Yes, There Is a Left-Wing Violence Problem in This Country

By Beket Adams

Sunday, April 20, 2025

 

Cnn must broadcast from another planet.

 

Network correspondent Donie O’Sullivan suggested recently — with a straight face — that political violence in the United States is almost entirely a right-wing phenomenon and that there simply is “no equivalent on the left.”

 

This isn’t just untrue. It’s dangerous.

 

Denialism creates a permission structure, which invites more left-wing violence. If it can be excused, forgiven, downplayed, or ignored entirely, then what won’t be allowed?

 

“While America’s roots are soaked in bloodshed, violence in the country today is mostly from right-wing extremism,” asserted O’Sullivan in the latest installment in his MisinfoNation series, which supposedly investigates “the rise of extremism” in America.

 

The senior correspondent added, “From Oklahoma City to Charlottesville to January 6. There is simply no equivalent on the left.”

 

The only thing more disturbing than the alternate reality O’Sullivan has constructed is the newsman who (apparently) knows nothing about the news.

 

My colleague Noah Rothman is correct when he writes that to “tally individual episodes of political violence on a scorecard is to miss the point.” Nevertheless, it’s helpful now and again to lay out precisely what we mean by “left-wing political violence.” Some people clearly need a refresher, including CNN’s stable of crackerjack reporters.

 

For starters, let’s take the firebombing of Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro’s official residence last weekend. The alleged arsonist set the home ablaze because of what the Jewish governor “wants to do to the Palestinian people,” according to a search warrant signed by Pennsylvania State Police. It can’t be missed that this occurred over the same weekend that CNN aired a report alleging that the right in America has a stranglehold on political violence.

 

Next, let’s take the assassination last year of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, whose alleged killer, Luigi Mangione, held a mishmash of political views, including several that can be rightly described as left-wing. More to the point, Mangione has become a folk hero — sainted even! — among left-wing progressives.

 

There is no “equivalent on the left”?

 

Let’s ask House Majority Leader Steve Scalise how he was injured.

 

Let’s ask Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh about Nicholas Roske.

 

Let’s ask the directors of any of the 90 crisis pregnancy centers that have been attacked in the years following the overturn of Roe v. Wade. Let’s ask the American Catholic bishops about the hundreds of churches that have been vandalized during the same period, often with the same pro-abortion message.

 

Let’s talk to the Tesla dealerships whose inventories have been vandalized and set on fire by anti-Musk left-wing activists.

 

Let’s talk to the victims of radical left-wing LGBT ideology, including the students of the Covenant School in Nashville, Tenn., the students of STEM School Highlands Ranch in Douglas County, Colo., or the Rite Aid employees in Aberdeen, Md.

 

Let’s review the year 2020, when left-wing agitators burned entire communities to the ground, leading to roughly $2 billion in damages and at least a dozen deaths.

 

The Department of Homeland Security spent upwards of $12 million in 2020 attempting to protect federal buildings in Portland from left-wing rioters, including a courthouse that was the site of a weeks-long battle between agitators and federal officers.

 

“Fiery but mostly peaceful,” indeed.

 

Let’s ask the Family Research Council security guard who took a bullet in 2012 to stop would-be shooter Floyd Lee Corkins, who was set on killing as many FRC employees as possible following the organization’s inclusion on the left-wing Southern Poverty Law Center’s “hate map.” To ensure that his political point would not be misunderstood, Corkins even brought a bag of Chick-fil-A sandwiches to adorn the bodies of his would-be victims, like some loony toon left-wing burial ritual.

 

Lastly, let’s ask the victims of left-adjacent mass shooters Christopher Dorner, who murdered four people in 2013, and Micah Xavier Johnson, who murdered five police officers in 2016. Sure, it may be a stretch to lay Dorner and Johnson at the feet of the left. Then again, if the right is responsible for Timothy McVeigh, as O’Sullivan suggests, the left is responsible for MSNBC enthusiast Dorner and Louis Farrakhan acolyte Johnson.

 

Similarly, if January 6 is evidence for the right’s monopoly on political violence, as O’Sullivan alleges, then any of the numerous examples of Democratically aligned activists who have overtaken capitol buildings, government offices, and courthouses, often grinding official proceedings to a halt, serve as evidence of the left’s part in this country’s political violence.

 

Few, if any, will deny the existence of right-wing violence. Many on the right will concede this point without hesitation.

 

There is also a great deal of left-wing political violence. The key difference is that the left and its messaging apparatus in news media refuse to admit as much. They excuse the violence and, in many cases, even celebrate it! The Portland rioters who spent several weeks in 2020 battling federal officers for control of a courthouse drew no rebuke from the press. Instead, they enjoyed high praise and plaudits, including a glossy fashion spread in the Washington Post.

 

One is free to cling to the fiction that political violence in the United States is the exclusive remit of the right, but one would be wrong. Dangerously so.