The U.S. Department of Justice has removed a study from its website that found far-right extremists were responsible for more deadly attacks in the United States than any other domestic group over the last three decades, days after conservative activist Charlie Kirk was shot and killed in Utah.
The vanished study, titled What NIJ Research Tells Us About Domestic Terrorism National Institute of Justice report, was removed from the DOJ website between September 11 and 12, shortly after Kirk, a Trump ally and founder of Turning Point USA, was gunned down at Utah Valley University, as The Guardian reports.
The study, which is now archived, opens as follows:
"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"
According to the study, extremists motivated by white nationalist and militia-style ideologies were the largest drivers of domestic terrorism-related deaths. It also cited Department of Homeland Security assessments warning that narratives about immigration, elections, and the COVID-19 pandemic could continue to serve as justifications for violence.
The NIJ article also detailed the creation of databases such as the Profiles of Individual Radicalization in the United States (PIRUS) and the Bias Incidents and Actors Study (BIAS), designed to track pathways into extremism and factors associated with committing hate crimes. It highlighted risk factors including co-conspirator involvement, target selection, and online radicalization, as well as intervention points for prevention.
The report eventually concludes that "militant, nationalistic, white supremacist violent extremism has increased in the United States" and that far-right attacks continue to outpace all other forms of domestic terrorism.
The Department of Justice had said on Tuesdat that it was only "reviewing its websites and materials in accordance with recent executive orders," according to 404Media.
Independent analysts noted that the study's conclusions align with prior work from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, which found that right-wing actors were responsible for the majority of terrorist incidents in the United States since 1994.
As The Guardian points out, Heidi Beirich of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism told Congress in 2023 that "data on acts of political violence clearly shows that it is the far right that is driving terrorism in the U.S." She added that while some violence comes from far-left actors, "it is simply not on the scale or as deadly."
Originally published on Latin Times
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