With all due respect, starting the data set at 1975 and then “finding” more right wing violence than left wing violence is not social science. The biggest period of political violence in modern American history is the late 60s through the early 70s, and it’s not even close, and it was almost all left wing violence. It’s also a mistake to just exclude 9/11 because it’s such an inconvenient outlier. The largest attack on American soil should inform how we think about the threats to civil order, especially considering that by all accounts, the gloves came off after 9/11 for the intelligence agencies, and probably dozens of other islamist plots were thwarted (compare Europe, where the American IC plays only a supporting role — their struggles with Islam are ongoing). Excluding 9/11 really is like the old joke: “Well, Mrs. Lincoln, besides *that* how was the play?”
You're right, of course, that there is a certain, arbitrary quality to beginning the data set at 1975 and in excluding 9/11. Two thoughts come to mind.
First, in a contingent world, there is always a certain, inescapable arbitrary aspect of any data set. To your point, they would likely have come to a different conclusion had they gone back to the 1960s, but not necessarily.
There was violent, ring wing opposition to the civil rights movement. Church burning and bombings, lynchings, and other forms of murder were not uncommon. How they compared quantitatively to left wing violence is one that I think the authors might have profitably explored.
At the same time, why start the data set in the 1960s? Why not include data from 1900 forward? Or even the post-Civil war era? In addition to Klan activity, would we include violent labor strikes and/or violent union busting?
The author pointed out in an earlier post (which in retrospect, I should have included) they choose to include the data he did for a reason. He writes
<<The number of deaths in politically motivated terrorist attacks is so tiny that any statistical analysis is extremely fragile. However, there is one consistent finding from analyses of politically motivated terrorism: There aren’t many deaths. Thus, their small numbers mean it's important to intensely analyze individual politically motivated terrorist offenses because the inclusion or exclusion of just a few killers or misclassification makes a big difference in the final tally.>> ("Politically Motivated Violence is Rare in the United States,
While I think expanding the data set might be desirable, I wonder if doing so would result in a lack of clarity.
Second, the question for me is not could they have used a larger (or smaller) data set, but are the parameters of the study reasonable? Obviously, I think they are, or I wouldn't have posted what I did.
The exclusion of 9/11 is helpful here. Including 9/11 would be something like staring into the sun; it would obscure other things going on around us. I'm thinking here of Talab's black swan analogy. 9/11 is a black swan event. Yes, in retrospect, it might have been foreseeable and maybe even preventable. But it wasn't and including it might result in discounting other, more likely if not more devastating, sources of political violence.
But, again, I think your comments are helpful and most welcome.
The parameters of the study being reasonable is exactly what I'm concerned with. I know it's a relatively rare phenomenon we are talking about so I'm not necessarily criticizing sample size. (And I'm ok with leaving out big outliers like 9/11, but if we are going to do that, let's make sure we are consistent and leave out the Oklahoma City bombing which accounts for over 40% of this data set's right-wing casualties!)
There's a very good theoretical reason to have the cut off for studying modern American political violence be the end of World War II. That was the last great change in the American dispensation. The world of America before World War II and the (semi-monarchical) reforms of FDR is simply a qualitatively different world than the one we have been living in for the last few generations. Going back further than that would result in an apples-to-oranges comparison. However, there is no such natural break in 1975.
But the break in 1975 does (conveniently for a left-oriented outfit like Cato) exclude all of the messiness of the late 60s and early 70s.
Of course I acknowledge your point that there was right wing violence then too. It's always "both sides." (but of course what's readily available in our cultural memory is almost always stylized instances of right-wing violence. Might this be related to the well-documented lack of conservative voices in academia and the legacy media? you be the judge.)
But the question that the studies you are sharing seem to raise is "where do we point the finger"? If we are going to approach such a dangerous question, we better do so with fear and trembling, which at the very least requires us to be vigorous in our thinking and look for evidence that goes against our prior beliefs, which I'm just not seeing here.
Your latest post regarding the deleted DOJ study (a study funded and published by the Biden administration, which was easily the most left-polarized administration we have had since the 1960s) and highlighted again by Cato's Alex Nowrasteh is case and point. Just more of the same drumbeat, confirming what we "know" about the baddies.
Perhaps the study was deleted because small "l" liberalism is showing itself to be a hollow shell once the Anglo and Christian underpinnings that held it together have been sufficiently eroded by multiculturalism and moral relativism. So now it's not about taking turns around a common narrative (what might that narrative be?). It's about my "studies" vs your "studies" in the service of making sure that I'm in power when the game of musical chairs we call liberal democracy ends. Because both sides know it's ending.
Why is it ending? I think Alex Nowrasteh might have some clues for us:
"Good policies matter most. A diverse population reduces social solidarity, which is good for economic growth because people don't want wealth-destroying policies to help out people who look different."
With all due respect, starting the data set at 1975 and then “finding” more right wing violence than left wing violence is not social science. The biggest period of political violence in modern American history is the late 60s through the early 70s, and it’s not even close, and it was almost all left wing violence. It’s also a mistake to just exclude 9/11 because it’s such an inconvenient outlier. The largest attack on American soil should inform how we think about the threats to civil order, especially considering that by all accounts, the gloves came off after 9/11 for the intelligence agencies, and probably dozens of other islamist plots were thwarted (compare Europe, where the American IC plays only a supporting role — their struggles with Islam are ongoing). Excluding 9/11 really is like the old joke: “Well, Mrs. Lincoln, besides *that* how was the play?”
Thank you for your observation.
You're right, of course, that there is a certain, arbitrary quality to beginning the data set at 1975 and in excluding 9/11. Two thoughts come to mind.
First, in a contingent world, there is always a certain, inescapable arbitrary aspect of any data set. To your point, they would likely have come to a different conclusion had they gone back to the 1960s, but not necessarily.
There was violent, ring wing opposition to the civil rights movement. Church burning and bombings, lynchings, and other forms of murder were not uncommon. How they compared quantitatively to left wing violence is one that I think the authors might have profitably explored.
At the same time, why start the data set in the 1960s? Why not include data from 1900 forward? Or even the post-Civil war era? In addition to Klan activity, would we include violent labor strikes and/or violent union busting?
The author pointed out in an earlier post (which in retrospect, I should have included) they choose to include the data he did for a reason. He writes
<<The number of deaths in politically motivated terrorist attacks is so tiny that any statistical analysis is extremely fragile. However, there is one consistent finding from analyses of politically motivated terrorism: There aren’t many deaths. Thus, their small numbers mean it's important to intensely analyze individual politically motivated terrorist offenses because the inclusion or exclusion of just a few killers or misclassification makes a big difference in the final tally.>> ("Politically Motivated Violence is Rare in the United States,
https://www.alexnowrasteh.com/p/politically-motivated-violence-is).
While I think expanding the data set might be desirable, I wonder if doing so would result in a lack of clarity.
Second, the question for me is not could they have used a larger (or smaller) data set, but are the parameters of the study reasonable? Obviously, I think they are, or I wouldn't have posted what I did.
The exclusion of 9/11 is helpful here. Including 9/11 would be something like staring into the sun; it would obscure other things going on around us. I'm thinking here of Talab's black swan analogy. 9/11 is a black swan event. Yes, in retrospect, it might have been foreseeable and maybe even preventable. But it wasn't and including it might result in discounting other, more likely if not more devastating, sources of political violence.
But, again, I think your comments are helpful and most welcome.
The parameters of the study being reasonable is exactly what I'm concerned with. I know it's a relatively rare phenomenon we are talking about so I'm not necessarily criticizing sample size. (And I'm ok with leaving out big outliers like 9/11, but if we are going to do that, let's make sure we are consistent and leave out the Oklahoma City bombing which accounts for over 40% of this data set's right-wing casualties!)
There's a very good theoretical reason to have the cut off for studying modern American political violence be the end of World War II. That was the last great change in the American dispensation. The world of America before World War II and the (semi-monarchical) reforms of FDR is simply a qualitatively different world than the one we have been living in for the last few generations. Going back further than that would result in an apples-to-oranges comparison. However, there is no such natural break in 1975.
But the break in 1975 does (conveniently for a left-oriented outfit like Cato) exclude all of the messiness of the late 60s and early 70s.
Of course I acknowledge your point that there was right wing violence then too. It's always "both sides." (but of course what's readily available in our cultural memory is almost always stylized instances of right-wing violence. Might this be related to the well-documented lack of conservative voices in academia and the legacy media? you be the judge.)
But the question that the studies you are sharing seem to raise is "where do we point the finger"? If we are going to approach such a dangerous question, we better do so with fear and trembling, which at the very least requires us to be vigorous in our thinking and look for evidence that goes against our prior beliefs, which I'm just not seeing here.
Your latest post regarding the deleted DOJ study (a study funded and published by the Biden administration, which was easily the most left-polarized administration we have had since the 1960s) and highlighted again by Cato's Alex Nowrasteh is case and point. Just more of the same drumbeat, confirming what we "know" about the baddies.
Perhaps the study was deleted because small "l" liberalism is showing itself to be a hollow shell once the Anglo and Christian underpinnings that held it together have been sufficiently eroded by multiculturalism and moral relativism. So now it's not about taking turns around a common narrative (what might that narrative be?). It's about my "studies" vs your "studies" in the service of making sure that I'm in power when the game of musical chairs we call liberal democracy ends. Because both sides know it's ending.
Why is it ending? I think Alex Nowrasteh might have some clues for us:
"Good policies matter most. A diverse population reduces social solidarity, which is good for economic growth because people don't want wealth-destroying policies to help out people who look different."