Fact check: Do right-wing or left-wing groups commit more hate crimes in the United States?

1. Why recent studies point to a sharper right‑wing toll

Multiple independent reviews published in September 2025 conclude that right‑wing extremists account for the majority of politically motivated killings and domestic terrorism fatalities in recent decades, with several estimates indicating roughly 75–80% of domestic terrorism deaths since 2001 are attributable to right‑wing actors ^[1]. These analyses cite high‑casualty incidents such as the 2015 Charleston church shooting, the 2018 Tree of Life synagogue massacre, the 2019 El Paso Walmart attack, and the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing as driving much of the fatality gap, and note that the lethality and frequency of right‑wing attacks have outpaced left‑wing incidents across multiple datasets and time windows ^{[2] [7]}.

2. Long‑run empirical evidence still favors the right‑wing dominance thesis

A peer‑reviewed empirical study covering ideologically motivated homicides from 1990 through 2020 found that far‑right violence both outnumbered and killed more people than far‑left violence over the 30‑year span, while acknowledging a measurable uptick in far‑left activity in the most recent five‑year window ^[3]. That study’s long temporal scope strengthens the conclusion that the structural balance of ideologically driven lethal violence has favored the far right, though it does not imply that far‑left violence is negligible or that trends cannot shift in future periods ^[3].

3. FBI hate‑crime statistics: comprehensive figures but missing ideological tagging

The FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program provides nationwide counts of reported hate crimes and victims—11,679 incidents involving 14,243 victims in 2024—but the statistical system does not record offenders’ political ideology, meaning reported hate‑crime totals cannot be reliably partitioned into right‑wing versus left‑wing categories ^{[5] [4]}. The 2024 FBI report and related summaries show year‑to‑year fluctuations and a recent decline in reported incidents from 2023 to 2024, but those trends reflect reporting patterns, offense types, and targeted characteristics, not perpetrators’ political alignment ^[6].

4. Different measurement choices explain apparent contradictions

Apparent disagreements across sources stem from different measurement questions: researchers examining “domestic terrorism fatalities” or “ideologically motivated homicides” classify incidents by attacker motive and ideological affiliation, whereas FBI hate‑crime statistics count bias‑motivated offenses without ideological labels for perpetrators ^{[1] [4]}. Consequently, studies focused on lethal extremist violence consistently find a right‑wing predominance, while raw hate‑crime counts alone are insufficient to attribute responsibility across the political spectrum; the two evidentiary streams answer distinct public‑safety questions ^{[2] [5]}.

5. Where the evidence is strongest — and where uncertainty remains

Evidence is strongest on the point that fatalities from domestic extremist attacks have disproportionately involved right‑wing perpetrators in recent decades, as multiple independent analyses and a long‑term empirical study concur ^{[1] [2] [3]}. Uncertainty remains regarding the overall count of nonlethal hate‑crime incidents by political orientation because national reporting systems lack ideological coding, and local law‑enforcement reporting completeness varies; therefore, any claim that one political wing commits more hate crimes overall cannot be substantiated solely from the FBI hate‑crime dataset ^{[4] [6]}.

6. What policymakers, researchers, and media should consider next

To reduce ambiguity, authorities and analysts should improve incident-level data collection by coding perpetrator motive and extremist affiliation when available, while guarding civil‑liberties safeguards in classification, and researchers should triangulate open‑source, law‑enforcement, and court records to map ideology to offenses more systematically ^{[1] [3]}. Media and public officials should distinguish between “hate‑crime incident counts” and “ideologically motivated lethal violence” to avoid conflating datasets with different scopes; clear labeling will prevent misleading comparisons and better inform prevention strategies ^{[2] [5]}.

7. Bottom line for the original claim

Based on current research through 2025, right‑wing extremist violence has produced more fatalities and more frequent deadly domestic‑terrorism attacks than left‑wing extremist violence, supported by multiple September 2025 analyses and a multi‑decade empirical study covering 1990–2020 ^{[1] [2] [3]}. Yet, because federal hate‑crime statistics do not record political ideology of offenders, the question “which wing commits more hate crimes” cannot be answered definitively from FBI hate‑crime counts alone; resolving that requires richer, motive‑coded incident data and continued, transparent research ^{[4] [5]}.