The Dayton Murderer Is Proof We Need To Take Left-Wing Violence Seriously
https://forward.com/opinion/428960/the-dayton-murderer-is-proof-we-need-to-take-left-wing-violence-seriously/
'Amidst the disturbing trend of political conflict in the United States escalating into violence, it has been a staple of conventional wisdom that the real danger comes almost entirely from the far right. Thus, after journalist Andy Ngo was beaten up by activists from the militant left-wing “Antifascist” movement at a protest in late June, commentators such as Vox’s Zack Beauchamp cautioned against attempts to portray Antifa’s record of violent behavior as even remotely comparable to that of far-right extremists. Beauchamp quoted an Anti-Defamation League primer on Antifa which said, “To date, there have not been any known Antifa-related murders.”
But is that still true today? We don’t know if Connor Betts, the 24-year-old Ohio man who killed nine people (including his own sister) and wounded 27 more when he opened fire on a crowded street in Dayton on Sunday, had any involvement with Antifa...
Betts’s Twitter trail makes it clear that he was a hardcore leftist who embraced some fairly extreme ideas—and, in some cases, advocated violence toward political enemies in Antifa-style language... In 2019—after Charlottesville, after the Tree of Life synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh last fall, and now the El Paso massacre—one would have to be either deluded or dishonest to deny the danger of violent far-right extremism in America.
One may quibble about the exact body count (for instance, the ADL’s tally of at least 50 murders by right-wing extremists in 2018 includes non-political killings motivated by family/personal conflicts, financial gain, or mental illness in which the perpetrator had some connection to far-right extremism).