Right-wing terrorists are motivated by ideas of racial or ethnic supremacy; opposition to government authority, including the sovereign citizen movement; misogyny, including incels (“involuntary celibates”); hatred based on sexuality or gender identity; and/or opposition to certain policies such as abortion.
Left-wing terrorists are motivated by an opposition to capitalism, imperialism, or colonialism; support for environmental causes or animal rights; pro-communist or pro-socialist beliefs; and/or support for decentralized political and social systems, such as anarchism.
Religious terrorists are motivated by a faith-based belief system. This may include Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, or other faiths. Within the religious category, we further distinguished cases in which the perpetrator adhered to a Salafi-jihadist ideology. After completing the coding process, we found that all religious incidents in this data set were also Salafi-jihadist in nature. The terms are therefore used interchangeably in the analysis. While perpetrators of some other attacks had religious ties, such as some within the Christian Identity movement, these attacks were motivated primarily by concepts of white supremacy and are therefore coded as right-wing. Similarly, though (primarily Christian) religious ideology may have influenced some perpetrators of abortion-related attacks, these fall under the definition of right-wing terrorism.
Ethnonationalist terrorists are motivated by ethnic and/or nationalist goals, including self-determination. Within this data set, issues driving ethnonationalist terrorism included political divisions within Haitian and Cuban exile communities and Puerto Rican independence. While anti-Semitic motives were classified as right-wing, attacks on Jewish individuals or institutions intended as a response to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict were classified as ethnonationalist.
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They split them so you can fit the graph on one page.
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