Conservatives or liberals more violent at protests
Executive summary
Empirical incident-level research and terrorism datasets indicate that right-wing extremists are responsible for more frequent and deadlier political violence than left-wing extremists in recent U.S. history, while scholarship on everyday protests shows a more complex picture in which mainstream liberals are likelier to tolerate disruptive tactics but not necessarily lethal violence [1] [2] [3].
1. What the event data say: right-wing violence is more frequent and deadlier
Large comparative datasets compiled by academic teams find that left-wing actors are less likely to perpetrate violent attacks, whereas right-wing extremist violence in the United States has been as frequent and far more lethal; one cross-ideological comparison reported left-wing extremists were responsible for a substantially smaller share of violent acts compared with right-wing and Islamist extremists [1] [4], and CSIS’s review highlights that left-wing attacks tend to be non-lethal while right-wing attacks have produced higher lethality in recent years [2].
2. Distinguishing extremists from mainstream protesters
Scholars and policy analysts caution that “left-wing” and “right-wing” terrorism labels do not map neatly onto the mainstream Democratic and Republican coalitions, and most liberals and conservatives are not violent; CSIS explicitly warns the terminology does not correspond to the overwhelming majority of political liberals or conservatives [2], and START’s work likewise compares extremist subgroups rather than everyday partisan protesters [1].
3. Protest tactics, tolerance and perceived legitimacy
Survey and experimental research shows ideological differences in attitudes toward protest tactics: some studies find liberals more willing to endorse disruptive or speech-limiting tactics (for example on campuses) and more supportive of protest as a high-value political activity [3], while other work shows that both conservatives and liberals react negatively to violence and that ideology does not change the basic psychological reaction to violent protest [5].
4. The role of organized groups and counter-protest dynamics
Reporting and event-monitoring projects document that organized far-right groups—militias, Proud Boys affiliates and similar networks—have been prominent at violent confrontations and at targeted mobilizations such as Stop the Steal and armed rallies, contributing to a higher incidence of right-aligned violence at certain events [6]. Conversely, far-left actors, including elements sometimes labeled “antifa,” have been involved in clashes and property damage, especially in street-level confrontations, but those incidents have tended to be less lethal in aggregate according to major incident datasets [7] [1].
5. Perception, partisan bias, and the politics of claiming violence
Public perceptions of which side is “more violent” are heavily partisan: polls show liberals overwhelmingly say right-wing violence is the bigger problem while conservatives overwhelmingly say left-wing violence is greater [8], and experimental studies demonstrate partisan asymmetries in how people evaluate protests depending on ideological alignment—respondents judge protests more harshly when they oppose their side [9] [10]. That means media framing and elite rhetoric can magnify perceived asymmetries independent of raw incident counts [9] [10].
6. What the evidence does not settle and important caveats
Existing sources compare extremist incident datasets, survey experiments, event monitoring and public opinion, but they do not provide a single, definitive metric of “violence at protests” across all contexts; dataset definitions vary, lethality and frequency are different measures, and many studies explicitly separate organized extremist attacks from broader protest behavior—so claims that “one side is categorically more violent” must be contextualized by whether the focus is extremist terrorism, street clashes, campus disruptions, or tactical tolerance [1] [2] [5].
7. Bottom line
When measured by documented incidents of extremist political violence and lethality, the preponderance of evidence in the cited research and analyses points to greater frequency and deadliness among right-wing extremist actors in recent U.S. years, while mainstream ideological differences show liberals more accepting of disruptive protest tactics and strong partisan bias in perceiving violence—meaning the answer depends on whether the question targets extremist violence, everyday protest tactics, or public perception [1] [2] [3] [8].