On July 16, Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller gave an important speech in Washington, D.C. Miller exhorted “normal” Americans to aggressively act to counter a huge threat to America: left-wing terrorism.
Miller repeated the theme of a recent presidential memo, NSPM-7. His speech, and NSPM-7, are based on a big lie that there is a huge wave of left-wing terrorism engulfing our nation. The lie is easily exposed by simple research but may influence many Americans, as the administration is repeating it, over and over.
The truth is there is indeed a great deal of extremist political violence—but it is almost all being perpetrated by extreme right-wingers. According to figures compiled by the U.S. government, in this country since 2001, right-wing extremists have committed at least 15 times as many murders as left-wing extremists. Similarly, far more non-lethal violent acts have been committed by right-wingers. There are many examples—but a striking one occurred on January 6, 2021, when Trump’s far-right-wing friends injured 140 police officers as they invaded and vandalized the capital.
In his speech, Miller used the terms left-wing terrorists, left-wing extremists and leftists, as if these all meant the same thing. Similarly, Trump has recently been conflating the word “communist” with progressive, socialist and even mainstream Democrat.
There are only a handful of left-wing terrorists in the U.S. They are not a significant threat. There are plenty of leftists with strong views who might be called extremists but who firmly oppose violence—many of them are part of a feared fringe: pacifists. There are tens of millions of leftists in the United States. They are better citizens than Steven Miller, who in an early speech argued that high school students should not bother to pick up their trash.
Robert Nuese is a retired general and electrical contractor in Graton.
