It's there more violent speech and sentiment from the left or the right

1. Why recent headlines say “the left is rising” — counts, timing, and the 2025 spike

A high-profile 2025 analysis found that between January and July 4, 2025, far-left plots and attacks outnumbered far-right ones, and some authors describe 2025 as the first year in decades where left-wing incidents exceeded right-wing incidents ^{[1] [4]}. That finding emphasizes incident counts in a narrow, recent window and highlights growth in anti-government and law-enforcement-targeted actions attributed to left-leaning motives. The same authors caution this is a shifting snapshot: they note that the lethality of left-wing incidents remains low, with most left-wing events nonfatal and focused on property or institutional targets, and they urge treating 2025’s pattern as one piece of a complex trend rather than definitive proof of a long-term reversal ^[1]. Critics of that reading point out small sample sizes and coding ambiguities as reasons to be cautious ^[4].

2. Why longer-term data keeps pointing to the right — fatalities, persistence, and scale

Multiple syntheses of longer-term databases and analyses emphasize that right-wing violence accounts for the majority of domestic terrorism fatalities since 2001, commonly cited in the range of roughly three-quarters of deaths, and that right-wing actors have produced more lethal lone-actor and organized attacks over time ^{[2] [3]}. These studies focus on fatalities and historical continuity: while left-wing incidents may have increased in frequency in 2025, right-wing violence remains more lethal and has shown persistence across eras. The distinction between incident counts and fatality-weighted impact is critical: an increase in low-lethality protests or plots will change counts quickly without shifting deaths or national-level threat metrics that security agencies prioritize ^{[2] [3]}.

3. Methodological fault lines that produce opposite headlines

The contrasting conclusions follow from clear methodological choices: time window, incident coding, motive classification, and whether nonlethal acts are counted alongside fatalities. The 2025 analyses that highlight a leftward rise use shorter windows and broader incident definitions that capture property damage, targeting of police, and plots, which inflates left counts relative to long-term fatality metrics ^{[1] [4]}. Critics stress small-n volatility—when absolute numbers are low, a handful of events can flip rankings—and the lack of a unified domestic terrorism database with standardized coding complicates cross-study comparability ^{[4] [1]}. These differences explain why both sets of authors can be factually accurate yet tell different stories.

4. What the research says about violent speech and elite rhetoric as accelerants

Separate experimental and survey research connects violent or threatening elite rhetoric with increased support for political violence among co-partisans, finding that partisan leaders’ threatening language raises fear and acceptance of violence particularly among strongly identified followers ^{[5] [6] [7]}. This work is not about which side generates more violent acts but about how rhetoric inflames attitudes and can prime supporters to tolerate or undertake violence. The implication is cross-ideological risk: violent rhetoric from either side can increase receptivity to violence in that side’s base, making the prevalence of provocations and elite cues an important, independent driver regardless of historic incident totals ^{[5] [6]}.

5. Balancing counts, lethality, and policy response — what matters for prevention

Policy and law enforcement typically prioritize lethality, capability, and intent, not raw incident counts, because fatalities and sophisticated plots pose disproportionate national security risks ^{[2] [1]}. That makes the long-term dominance of right-wing lethality salient for resourcing and counterterrorism, even as rising left-wing incidents in 2025 justify attention to emergent threats and community-level prevention measures. Experts recommend a comprehensive approach that tracks multiple metrics—incident frequency, targets, lethality, and rhetoric—and avoids politicized overreactions that downplay one problem while inflating another; several analysts explicitly call for resourcing responses across ideologies and improving data collection to reduce coding disputes ^{[1] [4]}.

6. Bottom line: context decides the answer — short-term counts vs. long-term harm

The straightforward bottom line is that both statements can be true depending on the question: if you ask which side produced more recorded incidents in parts of 2025, recent counting studies report more left-wing incidents; if you ask which side has caused more deaths and sustained lethal violence over the long term, the right remains dominant ^{[1] [2]}. To move past headline disputes, researchers and policymakers need standardized, transparent coding, routine publication of both incident and fatality counts, and attention to elite rhetoric’s role in stoking partisan willingness to commit violence ^{[4] [5]}. Only by comparing multiple metrics over clear timeframes can stakeholders produce durable conclusions and targeted prevention strategies ^{[3] [1]}.