From Australia and America to Britain, Europe, and India, various forms of vilification campaigns target leftist politics and its ideology, portraying it as inherently violent. The American, British, and European ruling classes detest leftist politics and consistently campaign against it to conceal their own failures. Across the political spectrum, both conservatives and liberals have failed to provide the basic necessities to the working people who create society’s wealth yet continue to live in destitution. Everyday marginalisation defines the lives of working masses.
The Republican Party led by Donald Trump calls for a crackdown on the radical left in the United States, while Britain suppresses left-wing activism to shield Israel and its ongoing Zionist agenda of genocidal mass violence against the people of Gaza. Giorgia Meloni routinely lashes out at left-wing opposition, and the Modi government in India spares no opportunity to brand left-wing politics as anti-national. The ruling classes across the world call for a crackdown on left-wing politics, portraying it as extremist. The so-called Democratic Party, Republican Party, Conservative Party (UK), and Labour Party (UK) consistently campaign against the left, branding its supporters as apologists for violence, Muslims, migrants, and lazy working people. Meanwhile, self-proclaimed nationalists worldwide relentlessly seek to undermine the left by delegitimising it legally, socially, and politically to preserve a capitalist system fundamentally rooted in exploitation and inequality.
Intellectuals, teachers, journalists, activists, lawyers, writers, and members of civil society who question the state and its absolutist power, advocate for government accountability, and fight to democratise and decentralise power for people’s development and the deepening of citizenship rights are branded by the Modi government in India as “urban Naxals.” Meanwhile, both the right-wing Hindutva politics led by the BJP and the Indian National Congress and other liberals label Communist Party of India (Maoist) members—who fight for tribal rights in the forests of India—as the single greatest internal security threat to the nation’s unity and integrity. People of leftist ideology are routinely branded as anti-nationals. This ideologically driven political narrative is deliberately crafted by the reactionary right-wing ruling classes to discredit the left as the voice of reason that stands for the interests of the working masses.
Does left politics breed violence? Is leftist ideology inherently violent? Global data on political violence suggests otherwise. Empirical evidence shows that it is right-wing and reactionary politics—and the ruling-class projects carried out in its name—that most often breed violence in society. A Cato Institute Policy Analysis (No. 991, published on March 10, 2025) titled “Terrorism and Immigration: 50 Years of Foreign-Born Terrorism on US Soil, 1975–2024” by Alex Nowrasteh reveals that religious extremists, white supremacists, and right-wing groups are responsible for most acts of violence, while atheists are responsible for none, and left-wing violence is extremely rare. Leftist politics and ideology have no connection to gun violence or mass school shootings in the United States. The study also notes that acts motivated by animal rights, environmentalism, or anti-police sentiments are often branded as left-wing violence. In Britain and Europe, most violence stems from white supremacist groups and from street-level unrest driven by drugs, unemployment, and social and economic marginalisation.
Historically, from the Crusades to modern terrorism in its political and religious forms, the largest numbers of people have been killed in religious, capitalist, and imperialist wars and conflicts. These forces promote terrorism, causing death and destitution on a daily basis. Such reactionary powers continue to wreak havoc on the everyday lives of working people. For them, violence is a tool of subjugation and mass domestication, instilling fear to maintain control. This project upholds the status quo and perpetuates the dominance of the rich over the poor. Violence is not only structurally embedded but also inherent within religions, right-wing reactionary forces, and their ideological foundations, all designed to sustain the hegemony of capitalism and the interests of its ruling class at the expense of the working masses. Without both implicit and explicit violence, capitalism would collapse almost immediately.
Capitalist media, ruling-class intellectuals, and their allied institutions propagate unfounded narratives of left-wing extremism and violence to undermine any prospects for the democratic transformation of society along paths of peace, progress, and shared prosperity. Violence, in contrast, is a tool of capitalism and imperialism, perpetuated through allied agencies and structures established by religious and right-wing forces to control and domesticate the masses, often at the expense of science and reason. For this reason, it is crucial to demystify the notion of left-wing extremism and expose the reactionary structures of capitalist violence, which are frequently inflicted upon people by religions, right wing politics, states and governments.
Leading philosophers and founders of left-wing politics and revolutionary ideology—from Marx and Lenin to Trotsky—opposed violence and emphasised the importance of class consciousness. As Lenin argued, “without the working class, all bombs are powerless, patently powerless.” Similarly, Trotsky critiqued violence in his seminal work on ‘Why Marxists Oppose Individual Terrorism’. Violence and terrorism, he noted, undermine the collective struggles of working people and their emancipation grounded in class consciousness. Therefore, it is entirely misguided to associate violence with left-wing political ideology.
However, the narrative linking violence to left-wing politics is a well-orchestrated political strategy by the ruling classes to protect their interests and conceal the inherently violent structures of governance, under which working masses continue to suffer in fear and destitution. This suffering is normalised by religious and right-wing forces in the name of national, racial, and religious pride and purity. The puritanical and absolutist nature of right-wing politics and its ideology not only breeds violence but also enforces it in the everyday lives of ordinary people.
On rare occasions, the left politics may adopt violent methods of struggle, depending on the conditions of struggle for human emancipation and in response to state or government violence. However, left-wing politics fundamentally values the collective celebration of life and liberties. Human emancipation from all forms of inequality and exploitation remains at its ideological core. In left-wing ideology, no human is considered alien, and peace, happiness, and shared prosperity are essential principles—leaving no space for violence as a defining feature of the movement. Left-wing politics fights for peace, liberty, equality, justice, citizenship rights and prosperity for all, regardless of their background. Consequently, it opposes all forms of violence that undermine the conditions necessary to achieve these objectives and advance human emancipation from all reactionary forces and their ideals.