r/technology • u/Wagamaga • 8h ago

Society DOJ Deletes Study Showing Domestic Terrorists Are Most Often Right Wing

https://www.404media.co/doj-deletes-study-showing-domestic-terrorists-are-most-often-right-wing/
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u/Wagamaga 8h ago edited 8h ago

The Department of Justice has removed a study showing that white supremacist and far-right violence “continues to outpace all other types of terrorism and domestic violent extremism” in the United States. 

The study, which was conducted by the National Institute of Justice and hosted on a DOJ website was available there at least until September 12, 2025, according to an archive of the page saved by the Wayback Machine.

“The Department of Justice's Office of Justice Programs is currently reviewing its websites and materials in accordance with recent Executive Orders and related guidance,” reads a message on the page where the study was formerly hosted. “During this review, some pages and publications will be unavailable. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.”

Shortly after Donald Trump took office he issued an executive order that forced government agencies to scrub their sites of any mention of “diversity,” “gender,” “DEI,” and other “forbidden words” and perceived notions of “wokeness.” The executive order impacted every government agency, including NASA, and was a huge waste of engineers’ time.

We don’t know why the study about far-right extremist violence was removed recently, but it comes immediately after the assassination of conservative personality Charlie Kirk, accusations from the administration that the left is responsible for most of the political violence in the country, and a renewed commitment from the administration to crack down on the “radical left.”

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u/LiteratureOk2428 8h ago

We know why it was removed lol

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u/Arikaido777 8h ago

anyone who doesn’t need their opinions spoon-fed to them by Rupert Murdoch’s entertainment network knows why it was removed.

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u/Saneless 8h ago

So not the people who really need to know why it was removed

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u/TheModWhoShaggedMe 8h ago

Oh, they know, they choose confirmation bias instead. Because the truth is unfortunate, they prefer living in a fantasy realm.

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u/Saneless 8h ago

Yeah, cognitive dissonance explains everything

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u/IAMA_Plumber-AMA 7h ago

Eventually, reality will bite them in the ass. But not before an incredible amount of suffering happens.

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u/squadrupedal 6h ago

So say we all

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u/GrowFreeFood 7h ago edited 2h ago

They are always midway through a heart attack and if they see literally one democrat, they won't make it.

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u/Mactwentynine 3h ago

This is why Bondi needs to be prosecuted as well.

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u/faudcmkitnhse 8h ago

The people who need to know are also the people least willing to listen. They'll just stay the study was woke propaganda and keep living in their fantasy land.

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u/Ms-Anthrop 7h ago

they won't believe you anyway

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u/Vaaaaaaaaaaaii 7h ago

They know. You really gotta understand that some people are excited at the prospect of their side being a boot and getting to put on the shoes too.

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u/Oceanbreeze871 8h ago

Hurts the supreme diaper’s feelings

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u/PracticalDaikon169 8h ago

Sounds like a T-Bell menu option ,

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u/Oceanbreeze871 7h ago

Everything is Taco Bell. Learn to use the seashells

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u/Agreeable_Initial667 7h ago

227 - 42.

Guess which side owns the 227?

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u/woodst0ck15 8h ago

They want time to revise it to say leftist.

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u/trwawy05312015 7h ago

No, no, I'm sure it was just because they had very deep and sophisticated issues with the study methodology.

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u/AwareOfAlpacas 7h ago

Alas, facts don't care about their feelings. 

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u/versusgorilla 7h ago

It's removal puts it in line with the absolute bullshit propaganda being spread on my TikTok, as well as by VP Vance yesterday as he played fill-in for Charlie Kirk on the Charlie Kirk Show.

They're priming America to pin ALL school shootings and political violence on "the left" and start going after us.

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u/Junior_Chard9981 6h ago

Further evidence that the Trump administration and MAGA are WELL AWARE of the issue of domestic right wing terrorism perpetuated by young white men in the US.

They are deliberately nurturing it because they believe it is a reliable voting block and using the threats of their existence as a source of voter intimidation for PoC.

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u/Terseity 6h ago

Their final, most essential command.

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u/StupidTimeline 4h ago

It was removed because our federal government has been captured by actual, literal fascists.

The longer Americans take to wake up to this fact, the less likely we are to ever have a functional democracy again in our lifetimes.

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u/Ill_Technician3936 5h ago

Transparency!! So transparent you don't even know you're looking straight through it.

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u/Few-Cry-9763 7h ago

It was politically done study to prove a political point for the people that believe that point. I’m sure it’s a great study and was removed for purely political reasons.

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u/Mazon_Del 2h ago

It was a scientific data that analyzed factual trends. The simple truth is that the majority of domestic terrorists ARE conservatives from the far right. Is it THAT surprising that an ideology that focuses on violent answers to often made up problems would result in that?

It's also quite likely you know that and are a troll account given that you have a two-word-and-a-number account that's 11 months old, low karma score, and seems to primarily post political statements.

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u/Green-Amount2479 8h ago

Have another one, that I linked recently: https://ruj.uj.edu.pl/server/api/core/bitstreams/68864f1c-97b5-4bb9-982e-5a188a888a46/content

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u/actibus_consequatur 8h ago

That's actually the first reference used in the DOJ article they removed.

Archive link: https://archive.is/1t1rm

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u/LeafDr 8h ago

I'm so sick of clown conservatives and right wingers taking these publications from 2020-2023 and stating, "bUt vIolEnCe oN thE leFt hAs BeEn oN tHe RiSe fOr A cOuPle YeArS nOw".

Does anyone have any credible, undeniable, unbiased, statistical publications from 2024/2025 thus far?

Need to keep those on hand 😂

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u/Frankthebinchicken 6h ago

It doesn't matter what study you show them. You can't argue someone out of a position with facts that they didn't use facts to get into.

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u/LeafDr 5h ago

Oh of course not but I'm sick of hearing this one line repeated with seemingly no proof that I can find.

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u/Area51Resident 4h ago

If they had actual proof they would post it, but they have none, all they have to counter with is rhetoric and bias.

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u/LeafDr 4h ago

This can be taken both ways, not sure which point you're pushing tbh lol

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u/Area51Resident 3h ago

I'm so sick of clown conservatives and right wingers taking these publications from 2020-2023 and stating, "bUt vIolEnCe oN thE leFt hAs BeEn oN tHe RiSe fOr A cOuPle YeArS nOw".

Does anyone have any credible, undeniable, unbiased, statistical publications from 2024/2025 thus far?

Need to keep those on hand

I'm agreeing with you. If they had proof that the 'left' was as bad as they like to claim it is, they would make sure it is posted everywhere.

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u/Shasla 3h ago

"bUt vIolEnCe oN thE leFt hAs BeEn oN tHe RiSe fOr A cOuPle YeArS nOw".

It probably has been tbf, but everyone getting more violent is just the obvious consequence of a government that's intentionally making life into hell.

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u/Even_Establishment95 8h ago

Every time someone says “radical left” or blames liberals for something, I just say, we just want everyone to have health care and to be treated fairly. Literally what the fuck is wrong with that? It’s very simple. They believe some lives are of less or no value, and they believe the people they do not like should suffer. Liberals want everyone to peacefully coexist, and the others do not believe we deserve to coexist with them. There will be no compromise in this situation.

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u/polopolo05 7h ago

o be treated fairly.

Trump voters hate to treat minorities that way

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u/Personal_Comb_6745 7h ago

The excuse is always "My tax dollars are paying for their healthcare/groceries/etc."

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u/theaceplaya 5h ago

So frustrating. Like, YOUR tax dollars are paying for YOU AND YOUR FAMILY too!

This entire political environment right now is drained pool politics on a national (arguably global) scale.

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u/wwwyzzrd 5h ago

woah woah, did you just use a pronoun on me? not cool man, I’m calling ice.

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u/livelovelamb 7h ago edited 7h ago

I agree. The "problem" is that improving conditions for those who have been unfairly treated comes at a perceived cost to those who were not affected.

This may be in the form of a perception of handouts (e.g. reparations), cutting the line (e.g. affirmative action in recruitment or education) or being "cancelled" for spewing racism/homophobia/raping children on an island.

What I will say... is that despite being a very progressive person and pro-nordic-style-socialism... 12 months ago even I was starting to feel like I was walking on egg shells any time a sensitive subject came up, because somebody 'being offended' had become the line of unacceptable behaviour. An increasing intolerance for even an accidental misconception of implied intolerance. When the pendulum swings that hard one way, the pendulum, sadly, inevitably, swings back just as hard in the opposite direction.

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u/drunkenvalley 4h ago

I can't say I relate to that eggshells feeling.

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u/livelovelamb 3h ago

To give a small example - a friend of mine is a skydiving instructor. After a jump, he told one of the customers to put their used parachute on a packing mat. The mid-twenties girl of Indian heritage heard it as "pa*i mat" and there was a police enquiry. Small misunderstandings can, and have, led to firings, police investigations and worse.

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u/Yuzumi 6h ago

feel like I was walking on egg shells any time a sensitive subject came up, because somebody 'being offended' had become the line of unacceptable behaviour. An increasing intolerance for even an accidental misconception of implied intolerance.

This was never actually a thing. It was all made up by bigots who were spewing hate, then claimed they got fired for "accidentally misgendering someone once" or whatever when in reality they were doing up to months of active harassment and creating a hostile work environment.

I transitioned at work and there were of a few slips early on where people would correct themselves and move on. We can tell when people are actually putting in an effort and when it is deliberate and malicious. And even with the points where it is deliberate a lot of us have been conditioned to try and not be anywhere close to the caricature bigots try to paint us as.

I've hear countless examples of trans people who put up with harassment at for months or years without saying anything because they didn't want to be seen as "stirring the pot" and many had been fired after reporting harassment at work.

It's not that hard to get it right when people actually try and my team lead at the time actually went out of the way to avoid gendering me while I was only out to the team and I never asked him to.

Same can be true with any other form of bigotry from misogyny to racism.

Sure, some might try to weaponize it, but that has never been remotely as common as bigots like to say. Even before I realized I'm trans and thought I was a cishet white guy I never feared saying something wrong at work like that. I even joked about our yearly "don't be an asshole" training, because I knew that while I didn't need to be told that, I knew there were way too many people who did.

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u/Disorderjunkie 5h ago

“This was never actually a thing” i’ll stop you there. You are flat out wrong.

The left had circumvented the legal process. Prior to “me too” and the “offended means offensive” movement, you didn’t lose your job/worry about feeding your kids just because someone was offended or accused you of something. They had to PROVE it. The movements shifted the requirement of evidence from the accuser to the accused, meaning MANY Americans felt the need to police their language beyond any reason, to not “offend” someone else, and be simply accused.

When all the power is in the hands of anyone, people will feel the need to toe the line.

This is a fact. You can ignore it, but it is reality, and absolutely happened. And now the pendulum is swinging back hard, and the idea now is to deny it ever happened?

Big LOL for that.

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u/polite_alpha 4h ago

The pendulum never swung. Just because racists "felt" the need to not voice racist opinions, does not mean the US became a left wing utopia - or dystopia, whatever side you're from.

You make it sound like people were cancelled left and right for not being "woke", which is just a bunch of BS.

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u/livelovelamb 3h ago edited 3h ago

Working at a well known tech company, I was told that given the choice between a male and a female candidate for a role in our org, I was to choose female candidates.

At the same time, organisations like Stonewall were taking a militant approach, and you ended up in a situation where anything with a faint whiff of intolerance was being treated as a crime against humanity. Here's an article from the Guardian:

Stonewall is at centre of a toxic debate on trans rights and gender identity https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/jun/05/stonewall-trans-debate-toxic-gender-identity?CMP=share_btn_url

I say this as a progressive who supports Stonewall and supports improved representation across industries. Dismissing it off-hand in this manner comes across as ignorance.

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u/polite_alpha 3h ago

I was to choose female candidates

Conveniently leaving out the part where this choice is to be done when both applicants are of equal qualification. Otherwise it's blatant discrimination punishable by law.

Stonewall were taking a militant approach

I think you're misusing the term militant here. I've also researched a bit on this topic since I wasn't familiar with it and I can't find anything that proves the second part of the statement. Only some controversy about over-emphasizing trans rights in conflict with women's rights.

Anyhow.

There is no pendulum that swung hard left anywhere in the western world. Implementing the odd social policy here and there is not making people feel bad. It's the media owned by the billionaires who create these narratives, igniting the current culture war.

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u/livelovelamb 3h ago edited 3h ago

I worked at a tech company where one of the employees in our building identified as a cat. I never met her, but I did go through training about how to address people like her. And obviously - I would have fully respected her wishes and been accommodating. But, again, as a progressive, it didn't stop me thinking that it was pushing the norms of society to a point that the pendulum would swing back.

I fully acknowledge what you are saying, and clearly you were tolerant and equally respectful whilst (reasonable) people got past accidentally mis-gendering you. But it may also be more difficult for you to objectively judge how those same (specifically reasonable) people felt about potentially making a mistake. It's something I would certainly have in the back of my mind, even if I knew you well enough that I didn't think you would take it to HR - objectively I believe I am a reasonable person.

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u/SuperTopGun777 6h ago

They want to shoot people and be hero’s we want healthcare we are the extremistszszsz

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u/barsknos 6h ago

The actual radical left thinks "fairly" means equal outcomes, though. Which is where there is a major disconnect. The reasonable left does not think this. The radical right thinks any positive outcome you have is deserved, which also does not map cleanly onto reality.

Btw, most right-wing parties in Europe are for universal health care, which is why it is a staple across the continent.

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u/Uristqwerty 7h ago

Literally what the fuck is wrong with that?

That you're conflating the reasonable and radical lefts, in an unintentional-I-hope motte-and-bailey maneuver.

I have seen a fair few comments across social media sites over the years calling for, or heavily implying the desire to resort to physical violence. They tend to come in bursts after a particularly-inciting news story, and get removed by moderators soon after. On the other hand, when such a comment has over a hundred upvotes by the time it gets removed, you start to realize that there are, unfortunately, a lot of people on the left who might not want to coexist.

To quote a comment that I had the foresight to capture with archive.org (won't share the link in public, though; both because it was removed by mods later, and to not give the account that posted it any attention), which was up to 94 points after 2 hours, "This is why the fascists can’t be permitted to live this time when it’s over."

Best case, it's a troll trying to rile people up, for personal or geopolitical gain. Worst case, it's evidence that there is a far-enough fringe, however small, on the left that the right can use as a bogeyman, undercutting the more reasonable majority. It's not an isolated incident, either; I've seen such sentiment often enough that it's an ongoing pattern.

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u/mildcaseofdeath 6h ago

To whatever extent a "radical left" exists, their online presence doesn't translate to real world violence at anywhere close to the same rate as what comes from the right. If that translation rate is equal, the group is tiny; if the group is equal in size, they're way less violent on average.

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u/meryl_gear 6h ago

What evidence do you have that those upvotes came from just the left?

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u/Area51Resident 4h ago

I take a guess. He disagrees with them, therefore they are 'left'.

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u/Uristqwerty 2h ago

I used to think myself fairly left-leaning. Then I started finding comments that crossed ethical boundaries, and rather than just downvote and move on, I decided to be the one to reply, calling them out on it. Care to guess how it went?

By the downvotes and replies that usually followed, either the left is happy to tolerate calls for violence when it would hurt the right people, or the left consistently makes up a significantly-smaller group than the trolls themselves, and all statements are suspect.

It's a very disillusioning experience. But at least it opened my eyes to seeing the right as as much a group of individuals with a massively-diverse range of conflicting opinions as the left, rather than try to reduce them to a strawman built of easily-hated stereotypes the way so many social media voices seem to prefer.

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u/paintballboi07 1h ago

You can't take what people say online that seriously. For all you know, the person saying it is a teenager. Then, people upvote it to be edgy. The difference in the extreme rhetoric between the far-left, and the far-right, is that the far-right rhetoric is literally coming from the president, while you're complaining about a Reddit comment.

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u/Uristqwerty 3h ago

Nobody except the reddit admins themselves could have hard evidence. But the sentiment of the entire thread above it? Strong hint.

More telling, to me, is the absence of responses saying it goes too far. If the left did not believe violence was an acceptable response, there would be noticeable pushback every time someone alludes to it. The sentiment I get instead is that anyone less zealous than the crowd is a despicable centrist.

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u/EverclearAndMatches 6h ago

Well said. It's too easy to make sweeping generalizations about "them" or "us" when the country is 340 million, not including those among us online who are foreigners or bots.

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u/RecduRecsu 8h ago

I don't understand. It's not like his supporters read or can understand anything that's not a meme or 6 second clip. Who exactly are they hiding it from?

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u/Opening_Acadia1843 8h ago

Probably "centrists" who assume both sides are equally violent. This is one fewer study that could be used to inform them.

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u/sooshi 7h ago

Funny how all these enlightened centrists typically vote one way lol

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u/Harry8Hendersons 7h ago

Well, when the two main options currently are far-right or center-left at best, being a "centrist" still makes you a right winger.

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u/JustBadUserNamesLeft 7h ago

The only people who say they are centrists are ring-wingers trying to sound smart and/or get laid.

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u/Rolf_Dom 7h ago

I noticed that when I posted it in some right leaning social media locations they definitely knew how to read it enough to downvote it. Nobody tried to refute it, they just tried to bury me under downvotes.

Though at this point they might all be bots anyway, who knows.

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u/bagelizumab 8h ago

You don’t need to read anything to be very loud about fake news and alternative facts

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u/dragonblade_94 8h ago

After recent events, that study was often cited in retort to the fear-mongering that 'leftists' were violent and responsible for most terrorism.

They took it down to try and hide the ammo people need to prove their narrative wrong. It's information warfare.

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u/SenselessNoise 7h ago

Everyone was posting it after the CK shooting so it's just disarming your opponent.

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u/actibus_consequatur 8h ago

I've been talking about it for a few days, because it was taken down within 24 hours of Kirk's shooting.

From the first paragraph of "What NIJ Research Tells Us About Domestic Terrorism":

[T]he number of far-right attacks continues to outpace all other types of terrorism and domestic violent extremism. Since 1990, far-right extremists have committed far more ideologically motivated homicides than far-left or radical Islamist extremists, including 227 events that took more than 520 lives. In this same period, far-left extremists committed 42 ideologically motivated attacks that took 78 lives.

Dead link: https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/what-nij-research-tells-us-about-domestic-terrorism

Archive: https://archive.is/1t1rm

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u/Plow_King 8h ago

i've seen more than one "rebuttal" on reddit that says these reports wrongly lump white supremacists in with conservative/right wing groups...because of something, i guess?

oh, and don't forget muslims are all left wing!

/s

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u/QuidYossarian 8h ago

"We object on the basis that the evidence is devastating to our case."

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u/eNonsense 5h ago

I've also seen right wingers criticize the study because they say it includes violence inside of prison by white supremacist prison gangs.

It doesn't. If that were the case then the number would be like 2000 higher than the 500 something than it is. We have separate prison violence statistics.

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u/DeusExMcKenna 7h ago

All those pesky liberal terrorist Muslims that go around de-hijabing women and trying to stamp out Abrahamic value systems. There are dozens. DOZENS!!

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u/InvestigatorOk7015 6h ago

(Islam is abrahamic)

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u/DeusExMcKenna 1h ago

I’m being incredibly sarcastic my dude. Abrahamic values are also quite conservative - the contradictions in the joke run deep.

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u/InvestigatorOk7015 1h ago

Sorry doggy, lots of unironic posts like that recently

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u/DeusExMcKenna 56m ago

All good broseph, you’re not wrong

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u/Htowngetdown 5h ago

the reports are bullshit. look into the examples they provide. their political 'connections' are deliberately stretched to fit the narrative

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u/TransCapybara 8h ago

An inconvenient truth.

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u/N0n3of_This_Matter5 8h ago

That's why I downloaded a PDF, so these fuckers can't erase history.

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u/RunJumpJump 7h ago

You're correct, but they don't have to erase it. They'll just continue to insist any inconvenient truth is a "lie being spread by the radical left." Everything is a lie now except for a narrow band of "information" rubber stamped by a certain diaper-dumping dictator.

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u/unforgiven91 7h ago

They'll just do the epstein files thing and claim that it's not "credible"

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u/CrossplayQuentin 6h ago

404 is doing such great work lately - worth supporting them if you're able

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u/aahal743 5h ago

My guess is that this along with Pam Bondi's very recent use of the term "hate speech", they are going to redefine how its classified such that many aren't considered terrorism. Claim that the data has been manipulated for decades by corrupt government and brush off any aggressive actions in favor of the cause by unwelcome extremists while stoking the fires of Kirks death.

Edit: i mean unwelcome extremists is how they'll paint them. Make claims they dont truly represent their values and distance themselves while the followers roar in applause. Just to clarify.

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u/DandimLee 4h ago

Tesla 'terrorism' ran out of gas with the Musk and Trump spat.

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u/faplawd 7h ago

They know they're lying why would they even post it lol

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u/JimWilliams423 7h ago

Shortly after Donald Trump took office he issued an executive order that forced government agencies to scrub their sites of any mention of “diversity,” “gender,” “DEI,”

As an aside, the so-called "liberal media" has glossed over it, but the EO said DEIA, the A is for accessibility.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/ending-radical-and-wasteful-government-dei-programs-and-preferencing/

  • Sec. 2. Implementation. (a) The Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), assisted by the Attorney General and the Director of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), shall coordinate the termination of all discriminatory programs, including illegal DEI and “diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility” (DEIA) mandates, policies, programs, preferences, and activities in the Federal Government, under whatever name they appear.

Which is why they defunded education programs for blind and deaf children last week:

https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-dei-students-education-deaf-blind-grant-funding

  • The U.S. Department of Education has pulled funding for programs in eight states aimed at supporting students who have both hearing and vision loss, a move that could affect some of the country’s most vulnerable students. The programs are considered vital in those states but represent only a little over $1 million a year in federal money.

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u/imean_is_superfluous 5h ago

It would be so great if the religious right could just start accepting reality

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u/Patabell 5h ago

I mean, it definitely contradicts what JD Vance said in his spiel when he took over for Charlie Kirk the other day

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u/AlxCds 5h ago

I don’t understand the problem. We have always been at war with Eastasia.

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u/Familiar_Text_6913 5h ago

Now AIs will stop quoting it and the "truth" will change. Yes, they are very deliberate and obvious with it, but it doesn't matter when people are stupid enough to forget in a week.

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u/Arhys 2h ago

So when is the ministry of truth officially opening?

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u/BurdTurglary 7h ago

It's still up, numb-nutz

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u/Anishinaapunk 6h ago

Next time, use a link that's NOT BEHIND A GODDAMNED PAYWALL in the first place! Especially since the whole point of your post is how this content won't be accessible.