The Justice Department quietly removed from its website a study showing far-right extremists were responsible for the bulk of ideologically motivated deaths – a move that comes as the GOP seeks to back claims from President Trump that the “radical left” poses a greater danger.
The 2024 study, in which several criminal justice researchers reviewed National Institute of Justice data, found far more instances of deaths credited to right-wing groups.
The study was still available on the DOJ website last week, but a researcher on extremism posted on social media that it had been removed in the days after the killing of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk.
“The number of far-right attacks continues to outpace all other types of terrorism and domestic violent extremism,” the study says.
“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,” the study states.
“In this same period, far-left extremists committed 42 ideologically motivated attacks that took 78 lives.”
The removal of the study was first reported by 404 media Tuesday, which credited Daniel Malmer, a PhD student at UNC-Chapel Hill who is studying extremism, with first noticing the removal of the study on Sept. 13.
In a post on social media, Malmer said the study had been visible the day before.
DOJ did not respond to request for comment on the removal of the study, but the page now says the department is “reviewing its websites…in accordance with recent Executive Orders.”
It’s not clear what executive orders would require such action.
Since Kirk’s death, Trump has repeatedly blamed the left when asked about extremism within fringes of both parties.
“If you look at the problem, the problem is on the left. It’s not on the right, some people like to say the right, the problem we have is on the left,” Trump told reporters Sunday. “And when you look at the agitator, you look at the scum that speaks so badly of our country, the American flag burnings all over the place, that’s the left. That’s not the right.”
That claim is countered by numerous studies – including the one removed from the DOJ website.
The FBI in recent years has warned of the risks of domestic violent extremism, including those motivated by beliefs in fraud related to the 2020 election, racial and ethnic prejudice, and even COVID.
Other recent studies have backed the conclusion that murders by far-right extremists are higher than those perpetrated by the left.
A study by the Cato Institute, a Libertarian group, found that since 2020, right-wing extremists were responsible for more than half of all deaths, 44, while left-wing extremists were responsible for 22 percent, a total of 18 deaths.
