Updated June 6, 2025 at 9:07 AM CDT
The U.S. is in a "perilous time" following three attacks against Jewish people and groups in less than two months around the country, a counterterrorism expert tells NPR.
On April 13, a man set fire to the Pennsylvania governor's mansion. The suspect told authorities he harbored hatred toward Gov. Josh Shapiro, who is Jewish, because of his position on the war in Gaza. Shapiro had hosted a Passover Seder at the residence the night before.
Within weeks, on May 21, another attacker killed two Israeli embassy staff members outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C. A federal official said the attack would be investigated as a hate crime and an act of terrorism.
Then on Sunday, an attacker in Boulder, Colo., threw molotov cocktails at people marching in support of Israeli hostages held by Hamas in Gaza. The FBI said it would investigate the attack that injured more than 10 people as terrorism. Investigators said the suspect, who was charged with attempted murder and a federal hate crime, declared he wanted to kill Zionists.
Seamus Hughes, a senior research faculty member at the University of Nebraska Omaha's National Counterterrorism Innovation, Technology, and Education Center, told Morning Edition the rise in antisemitic attacks in recent years "comes from all forms of ideologies and extremism – far right, far left, single issue."
The Anti-Defamation League, which has tracked antisemitic attacks for 46 years, counted a record number in 2024. More than 9,000 incidents across the U.S. represented a 344% increase over five years and an 893% increase over the past decade.
"The connective tissue for extremism in the U.S. is anti-Semitism. It brings all forms of extremism together," Hughes, who also served as the senior counterterrorism advisor for the U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, told A Martinez.
Hughes also discussed how this kind of self-radicalization can happen and what can be done to prevent more violence.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
A Martinez: How much of this do you think is self-radicalization as opposed to direct contact with a formal organized group?
Seamus Hughes: It tends to be individuals who are terminally online, are watching the videos online, getting radicalized, and then committing acts of violence. They don't tend to have what we call directed attacks – do this at this time with this weapon. It's much more self-directed.
Martinez: Is there one that's scarier than the other?
Hughes: From a law enforcement perspective, directed attacks are more concerning because they may have raised the ability for the individual to commit more violence than they would do individually. But it does allow for tripwires to happen. So if you're communicating with someone overseas or online and that person is on law enforcement's radar, it may cause that person to be arrested that way. When you have a self-directed type of attack, those individuals usually don't rise to a level of hitting against law enforcement's radar.
Martinez: Are there any typical root causes for this?
Hughes: It is a bit of a cauldron of extremism. These things don't happen in a vacuum, so the events that are happening in the Middle East and overseas do influence individuals here.
Martinez: No one's going to stop covering what is happening in Gaza, but it's on all day, all night. And then when you see unfiltered pictures or videos on social media, does that add fuel to these kinds of sparks that cause some kind of action?
Hughes: It absolutely does. And we do see the violent imagery being a triggering moment and the images they may see may actually not be true or correct, but they're getting inundated. And a lot of these individuals – when you pull back the curtain on it – have spent months, if not years, in an online echo chamber that has only told them what they wanted to hear and only fed their anger.
Martinez: The threat feels pervasive. Is it even possible to guard against these kinds of opportunities for attacks?
Hughes: Something like this that happened in Colorado is the nightmare scenario, which is a soft target, an open area that is very hard to protect from law enforcement's perspective. It seems tired to say this, but there is something to be said about 'see something, say something.' If you look at academic research or past attacks, there's always a bystander effect – family members, friends saw something concerning, didn't realize what they were watching, and didn't alert law enforcement. As law enforcement dives into this case, there needs to be an after-action review of was there anything missed? Does this individual rise to a level that should have been stopped beforehand?
This digital article was edited by Obed Manuel. The radio version was produced by Ana Perez.
Copyright 2025 NPR
