An in-depth look at the ideology of domestic terror attacks in the U.S. has revealed that 2025 set a 30-year high for radical left extremism, according to the nonpartisan Center for Strategic & International Studies.
“The first half of 2025 was marked by an increase in left-wing terrorist attacks and plots in the United States, which continues a trend noticeable over the last decade,” according to CSIS analysts Daniel Byman and Riley McCabe. “In absolute terms, left-wing incidents are on track in 2025 to reach historically high levels in the last 30 years.”
Not only is the left more violent, but the right is markedly less violent under President Donald Trump this year.
“Moreover, 2025 marks the first time in more than 30 years that left-wing attacks outnumber those from the far right,” the study read. “Indeed, the increase in left-wing attacks is particularly noticeable because attacks from right-wing perpetrators have sharply declined in 2025.”
The study comes as President Donald Trump has vowed to investigate the funding of left-wing protests and his executive order labeling antifa a domestic terrorist organization.
“Antifa is a militarist, anarchist enterprise that explicitly calls for the overthrow of the United States Government, law enforcement authorities, and our system of law,” Trump’s executive order signed last week read. “It uses illegal means to organize and execute a campaign of violence and terrorism nationwide to accomplish these goals.
“This campaign involves coordinated efforts to obstruct enforcement of Federal laws through armed standoffs with law enforcement, organized riots, violent assaults on Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other law enforcement officers, and routine doxing of and other threats against political figures and activists.
“Antifa recruits, trains, and radicalizes young Americans to engage in this violence and suppression of political activity, then employs elaborate means and mechanisms to shield the identities of its operatives, conceal its funding sources and operations in an effort to frustrate law enforcement, and recruit additional members.”
The attacks from the left began to rise in 2015, as Trump was starting his political career in earnest and vowing to unseat Democrats from the White House after two full terms of former President Barack Obama.
“Our analysis of terrorism trends in the United States shows that, indeed, left-wing violence has risen in the last 10 years, particularly since President Donald Trump’s rise to political prominence in 2016,” the study noted.
“More contentious politics in the United States and the expansion of the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement appear to have reenergized violent left-wing extremists.”
Still, the left is not as violent as it was last century, according to the study.
“The left-wing movement as a whole has not returned to its violent heights of the 1960s and 1970s, but the number of terrorist incidents involving left-wing extremists so far this year puts 2025 on pace to be the left’s most violent year in more than three decades,” it read.
As far as the reasons for the precipitous decline of right-wing extremism, the CSIS speculates Trump is winning on issues the right has long protested, rendering no reason to protest for them.
“This decline is striking, and explanations are speculative,” CSIS wrote. “One possibility is that many traditional grievances that violent right-wing extremists have espoused in the past — opposition to abortion, hostility to immigration, and suspicions of government agencies, among others — are now embraced by President Trump and his administration.
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