The NPR Politics Podcast
Is there a link between political violence and leaders’ rhetoric?
16 Mar 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What recent incidents of political violence are discussed?
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Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House.
I'm Odette Youssef. I cover domestic extremism. And I'm Barbara Sprent. I cover Congress.
There have been three targeted attacks in just the last week and a half, all considered political violence, two classified as acts of terrorism. It's a toxic stew. And today on the show, we'll try to understand what's leading to a dangerous atmosphere in this country and what role political leaders could play. Odette, let's start with these attacks.
Remind us of what we know about these three incidents.
Yeah. So the first was two Saturdays ago, Tam. There was an attempted attack on anti-Muslim protesters outside the mayor's mansion in New York City. Two young men have been charged with providing material support for a terrorist organization, ISIS. They allegedly both made statements to the effect that they were inspired by ISIS. And then on Thursday, there were two attacks.
One of them was at Old Dominion University in Virginia, where a man, according to the FBI, yelled Allahu Akbar before opening fire. He was killed at the scene. Previously, though, this man had served prison time after pleading guilty to providing material support for ISIS. This and the New York attack are both being investigated as acts of terrorism.
And then the third attack was on a synagogue in Michigan.
That's right, in a suburb of Detroit at Temple Israel. And there, a naturalized Lebanese-American citizen opened fire and crashed his vehicle into the building. He died by suicide. And investigators haven't stated a motive yet, Tam, but we do know that he had family who were killed in an Israeli airstrike in Lebanon a couple of weeks ago.
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Chapter 2: What common threads exist among the recent attacks?
And so that intolerance has been growing even before these foreign entanglements. And it was growing because of an increasingly tolerant environment for anti-Semitic white nationalist views in the U.S.
And it feels, you know, kind of even silly to have to point this out. But given what the internet is showing, I think that to add to Odette's point here about the broader environment, I mean, the perpetrator of the attack on the synagogue in Michigan, given what Odette shared about the Israeli strike in Lebanon that killed some of his family members.
I've seen things kind of on the Internet in the darker corners, sort of using it as an explanation or a justification of why he did this. And it feels, again, kind of silly to have to state this, but like it is objectively nonsensical and anti-Semitic to take the actions of the Israeli government and And attack American Jews at a place of community or worship.
And so sad to even have to say that, but it does feel like it's worth saying.
And obviously Temple Israel is not a branch of the nation of Israel.
I laugh at this because I'm sure that folks have seen a clip going around the Internet of someone saying that because it had Israel in the name of the temple, it is tied to the state of Israel, which I think shows sort of an ignorance, a lack of understanding. Temples have had the word Israel in them for far longer than the creation of the state of Israel.
But it is something I'll say that has been latched onto for extremist organizations overseas or the state of Iran that have been wanting to incite this kind of violence in the U.S. They are using the conflict to create more propaganda that they're putting out there on social media platforms to incite people to attack Iran.
Yeah, I was going to ask you if the experts you're talking to have any sense of what's contributing to this rise in anti-Semitism, this feeling that it's everywhere right now.
Yeah, I mean, so the foreign conflicts absolutely playing into it. And then we've already mentioned, you know, sort of rising, you know, homegrown white nationalist sentiment that's been happening for about a decade now. But there's another really important component, which is that over the last year or so, tech companies have greatly pulled back on content moderation and
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Chapter 3: How do foreign conflicts influence domestic political violence?
And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.
These days, it feels like the news changes every hour. Well, NPR has a podcast that does that too. NPR News Now brings you a fresh five-minute episode every hour of the day with the latest, most important headlines in episodes that are clear, fact-based, and easy to digest. Listen to NPR News Now on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.