The Meme and the Numbers
Recently, I’ve seen a new type of meme circulating in online comment sections: claims that “right-wingers” are disproportionately guilty of sex crimes against minors.
The most elaborate example I came across showed 42 mugshots, labeled as “right-wingers” arrested for sex crimes against children in September 2025 alone. The images were pulled from news reports, social media, and arrest records.
But what does this actually prove? Not that “right-wing” people are uniquely dangerous. It only demonstrates the statistical illiteracy of whoever compiled the list.
Why 42 Seems Like a Lot
Why does 42 seem striking? Because of the base rate fallacy—our minds are not adapted to think in terms of thousands of crimes per month. Forty-two faces on a meme look overwhelming until you realize they represent a tiny fraction of the actual base rate.
The Actual Numbers
The National Crime Victimization Survey estimates that in 2024 there were about 92,000 sexual assaults of victims aged 15–17 and about 29,000 of victims aged 12–14. On average, that means roughly 10,000 victimizations of minors every month.
The FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting tells a similar story: between 9,800 and 11,000 reported rapes per month across all age groups.1
Defining “Right-Winger”
In competitive presidential elections, the Republican candidate typically wins 46–48% of the vote. By that measure, nearly half the country could be placed in the “right-wing” category. If there are 10,000 monthly sex crimes against minors, then about 5,000 of those offenders would be “right-wing” if there is no correlation whatsoever.
The “right-winger” label can be broadened further—for example, to include anyone who believes biological males should not compete in women’s sports, a view held by about 80% of Americans—and the expected number rises to 8,000 monthly cases.
Selection Bias, Not Sampling
Finally, the creation of the meme is an exercise in selection bias. Whoever made the meme went out looking specifically for “right-wing” offenders. Out of the many thousands who statistically exist, they spotlighted 42. That is not a representative sample—it’s cherry-picking.
Motivations for the Meme
Why produce such a meme at all? Likely for two reasons. One is to keep the Epstein–Trump association alive in the news cycle. The other is to counter criticism of transgender policies that allow male-bodied individuals into female spaces, by implying that “right-wingers” are just as dangerous.
However, this overlooks the point of the criticism it is attempting to counter. The point is not to count the number of transgender offenders. The point of the criticism is that a specific policy (gender self-identification) has a specific consequence (exploitation by sex offenders to access vulnerable women and girls). By contrast, no policy says, “If you identify as right-wing, you go into the girls’ locker room.”
Conclusion
Memes like this exemplify what has gone wrong with public discourse. Like calling someone a “fascist,” accusing someone of being a pedophile without evidence is the lowest form of argument. Extending that accusation to tens of millions of people is worse.
Even if such a correlation could be proven, it would have no practical value. If people in Group A have a 0.5% chance of being a pedophile and people in Group B have a 0.8% chance of being a pedophile, we don’t treat people in the latter group differently. Doing so would be prejudice.
In the end, these memes do not tell us anything meaningful about sex crime and partisan affiliations. It is the behavior of those who have no argument to make, no information to share, and nothing to say.
Further Reading
I have written in more detail about this very fallacy in my past article “The Fallacy of Listing Examples.”
Unlike the NCVS estimates, these involve crimes against victims of any age and include only crimes that meet the legal definition of rape and not sexual assaults more generally.