I don't think it's that surprising. Now I'm not saying right-wing extremism isn't at a 20 year high, nor am I making excuses for right wing extremism, but Europe (at least the countries I've lived in and during my lifetime) has had decades of predominantly left-wing ideology at the reins. And now some countries, like Sweden, are starting to see certain devastating direct consequences as a result of irresponsible and frankly delusional, if not self deprecating politics. Speaking up about uncontrolled mass immigration get's called out as right wing extremism and racism. And let's face it, if someone can't talk about something that is very immediate and serious to them, and then they get angry and lash out in any capacity whatsoever then it registers as right wing extremist violence. Meanwhile if someone goes out on the street and literally yells "kill all conservatives! kill all white people! every city, every town, burn the precinct to the ground! down with democracy!", people would consider it ridiculous to call it left-wing extremism, when in reality it is left wing violent extremism.

I just think it's curious that people are hardly talking about Antifa and other left-wing extremist groups in any intellectually honest capacity, and when they do talk about them they're not viewed as the fascist, anti-democratic, violent extremists that they are. Antifa and BLM have probably killed hundreds in the last year, assaulted I don't know how many LGBT people (for some reason BLM hates trans people), caused billions of dollars of damage to both American and European infrastructure and society. And yet people are more worried about right-wing extremism. Maybe it's because I grew up in northern Europe, but right-wing extremism hardly exists. Whereas left-wing extremism is practically fashionable at this point.

I've heard rhetoric that literally echoes that of communist and nazi rhetoric in the media and from the government - left-wing of course, and no one bats an eye. Yet multiple countries and intelligence agencies consider Antifa to be a domestic terror network in the 'autonomous environment'. In Sweden, Antifa is considered one of the greatest threats to national security and democratic stability. In fact, contemporary left-wing extremism is likely the greatest threat to democracy that we are now facing, since it permeates all levels of society and as we all know, if we studied history, identity politics always end up in genocide. But somehow now it's politically incorrect to not take part in the identity politics.

And I wonder how this could have happened. Right wing extremism is bad, no one is questioning that, but it has never been even close to as devastating as left wing extremism was during the last century.

Genuinely confused about this. I have to admit I'm happy to have found this sub, since people here generally actually have somewhat open and honest discussions about these things. Which is quite uncommon on Reddit, where people usually just censor whoever doesn't agree.