How many right-wing extremist attacks occurred in the US in 2020?

1. What the major analysts say about 2020: overwhelming share, not a single-number

National and independent analysts converge on the conclusion that right‑wing extremists were responsible for most U.S. domestic terrorist attacks and plots in 2020, with CSIS reporting that right‑wing actors committed over 90% of attacks and plots between January 1 and May 8, 2020 and that right‑wing attacks rose steeply in the preceding years ^[1], while encyclopedic summaries and synthesis pieces likewise state that right‑wing extremists accounted for roughly 90% of domestic attacks and plots in 2020 ^[3]; however, these sources present percentages and time slices rather than an exact calendar‑year count ^{[1] [3]}.

2. Independent incident tallies are fragmentary and aggregated across years

The Anti‑Defamation League’s Center on Extremism compiles incident lists and reports 67 domestic terror incidents by right‑wing extremists from 2017–2022 and notes 40 incidents in the three‑year span 2020–2022, but the ADL’s public reporting in the provided snippet does not break that 40 down into a discrete 2020 total on its face ^[2]. Other databases and trackers mentioned in the reporting—such as academic centers and international indexes—report counts for different periods or for the broader category “terror events,” so direct year‑for‑year comparisons are not straightforward ^{[4] [5]}.

3. Partial‑year snapshots and examples illustrate the pattern but not the sum

Concrete examples and partial‑year analyses underscore the trend: CSIS’s early‑2020 window cites right‑wing responsibility for over 90% of attacks and plots through early May 2020 ^[1], and other analysts and outlets emphasize high lethality and frequency of right‑wing violence in recent years ^{[6] [7]}. The reporting also documents notable single incidents in 2020 — for example, a May 29 drive‑by shooting in Oakland tied to anti‑government “boogaloo” actors — which illustrate how incidents were distributed across ideologies but do not produce a single national count ^[2].

4. Why counts differ and why a single number is hard to produce

Differences in methodology explain much of the ambiguity: analysts use different definitions (terrorist attack vs. plot vs. foiled plot vs. violent extremist incident), include or exclude nonfatal assaults, and aggregate across multi‑year windows; law enforcement, academic, and NGO datasets are often complementary but not identical, and some public reports emphasize proportions and trends rather than exhaustive annual tallies ^{[2] [1] [4]}. That methodological divergence, reflected in ADL, CSIS, START/UMD and other sources, means the provided materials do not yield a single definitive 2020 count ^{[2] [1] [4]}.

5. Balanced conclusion and next‑best answer

Based on the reporting available here, the defensible factual conclusion is that right‑wing extremists were responsible for the overwhelming majority of U.S. domestic terrorist attacks and plots in 2020 — with several sources indicating about 90% for at least the early months of 2020 — but the exact number of right‑wing extremist attacks in calendar year 2020 cannot be produced from these sources because they either give percentages, partial‑year windows, or multi‑year aggregates rather than a single, nationwide 2020 total ^{[1] [3] [2]}. Readers seeking a precise single‑year tally should consult primary incident databases (for example GTD, FBI or aggregated NGO lists) and verify inclusion criteria, because the public commentary and analyses cited here prioritize trend interpretation over publishing a standardized annual count ^{[1] [4]}.