People make mistakes.

It looks like it pretty well aligns with my understanding as it can be understood from the data we have today.

Two notes:

- not all violence is terrorism

- the definition of terrorism stays within an upper bound and lower bound of tolerance, but nonetheless is constantly in flux

Generally speaking, left wing violence (even in history) is coordinated by loosely connected cells. This makes things quite difficult to track. I always hark back to my days in the military and how hard of a time between 2009 and 2012 they had understanding disjointed cells of terror with respect to the Taliban.

They're better understood now, but it took a long time. The only benefit that I had in understanding the organization of these cells was that I was on IRC as a young person and got to watch organizations like Anonymous flourish. I can see left wing violence but I can't point to a specific organization or person leading it. I won't speculate on why left-wing groups do this, but it is of strategic advantage even in history. The bombings of the 1970's are a great example of this, if we choose not to pay attention. [0]

This is in contrast to right wing violence that has big names like Gavin McInnes, Richard Spencer, at times Donald Trump or go by names like The Proud Boys, The Alt-Right, the KKK, etc... When you have a name and a domain you're a whole lot easier to track and it's easier to talk about substantively and definitively.

The above explains why left-wing violence is just plain missing from this graph. It misses my overall point though.

My overall point is that any violent group deters discourse. Any group that deters discourse is a threat to democracy. I would suspect even if we tracked them equally that right-wing violence would outpace left-wing violence. That's a neat comparison for a graph but has very little substance at the end of the day. We are not single task machines and we can certainly focus on shutting down two groups that are a threat to democracy.

Any violence which is used to deter discourse deserves to be shut down and it is most effectively shut down by the people who belong to the groups most closely related to it. That's to say, if you're a Republican you can more easily shut down the Alt-Right because you have better access to understanding and tools within the RNC to get rid of them. The same would go for Democrats who could easily shut down left-wing violence and divisive rhetoric, but like Republicans have let it create a home.

My last point is rhetoric, which of course is not captured by CSIS. Both of these groups (violence aside) have toxified public and online spaces with hate speech and divisive rhetoric. I cannot count how many left-wing people have entered into these spaces and accused anyone and everyone of some moral crime to the point that people are starting to posit that it sounds like a religion. Having grown up in a repressive religion, I have very little to argue against this point with. On the other hand, right wing groups have saturated online spaces with hate that has driven down diversity in communities and has created this constitution looking rule systems. They both use similar methods: brigading, harassment, stalking, doxxing, etc...

I suspect all of the above are interconnected. All of them are worth stopping. It just takes people who don't mind saying, "enough is enough".

[0] https://time.com/4501670/bombings-of-america-burrough/