'm looking to see if there's another source I can get it from.

I'm curious to see the actual data (where it lists out the cases) because one of the critiques I'm seeing floating around, some events and incidents are notable by their absence, and certain notable incidents get omitted based on the fact that prosecutor decided to not to pursue charges.

This is one I see commonly being cited

Government drops charges against all inauguration protesters

"The solidarity we showed as defendants won out," said one activist whose charges were previously dropped.

www.nbcnews.com

Another thing I see being mentioned is that high profile incidents aren't getting labelled correctly, or not labelled at all.

One example I heard was the Chaz/Chop situation that happened in Seattle.

When I look at Washington State...and "anti-government/sovereign citizens"

25 people, and 23 getting attributed to "far-right"? At the very least, Raz Simone (the leader of that whole thing, who was walking around with an assault rifle) should at least be 1 notch in the far-left category right?

I may end up creating a burner account later just to download it.

How would that change it do you mean? Racial ideological violence would still be right-wing, regardless if it's latino or black gangs doing it. How many of the white racially segregated gangs aren't racist?

It changes it because it's not so much the data itself, but how it's being used to shape public perceptions.

In contemporary discourse in the US
"Right = Republican"
"Left = Democrat"

I realize that's often too superficial of a categorization, but it is how the majority discusses it, none the less.

Really, what people are trying to discuss (and yes, disingenuously score political points with), is which voter faction/bloc presents the biggest risk of violence when they're not getting their way.

So attributing right-wing motives/reasoning to things that left-wing people are doing obfuscates the public debate people are actually trying to have.

For instance, if a left-wing pro-Palestinian activist were to commit arson on a Synagogue or assault a Jewish student (despite being a politically left voter, who opposes republicans on almost everything), that action would be chalked up as antisemitism, therefore 'a right wing ideology'.

And then gets added to the tally that's aiming to convey the message "Right wing = Republican/conservative, and look - there's more right wing violence"

There are times when it does line up...for-instance, anti-abortion violence. If someone is bombing an abortion clinic, it's stemming from a right-wing ideology, and is overwhelmingly likely that it's a right-wing person doing it.

However, the Chaz/Chop I mentioned earlier would a good example of when it doesn't line up, "anti-government/sovereign citizens" movements get the label of "right-wing" (therefore it gets added to the bucket that people interpret as "republican/conservative"), but the people participating in that certainly weren't "right wing conservatives"

 

[Aryeh Jay]

Perhaps the current FBI can reevaluate the data and release it.