A recent report by The Atlantic has admitted that far-left terrorism has become more prevalent in the United States than attacks by far-right extremists.
The magazine said it examined 750 attacks and plots in the US from January 1, 1994, to July 4, 2025, focusing “only on incidents of terrorism, which we define as attacks or plots by a nonstate actor attempting to achieve a political end and exert a psychological influence on a broad population.” The dataset tracked weapon types, targets, fatalities, and perpetrators’ ideologies.
“We found that left-wing terrorism has increased since President Donald Trump’s rise to political prominence in 2016,” the report read. “Indeed, 2025 marks the first time in more than 30 years that left-wing attacks outnumber those from the far right.”
The report continued by saying that 2016 was a “turning point for left-wing terrorism,” speculating that Donald Trump’s political ascent was a likely motivator in left-wing violence.
“By July 4 of this year, far-left extremists had already been responsible for five terrorist attacks and plots, putting 2025 on pace to be the left’s most violent year in more than three decades,” the report added. It also said that right-wing violence in 2025 has “plummeted.”
“This extraordinary drop-off is too recent to allow for any definitive explanations—and the number of terror incidents often fluctuates over short periods—but Trump’s reelection could be a key factor.”
The report comes as President Donald Trump has recently signed an executive order labelling the far-left group Antifa as a domestic terrorist organization, directing federal agencies to crack down on acts of violence carried out by its members.
