Against Far-Right Political Violence

As of 2001, around 45 terror attacks have been perpetrated by far-right individuals in the United States, killing 133 people according to wikipedia. Some of the entries classified as ‘terror attacks’ are dubious, like the charlottesville ramming, otherwise the list is fairly exhaustive. Notable attacks perpetrated for right wing political motivations include:

• The Oklahoma City Bombing: in 1995, Tim McVeigh and Terry Nichols (likely assisted by others) bombed a federal building, killing 153 people and injuring 680.

• The El Paso Shooting: in 2019, the El Paso shoter killed 23 people and injured 22 others.

• The Buffalo Shooting: in 2022, the Buffalo shooter shot and killed 10 Black people.

What, exactly, have these terror attacks accomplished? Even if it assumed that all of the people who died in these attacks were not White, the net effect on the demographic makeup of the United States is marginal. These attacks have also not deterred immigrants from coming to the USA or caused changes in immigration law. So, what have these attacks actually accomplished?

• Almost all of the attackers were imprisoned or killed.

• Any talk of the Great Replacement is charged with links to terrorism and violence.

• Michael Woodley was cited in the Buffalo manifesto, and was subsequently suspended from his University position.

• New York banned the sale of certain armors and barred most 21 year olds from owning semi-automatics as a response to the Buffalo Shooting.

All of these consequences are negative and harm the right wing, and it would be preferable if these attacks had never happened. The lack of efficacy of terrorism is not exclusive to the right wing; gwern notes that basically all terrorist movements have failed in accomplishing their objectives, or did not accomplish them by attacking civilians:

Statistical analysis of terrorist groups’ longevity, aims, methods and successes reveal that groups are self-contradictory and self-sabotaging, generally ineffective; common stereotypes like terrorists being poor or ultra-skilled are false. Superficially appealing counter-examples are discussed and rejected. Data on motivations and the dissolution of terrorist groups are brought into play and the surprising conclusion reached: terrorism is a form of socialization or status-seeking.

II.

If you want to do shady political actions in real life, I would recommend doing them solo or extremely close friends. Organizations made for these purposes are bound to be infiltrated by feds, and collaborators could potentially be caught and incriminate the whole operation. If a ‘shady political action’ has to involve a violent killing, all I have to recommend is to not kill innocents (yes, this includes random non-Whites) and to avoid getting caught.

Even so, killing high-profile non-innocent people is still likely to be uneffective, as the overwhelming majority of them have a marginal amount of influence on government policy and it would also garner bad press. Even if highly influential people are killed, they will either be replaced (e.g. Biden with Harris) or their money would be inherited by their children, who are likely to be leftists as well due to environmental incentives and genetics.

TL;DR don’t become this guy: