Political wing/violence

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About

This page was created in response to the question of whether liberal fears of right-wing violence are exaggerated. For now, this discussion is limited to events within the United States or primarily carried out by US citizens.

First, it is necessary to decide which events are attributable to liberals, which to conservatives, and those whose participants are not clearly or overwhelmingly adherents of one philosophy or the other. "Right-wing" participants are tentatively defined as those with heavier weaponry or citing religious or patriarchal motivations, while "left-wing" is tentatively defined as those acting in defense of civil rights (or in protest of violation of same).

Events

Event wing # killed # injured # perpetrators
Los Angeles riots of 1992 left (tentative) 53 2000 1000+?
Rodney King beating (led to above) right 0 1 4
1995 Oklahoma City bombing right 168 850+ 2
Jonestown (airstrip murders) right 5 11 ~10
2009 shooting of George Tiller right 1 0 1
Columbine High School massacre right 13 24 2
Virginia Tech massacre insanity 32 23 1
2009 Knoxville shooting right 2 7 1
Kent State shootings right 4 9 29
2001 Cincinnati riots

This table is not complete.

Notes:

  • Assigning blame to liberals for the LA riots is very dubious; the political affiliation of the individuals involved is largely unknown, and the riots did not have any particularly political goal to them -- they were mainly in anger at the King beating (or possibly just using it as an excuse). It is being accepted for now in order to see how the numbers stack up if conservative premises are used.
  • Incidents of largely self-inflicted violence which I am leaving out, for now: 1995 Waco Massacre, Jonestown (the main suicide -- 909 people), Ruby Ridge

Sources

new

This has not yet been included in the above table:

Links

Reference

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