It is simply a fact that the far right has been responsible for most of the political violence committed in the United States since the start of the 21st century, with particular emphasis on the past 10 years of American political life.
There was the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va., where a far-right extremist killed a counterdemonstrator. There was the 2018 Tree of Life attack in Pittsburgh, where a shooter killed 11 people (all of whom were Jewish) and wounded six others at a synagogue. Echoing the so-called great replacement conspiracy theory, the perpetrator blamed Jewish people for bringing migrant “invaders” into the United States. “I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered,” he posted on the social media website Gab, a haven for online white supremacists. “Screw your optics, I’m going in.”
There was also the 2019 slaughter in El Paso, where a shooter targeted Latinos — killing 23 people and injuring 22 others — after posting a manifesto in which he condemned “cultural and ethnic replacement” and a “Hispanic invasion” of the United States. Nor should we forget the 2022 Buffalo supermarket attack, in which still another shooter citing the great replacement conspiracy theory targeted members of a minority group, killing 10 people (all of whom were Black) and wounding three others.
In a piece written just after the Buffalo shooting, my colleague David Leonhardt, citing data from the Anti-Defamation League, observed that out of 450 killings committed by political extremists from 2012 to 2022, about 75 percent were committed by right-wing extremists, with more than half connected to white supremacists. “As this data shows,” he concluded, “the American political right has a violence problem that has no equivalent on the left.”
What’s critical for us to understand that this isn’t a problem of the fringe. Not only was President Trump permissive of right-wing violence throughout his first term — consider his reaction to the violence in Charlottesville — but after losing his bid for re-election, he also led an organized effort to overturn the results, culminating in a riot in the Capitol. And what was one of his first acts back in office? He pardoned the rioters, in as clear an endorsement of violence on his behalf as one can imagine.
In the years since the Jan. 6 attack, supporters of Trump, honoring his demands to “stop the steal,” engaged in a campaign of intimidation and harassment toward election workers. Trump himself used one of the attacks — the assault on Paul Pelosi, the husband of a former Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi — as fodder for jokes and entertainment. Speaking of entertainment: There is also much to be said about the right-wing media ecosystem, where prominent voices indulge and even endorse violence against their political opponents.
None of this is to say that political violence can’t come from the political left. We have seen two instances over the past month of violence with a left-wing valence: In Washington, D.C., a man gunned down two Israeli Embassy staff members, and in Boulder, Colo., a man threw Molotov cocktails at demonstrators calling for the release of Israeli hostages in Gaza, injuring twelve people.
Even so, the point is that the preponderance of political violence in the United States comes from extremists on the right, one of whom has been charged with attacking two Minnesota state lawmakers last week — State Representative Melissa Hortman and State Senator John Hoffman, both Democrats — killing Hortman, her husband and her dog and wounding Hoffman and his wife.
The man accused of the shootings, Vance Boelter, has been identified as a Trump supporter and an adherent of a far-right Christian movement. He was motivated, it appears, by his opposition to abortion, which makes him one of many men in recent memory who have killed in the name of “life.”
All of this taken together shows us why it is important to not treat this bout of political violence as a generalized problem of American political life. It is, instead, a specific problem of a specific ideological tendency: one obsessed with the maintenance of rigid hierarchies of race and gender and willing to defend them by any means necessary.
What I Wrote
My column this week was on the strategic miscalculation of the president’s draconian immigration policies.
Here we see Trump’s fundamental problem. He and his White House seem to think that the cost of their policies — the fallout from their effort to mold the country to fit their nativist and mercantilist obsessions — are indirect. Who cares about a few thousand protesters in Los Angeles or even a few million undocumented immigrants out of the more than 340 million people in the United States? But the reality is that to harden the border and more tightly police immigration — to remove as many unauthorized people as possible — is to necessarily subject American citizens to the scrutiny and violence of the state. External control requires internal suppression.
I joined my colleagues Michelle Cottle and David French on a video episode of The Opinions, and I’ve also been doing YouTube videos on American history. The most recent one tackled the origins of Jim Crow.
Now Reading
Kerry Howley on Pete Hegseth, for New York magazine.
Erik Baker on Trump’s social Darwinistic worldview, for Harper’s.
Madiba K. Dennie on the equal protection clause of the Constitution, for Balls and Strikes.
Max Rivlin-Nadler on Zohran Mamdani, for The New York Review of Books.
Isaac Chotiner on Trump’s strategy or lack thereof on Iran, for The New Yorker.
Photo of the Week
A snowy scene at Williams College. I took this in January when I was teaching a class on the Constitution for the school’s winter session.
Now Eating: Rosemary White Beans With Tomato
The main modification I made to this recipe, which comes from New York Times Cooking, was to cook the onions for 30 minutes, until they were basically caramelized, and to keep them in the pan for the sauce, rather than remove some for garnish. I have nothing to recommend this change other than it was my preference. I also added the juice of one lemon at the end, to enhance the flavor. Again, this was just preference.
Ingredients
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½ cup extra-virgin olive oil
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1 large white onion, halved and thinly sliced into half-moons
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Fine sea salt
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6 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
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2 teaspoons minced fresh rosemary, or ½ teaspoon dried rosemary
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¼ teaspoon red-pepper flakes, more for serving
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2 (15-ounce) cans white beans, such as cannellini or butter beans (preferably canned with salt), drained and rinsed
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1 cup chopped tomatoes, fresh or canned
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1 ½ teaspoons finely grated lemon zest
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1 cup chopped fresh parsley leaves and tender stems, more for garnish
Directions
In a large skillet, heat 2 tablespoons oil over medium-high heat until it shimmers. Add onion and cook, stirring occasionally, until well browned all over, 7 to 10 minutes. Reduce heat to medium, transfer half the onions to a plate and season lightly with salt.
Add remaining 6 tablespoons oil, the garlic, rosemary, red-pepper flakes and a pinch of salt to the onions in the skillet. Cook until garlic is pale gold at the edges (don’t let the garlic turn brown), 2 to 5 minutes.
Add beans, chopped tomatoes, ½ cup of water and 1 teaspoon salt to skillet; stir until beans are well coated with sauce. Bring to a simmer over medium-low heat and cook until broth thickens, stirring occasionally, about 10 to 15 minutes.
Stir in lemon zest and parsley. Taste, adding more salt if needed. Garnish with reserved onions, more parsley, olive oil and red-pepper flakes, if you’d like. The beans thicken as they cool, but you can add more water to make them brothier, according to your preference.
Jamelle Bouie became a New York Times Opinion columnist in 2019. Before that he was the chief political correspondent for Slate magazine. He is based in Charlottesville, Va., and Washington. @jbouie
The post Right-Wing Violence Is Not a Fringe Issue appeared first on New York Times.
