The assassination of Charlie Kirk has unleashed a predictable wave of left-wing gaslighting that would make any reasonable person’s head spin. Within hours of this horrific crime, the same left-wing voices who spent years justifying and downplaying actual violence from their own side were rushing to condemn political violence and trying to flip the script by claiming that political violence is predominantly a right-wing phenomenon.
To perpetuate this narrative, they’ve weaponized a deeply flawed study to rewrite history and cast conservatives as the real villains in America’s political violence problem. The go-to talking point making rounds among Democrats and their media allies centers on a study from the Cato Institute’s Alex Nowrasteh, which purports to show that right-wing extremists commit the majority of politically motivated killings in America.
The left has parroted this convenient narrative everywhere to deflect attention from the fact that a radicalized leftist just murdered one of conservatism’s most prominent young voices in broad daylight.
When I saw a graph from the study showing murders in politically motivated terrorist attacks (excluding 9/11), two things immediately jumped out at me.
The first is the big spike in 1995. While obviously because of the Oklahoma City bombing, the question I had was how Nowrasteh categorized it. As I suspected, he categorized Timothy McVeigh's ideology as “right-wing,” but this classification is debatable. McVeigh was an anti-government extremist whose rage stemmed from anger over the 1993 Waco siege and the 1992 Ruby Ridge standoff, not from conservative ideology. McVeigh rejected both political parties, described himself as agnostic, supported abortion rights, and drew inspiration from militia and anarchist movements rather than conservatism.
The second red flag is even more damning. Notice how the data conveniently shows a dip in 2020, the same year America witnessed the most destructive riots in its history. The George Floyd riots not only caused billions in property damage nationwide, but at least nineteen known deaths. Yet somehow, none of these deaths made it into Nowrasteh’s tally of political violence. How convenient.
Does anyone else find it odd that @CatoInstitute failed to include the George Floyd riots and other leftist violence from 2020-2021 in this chart? pic.twitter.com/4rvqzbp8jC
— Matt Margolis (@mattmargolis) September 17, 2025
Others have found problems with the study as well.
The Daily Caller’s Amber Duke dug into Nowrasteh’s methodology and exposed it as sloppy and biased. His list misclassifies several killers as “right-wing,” often stretching the label to absurdity. Duke highlighted many of these flaws, but even she missed a few glaring examples. Take the 2022 Club Q shooting in Colorado Springs: Nowrasteh called it “right-wing” despite the shooter, Anderson Lee Aldrich, identifying as “non-binary” and suffering from severe mental illness. He killed five people. Likewise, Peyton Gendron, who murdered ten people in a Buffalo supermarket, was branded “right-wing” even though his manifesto explicitly described himself as an “eco-fascist national socialist.” The same goes for Patrick Crusius, the 2019 El Paso Walmart shooter who killed 20 people. Nowrasteh slapped a “right-wing” label on him as well, even though his own writings revealed an eco-fascist worldview nearly identical to Gendron’s.
Duke also discovered that Nowrasteh omitted genuine left-wing killers from his list entirely, including the Waukesha Christmas parade attacker who drove his truck through a crowd in 2021, killing six people.
One could easily see that a more thorough examination of the data would turn up more errors and omissions.
The broader pattern here reveals the left’s desperate need to control the narrative around political violence. When their side commits horrific acts, they immediately pivot to studies, statistics, and academic papers designed to muddy the waters and shift blame elsewhere. Meanwhile, they conveniently ignore their own side’s long history of excusing and encouraging violence.
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The truth about political violence in America can’t be hidden behind manipulated data and selective methodology. While the CATO study tries to paint conservatives as the primary threat, real Americans remember which side spent the summer of 2020 burning down neighborhoods and which side has been calling for more civility in political discourse. They remember which politicians refused to condemn the rioting and which media outlets described burning buildings as “mostly peaceful protests.” Most importantly, they can see through the transparent attempt to use Charlie Kirk’s assassination as an opportunity to smear the very movement he died defending.
The left’s coordinated response to Kirk’s murder reveals their true priorities: not preventing future violence or promoting genuine unity, but in covering up their culpability in political violence.
The left’s rush to rewrite political violence after Charlie Kirk’s assassination is classic gaslighting. They weaponize flawed studies to paint conservatives as the villains while ignoring their own side’s riots and terror. At PJ Media, we expose these lies daily. Join PJ Media VIP now with promo code FIGHT for 60% off—stand for truth, not spin. Don’t wait, join today.
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