{"id":2599767,"date":"2026-05-07T07:35:02","date_gmt":"2026-05-07T11:35:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/california-arson-revealed-as-more-left-wing-destruction-as-media-lie-to-conceal-lefts-violence-problem\/"},"modified":"2026-05-07T07:40:24","modified_gmt":"2026-05-07T11:40:24","slug":"california-arson-revealed-as-more-left-wing-destruction-as-media-lie-to-conceal-lefts-violence-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/california-arson-revealed-as-more-left-wing-destruction-as-media-lie-to-conceal-lefts-violence-problem\/","title":{"rendered":"California Arson Revealed As More Left-Wing Destruction"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">14<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fcalifornia-arson-revealed-as-more-left-wing-destruction-as-media-lie-to-conceal-lefts-violence-problem%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=2599767&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>The text argues that recent major incidents of political violence-such as the 2025 Palisades Wildfire-should not be explained as outcomes of climate change or as isolated strokes of unrelated \u201cviolence,\u201d but rather as connected to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/student-suspended-from-education-program-for-saying-a-man-is-a-man-a-woman-is-a-woman\/\" title=\"Student Suspended From Education Program For Saying, \u2018A Man Is A Man, A Woman Is A Woman\u2019\">left-wing ideology<\/a> and criminal acts. It claims that prosecutors,investigators,and media framing repeatedly downplay or reclassify left-wing violence as non-ideological unrest or ordinary crime,while emphasizing right-wing extremism.<\/p>\n<p>A central point is that research cited by mainstream outlets (notably a New York Times discussion drawing on a PNAS study) allegedly uses datasets whose inclusion rules depend heavily on how journalists and prosecutors label cases. Because those databases often rely on media and court narratives, the article contends that left-wing violence can be excluded when it\u2019s framed as protest, vandalism, or opportunistic behavior, even when it occurs during clearly ideological demonstrations.<\/p>\n<p>The author further criticizes the reliability of studies that lump outcomes together under broad measures like \u201cviolent,\u201d arguing that cases might potentially be counted or ignored depending on intent, categorization, and the time window of data collection. They cite examples involving the Black Lives Matter-related unrest,suggesting that many violent crimes that occurred during ideologically motivated events where treated by authorities as \u201cadjacent to\u201d peaceful demonstrations and therefore would not register as ideologically driven violence in the kind of datasets being used.<\/p>\n<p>the piece maintains that mainstream media and compliant \u201cexperts\u201d use selective or biased data to shift blame away from the left. It concludes that the country has an ideological political violence problem, and that-based on its interpretation of the evidence-this problem is predominantly associated wiht the left rather than the right.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"readmore\">\n    <button onclick=\"showReadMore()\" id=\"readmorebtn\">Read more&#8230;<\/button>\n<\/p>\n<hr id=\"line\">\n<span id=\"more\"><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>Perhaps unsurprisingly, the deadly 2025 Palisades Wildfire was not the result of climate change, but a left-wing arsonist, <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2026\/05\/04\/us-news\/palisades-arsonist-became-fixated-with-luigi-mangione-before-deadly-blaze-prosecutors\/?utm_medium=social&#038;utm_campaign=nypost&#038;utm_source=twitter\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">according<\/a> to prosecutors. Thirty-year-old Jonathan Rinderknecht was <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2026\/05\/05\/media-other-dems-invite-more-left-wing-violence-by-making-excuses-for-killers-they-agree-with\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">reportedly fascinated<\/a> by Luigi Mangione (the suspect in the murder of the UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson) and was \u201cranting\u201d to his Uber customers about capitalism and vigilantism before allegedly setting the blaze. That wildfire caused <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/newshour\/nation\/a-year-after-the-la-wildfire-disaster-key-numbers-show-how-it-unfolded-and-the-toll-left-behind\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">12 deaths<\/a> (and potentially <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/news\/articles\/2025\/death-count-for-2025-la-county-wildfires-likely-hundreds-higher-than-official-records-show\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">hundreds<\/a> of others), while contributing to an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/business\/story\/2025-01-24\/estimated-cost-of-fire-damage-balloons-to-more-than-250-billion\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">estimated<\/a> $250 billion in damage from the Los Angeles-area fires.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s just the latest in the growing string of left-wing violence that is plaguing the country,  violence that will not stop until the left is willing to confront the product of its own making. <\/p>\n<p>But how can leftists confront this problem when the complicit propaganda press repeatedly reassures them \u2014 despite the assassination attempts against President Donald Trump, the assassination of Charlie Kirk, the attempted assassinations of Steve Scalise and of ICE agents in Texas, the arson at Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro\u2019s home, and countless other examples \u2014 that the <em>real<\/em> culprits are Republicans?<\/p>\n<p>As a prime example of this deceptive \u201creassurance,\u201d The New York Times <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/05\/01\/us\/trump-shooting-political-violence-us.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">declared<\/a> that \u201cRepublican commentators have argued, incorrectly, that political violence is largely a left-wing problem\u201d just days after yet <em>another<\/em> attempted assassination of President Donald Trump. According to Times reporter Linda Qiu, while \u201cfar-left violence is rising,\u201d \u201cmost political violence in recent decades has come from the far right.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She goes on to cite a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pnas.org\/doi\/full\/10.1073\/pnas.2122593119#sec-1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">report<\/a> by \u201cextremism experts\u201d \u2014 aka the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) \u2014 which claimed in 2022 that \u201cright-wing extremists may be more likely to engage in politically motivated violence.\u201d But as is commonly the case with research touted by legacy media, the study\u2019s own methodology reveals how badly skewed the conclusions are.<\/p>\n<p>The report includes two studies, Profiles of Individual Radicalization in the United States (PIRUS) and Global Terrorism Database (GTD), and uses PIRUS data up to 2018 and GTD data up to 2017. PIRUS codes individuals based on \u201cpublicly available court documents, newspaper accounts, and published sources,\u201d while GTD uses roughly 2 million news articles daily and then has analysts determine what counts as a \u201cterrorist attack.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In other words, the databases rely heavily on the biased corporate media: When the propaganda press frames something as right-wing extremism, it counts as right-wing extremism in the databases. But if the propaganda press or prosecutors frame left-wing violence as a protest, unrest, or not associated with an ideological crime, the databases do <em>not<\/em> consider the violence to be left-wing.<\/p>\n<p>PIRUS also only includes data for individuals who were arrested or indicted for explicitly ideological crimes.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTo be included in the [PIRUS] database, individuals have to meet at least one of the following criteria:\u00a0arrested or indicted for illegal ideologically motivated offenses, killed because of their ideological activities, identified as a current or former member of a designated terrorist organization, or associated with an organization whose leader or founder was indicted for violent ideologically motivated offenses. Individuals meeting one or more of these criteria must also have been radicalized (primarily or entirely) within the United States and\u00a0have a clear link between their criminal behavior and their ideological motive,\u201d the study says.<\/p>\n<p>In other words, whether political violence enters the dataset often depends less on the violence itself and more on how prosecutors and so-called journalists choose to describe it. <\/p>\n<p>The New York Times\u2019 choice to rely on studies that don\u2019t include data after 2018 means the violent Black Lives Matter riots are completely absent from the calculus (and, given the criteria above, the left-wing riots likely would have been ignored by the studies <em>even<\/em> if post-2018 data had been included). But the absence of those riots (which <a href=\"https:\/\/www.axios.com\/2020\/09\/16\/riots-cost-property-damage\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">caused more<\/a> than $1 billion in damage and <a href=\"https:\/\/journals.sagepub.com\/doi\/10.1177\/26330024251388499\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">more than 30 associated deaths<\/a>) illustrates a catastrophic flaw in how leftist media and researchers approach the question of political violence. <\/p>\n<p>During the BLM riots, hundreds were arrested for arson, assault, looting, destruction of property, and other crimes. These crimes took place during an explicitly left-wing ideological demonstration organized around a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/5-times-the-left-turned-on-their-own-for-not-being-woke-enough\/\" title=\"5 Times The ... Turned On Their Own For Not Being \u2018Woke\u2019 Enough\">left-wing political movement<\/a>. Yet, in September of 2020, the Department of Justice framed <a href=\"https:\/\/www.justice.gov\/archives\/opa\/pr\/over-300-people-facing-federal-charges-crimes-committed-during-nationwide-demonstrations\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">300 federal charges<\/a> filed for crimes during the George Floyd riots as \u201ccrimes committed adjacent to or under the guise of peaceful demonstrations,\u201d not as ideologically motivated domestic terrorism.<\/p>\n<p>That means those crimes would not have been counted toward left-wing violence <em>despite<\/em> the clear association.<\/p>\n<p>The Associated Press inadvertently highlighted the same problem while trying to dismiss President Donald Trump\u2019s criticisms of those riots. As <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ksat.com\/news\/politics\/2020\/10\/20\/protest-arrests-show-regular-americans-not-urban-antifa\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">KSAT<\/a> reported, citing the AP\u2019s research, \u201cVery few of those charged appear to be affiliated with highly organized extremist groups, and many are young suburban adults from the very neighborhoods Trump vows to protect from the violence in his reelection push to win support from the suburbs.\u201d FBI\u2019s internal <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2020\/07\/15\/george-floyd-protests-police-far-right-antifa\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">2020 <\/a>assessment asserted that \u201cmuch of the violence and vandalism is perpetrated by opportunistic, individual actors acting without specific direction.\u201d It\u2019s categorizations like these that would have allowed the left-wing BLM riot perpetrators to avoid detection in the system used for the PNAS study.<\/p>\n<p>But formal affiliation with an extremist group is not what makes violence political. A man who burns a building down during an explicitly ideological riot is still participating in ideological violence even if he wasn\u2019t formally given an Antifa membership card, and even if leftist ideology wasn\u2019t the driving force in particular crimes during the 2020 riots, left-wing ideology enabled them by creating a permission structure for violence and chaos.<\/p>\n<p>The PNAS report itself effectively admits the flaw in its limitations sections. Yet the authors still use these incomplete datasets to reach sweeping conclusions about ideological violence in America.<\/p>\n<p>The report also admits that cases are considered \u201cnonviolent where it was clear from source documents that individuals did not intend to harm others, including acts of vandalism, illegal protest, fraud, and property destruction where the perpetrators took measures to ensure that no one was injured or killed,\u201d conveniently side-stepping entire swaths of destrutive activity. Yet at the same time if a so-called \u201cright-winger\u201d plots an attack that is never executed, it is still counted as violence if there was intent to harm.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOur main outcome variable was whether the act committed by an individual was violent. The dataset coded as violent cases where there was strong evidence that individuals were conspiring to kill or injure even if they failed to do so,\u201d the report states.<\/p>\n<p>This spin, peddled so readily by The New York Times, isn\u2019t new. After each attempted assassination against the president, the left has tried to claim that the real political violence comes from the right. In the aftermath of Charlie Kirk\u2019s assassination, <a href=\"https:\/\/archive.md\/Mv1xF#selection-1747.450-1747.569\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">The Economist <\/a>claimed that while \u201cextremists on both left and right commit violence \u2026 more incidents appear to come from right-leaning attackers.\u201d As The Federalist previously <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2025\/09\/20\/the-study-youre-citing-about-right-wing-violence-is-full-of-fake-data\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">explained<\/a>, the study The Economist cited was conducted by The Prosecution Project, whose executive director is \u201copenly anarchist Antifa-affiliated\u201d as The Federalist had <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2023\/06\/01\/meet-the-violent-anarchist-behind-dhss-pyramid-of-far-right-radicalization-scandal\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">reported<\/a> in 2023.<\/p>\n<p>The study, much like the PNAS research, is flawed. For example, The Prosecution Project cites a charge against John Reardon, who made antisemitic threats. The study noted: \u201cInfluenced by events in Gaza, he also said, \u2018you do realize that by supporting genocide that means it\u2019s ok for people to commit genocide against you.\u2019\u201d As The Federalist noted, \u201cThe <a href=\"https:\/\/www.justice.gov\/usao-ma\/pr\/massachusetts-man-who-threatened-kill-members-jewish-community-and-bomb-synagogues\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Department of Justice<\/a> never identified Reardon\u2019s political affiliation, but The Prosecution Project\u2019s own account seems to indicate he was a pro-Palestine fanatic, a cause typically associated with Democrats. Yet The Prosecution Project identifies Reardon\u2019s crimes as \u2018rightist\u2019 because they\u2019re \u2018identity-focused.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In another example of debunked leftist research, <a href=\"https:\/\/natpop.substack.com\/p\/how-the-left-manipulates-data-on\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Ryan James Girdusky<\/a> took a deep dive into a study of political violence by the Anti-Defamation League and found the study did not include the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. The suspect, Mangione, purportedly left behind a <a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/3YuVZYV\" >manifesto espousing left-wing ideas<\/a> about health care and elites.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2025\/10\/02\/data-doesnt-lie-political-violence-is-an-overwhelmingly-left-wing-problem\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Bruce Gilley reported<\/a> in these pages on a separate list the Cato Institute\u2019s Alex Nowrasteh put together. It counted \u201c12 lethal political attackers since 2020 from the right but only nine from the left.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But, as Gilley observed, \u201c[Nowrasteh\u2019s] list of the Right mistakenly includes at least four cases: the Melissa Hortman killing \u2026 a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/political-violence-is-an-overwhelmingly-left-wing-problem\/\" title=\"Political ... Is An Overwhelmingly ... ...\">confused black teenager<\/a> who killed one student at Antioch High School in Tennessee [in 2024] (laughably called a \u2018white supremacist\u2019 by the media), a Hispanic man also labelled a \u2018white supremacist\u2019 who shot up a shopping mall in Texas in 2023, and a man who became addicted to prostitutes and shot up a brothel in 2021 (again, laughably called a political crime because the sex-workers were Asians),\u201d Gilley reported.<\/p>\n<p>Notably, Nowrasteh\u2019s list of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/top-study-exaggerating-threat-of-right-wing-extremism-cites-the-splc\/\" title=\"Top study exaggerating threat of right... cites the SPLC\">left-wing violence excluded<\/a> the murder of Iryna Zarutska, whose alleged killer said, \u201cI got that white girl,\u201d as well as \u201cthe six whites killed (and 60 injured) by the virulent black supremacist who ploughed his car into a Christmas parade in Wisconsin in 2021,\u201d Gilley pointed out.<\/p>\n<p>The propaganda press has touted all of these \u201cstudies\u201d and \u201cexperts\u201d to downplay left-wing violence while deflecting blame. But the <em>real<\/em> data doesn\u2019t lie: America has a political violence problem, and it\u2019s <em>not<\/em> coming from the right.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>      Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist. Brianna graduated from Fordham University with a degree in International Political Economy. Her work has been featured on Newsmax, Fox News, Fox Business and RealClearPolitics. Follow Brianna on X: @briannalyman2<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Prosecutors: 2025 Palisades Wildfire blamed on left-wing arsonist Jonathan Rinderknecht<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":74,"featured_media":2599768,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/54797709937_d3a8a6307e_k-e1778095700390.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[33651],"tags":[13856,4045,3976,5129],"class_list":["post-2599767","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-western-journal","tag-arson","tag-california","tag-investigation","tag-left-wing"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/54797709937_d3a8a6307e_k-e1778095700390.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2599767","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/74"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2599767"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2599767\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2599772,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2599767\/revisions\/2599772"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2599768"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2599767"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2599767"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2599767"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}