The assassination of Charlie Kirk has unleashed the most predictable wave of left-wing gaslighting I've seen in years. Within hours of this horrific crime, the same voices who spent the summer of 2020 calling violence riots "mostly peaceful protests" were suddenly clutching their pearls about political violence and desperately trying to pin the blame on conservatives.
But reality has a funny way of destroying carefully crafted narratives, and the past week alone has been absolutely devastating to the left's mythology about who really commits political violence in America.
First, we had the Charlie Kirk assassination itself—a conservative leader gunned down in broad daylight by a radicalized leftist. The left initially tried to claim the shooter was a MAGA Republican, which backfired spectacularly when the truth came out.
To maintain their crumbling narrative, the left weaponized a deeply flawed 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. This convenient talking point has been parroted everywhere to deflect from the fact that their side just murdered one of conservatism's most prominent young voices.
But when you actually examine Nowrasteh's methodology—which I have—the whole thing falls apart faster than a House Democrat's promise to secure the border.
Take Timothy McVeigh, labeled "right-wing" despite his ideology having nothing to do with traditional conservatism. McVeigh was an anti-government extremist whose rage stemmed from Waco and Ruby Ridge, not conservative principles. The man rejected both political parties, described himself as agnostic, and supported abortion rights.
Then there's Anderson Lee Aldrich, the Club Q shooter, branded "right-wing" despite identifying as non-binary and suffering from documented mental illness. Peyton Gendron, the Buffalo supermarket shooter, gets the same "right-wing" label even though his own manifesto explicitly identified him as an "eco-fascist national socialist"—hardly traditional conservative ideology. The study also classified a couple who killed a sex offender as perpetrators of "right-wing" violence despite the fact it was a personal vendetta with no apparent political motivation whatsoever.
Even more telling is what Nowrasteh's study leaves out entirely. Notice how the data shows a convenient dip in 2020—the same year America witnessed the most destructive riots in its history. The George Floyd riots caused billions in property damage and at least nineteen deaths, yet somehow none of these deaths made it into his tally of political violence.
The Waukesha Christmas parade attacker, who drove his truck through a crowd in 2021 killing six people, also got left out. When you correct for these glaring omissions and misclassifications, the numbers between left-wing and right-wing violence become roughly equal—and that's just examining the past decade. (RELATED: That CATO Study on Political Violence Is Hot Garbage)
But, the narrative that political violence is a right-wing problem took another hit this past week, when, Anibal Hernandez-Santana, a 64-year-old former legislative director for the California Federation of Teachers, decided to turn his politics into bullets with a drive-by shooting at the local ABC station. This wasn't some random act—it happened just one day after protesters gathered there with their usual signs calling Trump "Hitler" and his supporters "fascist enablers." Hernandez-Santana absorbed that mood of righteous fury, posted calls for Trump's demise on social media, and then carried his left-wing politics into the realm of violence.
And that wasn't all. Saturday night in Nashua, New Hampshire, 23-year-old Hunter Nadeau opened fire at the Sky Meadow Country Club, killing one and injuring at least two others while shouting "Free Palestine!”
The truth is unavoidable: the left doesn't just tolerate political violence, it cultivates it. They spent the summer of 2020 making excuses for rioters while their media allies described burning buildings as "mostly peaceful protests." They've created an atmosphere where their followers believe they have a moral obligation to commit violence against their political opponents.
We keep hearing lectures about "rising extremism on the right," but the evidence keeps piling up showing exactly where the real threat is coming from. A popular conservative leader gets assassinated. A leftist union operative shoots up a television station. An anti-Israel radical sprays gunfire into a country club. And somehow the left still thinks it can wag its finger at conservatives?
The left's entire mythology about political violence just collapsed under the weight of reality. No amount of academic sleight-of-hand or media spin can hide the fact that their side continues to demonstrate a pattern of political violence while simultaneously trying to blame conservatives for the very problem they've created.
Their coordinated response to Kirk's murder reveals their true priorities: not preventing future violence or promoting genuine unity, but covering up their own culpability while smearing the very movement Charlie Kirk died defending. They can hide behind fake studies and bogus narratives all they want, but the American people can see right through their desperate attempts to rewrite history and escape accountability for the violence they've unleashed.