Is there a link between political violence and leaders’ rhetoric?
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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. According to Israel Defense Forces, one of his brothers who was killed was a Hezbollah commander.
Yeah. And I think that there are still a lot of questions there.
Yeah. And I have a question on that front. Odette, all three of these attacks happened obviously when the U.S. is still at war with Iran. I'm curious to what degree you think that the war is contributing to the violence that we've seen this last week.
Yeah, I think it's really important to take each incident on its own merits. And so far, the only indication of a possible link may be in that synagogue attack. For the other two, there just isn't any indication yet of anything like that. But overall, the conflict in Iran has most immediately raised the threat concern for the Jewish diaspora and especially for Jews in America. Right when the conflict began, the Department of Homeland Security issued a security bulletin basically about this to law enforcement partners and to Jewish community partners. But I do want to step back a bit because, you know, the environment that Jews in the U.S. have been facing has actually been worsening for the better part of a decade.
And I spoke about that with Eric Fingerhut. He heads the Jewish Federations of North America. And I want to share with you some of what he told me. This is not new since the Operation Epic Fury, the war in Iran. This is not new since October 7, 2023. This has been going on now for years in our community. Go back to October 27, 2018, when you had the most violent attack on Jews in the history of the United States of America in Pittsburgh, in Squirrel Hill, Pennsylvania. And that was at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh. And of course, that was the year after the deadly white supremacist gathering in Charlottesville, where young men with tiki torches marched at night chanting, Jews will not replace us.
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.
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