President Trump is correct to begin a long-overdue Department of Justice (DOJ) inquiry into the funding and organization behind leftist violence. Although local authorities often arrest and punish those immediately responsible for violence, the planners behind the schemes have rarely suffered appropriate consequences.
One law in the DOJ’s legal tool kit is the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO). It authorizes prosecution of those who conspire to commit certain serious crimes, such as terrorism and arson. In criminal law vocabulary, to “conspire” is to enter into a partnership for the purpose of committing a crime.
Recent events, including the assassination of Charlie Kirk and attacks on immigration-enforcement officials, exemplify why the DOJ should act. But the problem is far more extensive than those events and long antedates them.
In a May 2, 2024 column for the Epoch Times, I contended that DOJ should use RICO to investigate leftist violence and hold accountable those who organize it. I pointed out that repetitive leftist rioting and other forms of violence extended back at least as far as 1968, the year of the Watts Riots in Los Angeles. Since 1968, America has witnessed innumerable disruptions on college campuses; attacks on law enforcement officers; invasions and occupations of public buildings; suppression of conservative demonstrations and other public events; and repeated inner-city looting, arson, intimidation, and assaults—all in addition to the occasional political shooting.
Of course, people on the extreme right can commit political violence also. But if you count the number of major right-wing political riots since 1968, that number stops at one: the January 6, 2021 invasion of the U.S. Capitol. But count the number of major left-wing political riots since 1968, and the number soars toward infinity. And the conduct even of the January 6 riot—as bad as it was—was still more restrained than that in the typical leftist uprising.
Unfortunately, on this subject some won’t admit reality. PBS News recently claimed that most political violence in the United States comes from the right rather than the left. This is pure gaslighting.
PBS News’ argument relies largely on a paper by the left-of-center Anti-Defamation League, issued when that group had a close working relationship with the Biden Administration. You may recall that a cornerstone of the Biden policy was exaggerating the threat from the right to justify lawfare and suppressing First Amendment freedoms.
The Anti-Defamation League’s report cherry-picks the record by focusing on a relatively tiny number of isolated incidents (such as individual shootings) at the expense of events of mass disruption that can tear the social fabric, destroy hundreds of businesses, vandalize public property, and harm tens of thousands of people.
Coordination
The Left’s mass violence shows unmistakable symtoms of national, or even international, organization. Typical were the pro-Hamas protests that suddenly popped up all over the country two years ago. As I wrote in my 2024 article:
It beggars belief that inexperienced and unorganized students in locations as disparate as New York, Indiana, and Arizona would decide, at almost the same moment, to demonstrate in precisely the same manner for exactly the same cause. It also beggars belief that students indoctrinated in feminist and LGBTQ+ ideology suddenly would jettison it to side with the fervently anti-LGBTQ+ Hamas rapists.
Not only are there shared patterns of organization throughout many geographical locations, but there are shared patterns of organization over time. These protests pop up at opportune moments like mushrooms after a hard rain—all apparently produced by the same massive underground fungus.
First: Leftist riots, intimidation, building seizures, property damage, and assaults tend to occur in places with many young people who are not gainfully employed. These include college and university campuses and inner cities with high unemployment rates.
Second: If the protests were spontaneous, you would expect them to occur in random locations around the country. In fact, though, they appear in locations where the official response is likely to be weak. These include colleges and universities—where administrators usually have spines with the consistency of wet mucus—and left-wing cities in left-wing states. (Consider how much more often leftist violence occurs in Portland, Oregon than in Dallas, Texas.)
Third: The disruptors’ equipment often is the product of professional design and preparation. Slogans and iconography (symbols) tend to be similar.
Fourth: Funding from unknown sources provides food and equipment to the protesters. Many participants, particularly the organizers, are clearly paid. Some have surmised that misused federal money provides much of the funding for leftist political disruption. This view receives some support in a lower-than-expected level of mass violence since the Trump administration slashed funding to granting entities such as the Agency for International Development. At any rate, the DOJ should try to get at the truth.
Fifth: Perceptive observers sometimes note other indications of central planning: pre-riot placement of piles of bricks for Black Lives Matter thugs, tents for pro-Hamas demonstrators, and so forth.
Sixth: Leftist mass violence often follows the political calendar. The BLM riots, for example, occurred in 2020, a presidential election year—soon after leftists learned that incumbent President Trump was polling surprisingly well among African-American men. The BLM demonstrations had the effect of shifting African-American men back to the Democratic ticket, and perhaps were designed to do just that.
Conclusion
The first responsibility of any government is to protect its citizens and their rights and property. In an excess of courtesy to the violent left, government has failed in this obligation for many years. We can hope the new DOJ investigation will begin to correct this.
Robert G. Natelson, a former constitutional law professor who is senior fellow in constitutional jurisprudence at the Independence Institute in Denver, authored “ The Original Constitution ” (4th ed., 2025). He is a contributor to the Heritage Foundation’s “ Heritage Guide to the Constitution.”
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