Is domestic terrorism the next step for antisemitic radicals?

(JNS) Americans were shocked and outraged by the assassination of Brian Thompson, the CEO of the UnitedHealthcare insurance company. Or at least most Americans were. Some were apparently happy about it, as a torrent of hate on social media directed towards the victim and sympathy for the murderer indicated.

Thoughtful people may be perplexed as to how it is that some are treating the alleged killer, Luigi Mangione, 26, as a sort of folk hero on whose behalf a crowdfunded legal defense fund has been established, and Thompson, 50, a husband and father, as a villain. It’s hard not to draw a connection between this incident and the way that many supposedly educated Americans have reacted in much the same manner to the atrocities committed by Hamas and Palestinian terrorists on Oct. 7, 2023. The attack on an insurance executive has prompted worries that this won’t be the last instance of violence directed at someone in the health-care industry.

There’s no need to wait to see if a similar pattern will emerge in response to the demonization of Israel. The growing list of crimes and threats against Jews from those who sympathize with Hamas and its goals has already shown us that the line that separates violent rhetoric from assaults and murderous terrorism can be razor-thin.

After two “pro-Palestine activists,” as The Washington Post sympathetically described them, were banned from George Mason University in Virginia, the response from many on campus and by antisemitic groups like the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), as well as the liberal press, was to label them as innocent victims of a Jewish-directed purge of those who “criticize” Israel.

The duo was brought to the attention of the police because they were suspected of committing acts of antisemitic vandalism. Given that they were members of the Students for Justice in Palestine group that supports the assault on Israel and the terrorists’ goal of Jewish genocide, they were prime suspects. But when police found weapons, ammunition and Arabic armbands calling for death to the Jews at their home, the university was blamed for persecuting them by other left-wing campus groups. As the CAMERA media monitoring group noted, being open supporters of terrorism didn’t prevent the Post from buying into the narrative that the real story was the suppression of “pro-Palestine” activism. The appalling fact that students at a respected institution of higher education possessed material and arms that could potentially be used against their peers to put their sympathies into action seemed an afterthought.

What happened at George Mason is one case among an increasingly lengthy list of incidents in which “pro-Palestine” advocacy has become violent. That is the context in which we should be thinking about the death of Brian Thompson and why it is that so many people were ready to justify or rationalize it. Rather than discuss that incident in isolation, the link between antisemitic rhetoric associated with Israel by left-wing propagandists and their followers since Oct. 7 and the catalogue of violent incidents committed against Jews in the United States must be understood as an indication of where such activity leads.

Pushed too far?

We can’t be surprised when people like former Washington Post reporter Taylor Lorenz, who is notorious for her unhinged comments on a variety of issues, share posts that express support for what happened to Thompson. What’s even worse is the willingness of supposedly respectable public figures to rationalize the crime as an understandable reaction to what they claimed was an unjust health-care system.

That was the position taken by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.)—the leader of the left-wing “Squad” in the U.S. House of Representatives who may soon be elevated to the post of ranking Democratic member on the House Oversight Committee. Their condemnations of the murder of Thompson were followed by a “Yes, but” addendum in which they claimed that such things are what we can expect when “people are pushed too far.”

The question of how American health care might be improved or made less inequitable, as well as whether insurance companies are to blame for all that is wrong with the system, are topics that can inspire plenty of spirited debate. Advocacy for the reform or abolition of insurance companies, socialized medicine or even the prosecution of their executives is one thing. But the comments about the murder of Thompson reflect a growing willingness on the left to treat politically motivated violence as a natural response to anything they don’t like. That’s something that cannot be ignored, even if assassination is also deprecated by insurance-industry critics as an ineffective strategy to effect the change they want.

A history of politically charged violence

This wouldn’t be the first time in American history that policy debates morphed into political violence. Anarchist bombings and assassinations of public figures, such as President William McKinley in 1901, were seen by some as a response to the excesses of capitalism in a period that historians call the “Gilded Age.” In the 1960s, an element of the movement protesting American involvement in the Vietnam War similarly became violent as the Weather Underground engaged in a campaign of domestic terrorism that involved larceny, murder as well as bombings of sites like the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C.

That’s an ominous precedent for the latest iteration of left-wing activism that focuses its hate against Jews and Israel.

There is a clear distinction in the law between advocating for violent outcomes and committing violence. Even those who want to see all Jews dead still possess the same First Amendment right to free speech as their neighbors who are not hate-mongers, so long as it is unconnected to actual violence. But as we’ve seen many times in the past, both in the United States and elsewhere, terrorism doesn’t arise in a vacuum. People who support genocide and terrorism in principle—such as those who chant “From the river to the sea” and “Globalize the intifada” on college campuses and in the streets of American cities—may well eventually conclude that participating in such acts themselves is justifiable. If Hamas murderers, rapists and kidnappers are your heroes and their actions are held up as an understandable reaction to “occupation,” why wouldn’t we expect a certain percentage of those glorifying Oct. 7 to seek to emulate it?

It’s not good enough for those who oppose insurance companies or Israel to merely say that nothing justifies violence while also supporting the agendas of those who cross the line from preaching about issues to attempted murder. Once people see where a desire to seek scapegoats or to apply toxic Marxist ideology to political disputes leads, there is an obligation on the part of responsible citizens to disavow such causes, as opposed to treating them as “wake-up calls” that should impel us to do their bidding.

Who needs a ‘wake-up call’?

Pro-Hamas mobs continue to make their presence felt on college campuses and in public discourse. But the presumption on the part of much of the liberal mainstream media and many Democratic politicians that they are merely well-meaning “idealists” who want a better world or less suffering for Palestinians is mistaken. Their worldview has been formed by toxic radical ideologies like critical race theory and intersectionality that allow for little or no nuance when discussing complex problems like the conflict between Israel and its foes, and the demonization of those who disagree with them.

Some of the protesters are foreign students from Muslim or Arab nations where the hatred of Jews and the support for violence against Israel is commonplace. And groups like SJP have received funding from foreign nations like the terrorist-supporting regime in Iran. Many educational institutions also are financed in part by Hamas allies like Qatar.

Put all that together and you have a recipe not just for a surge in antisemitism driven from the left but also a very real possibility that organized violence in the form of domestic terrorism might follow.

In the past four years, the U.S. Department of Justice has shown little interest in investigating the very real threat of domestic terror from Hamas sympathizers. Instead, it has wasted considerable time and energy chasing after peaceful conservatives who have protested against COVID-19 policies, woke indoctrination in the schools or abortion as if they were domestic terrorists. Reversing this should be a priority for the incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump.

The chattering classes who dominate public discourse, along with the left-wing politicians who seek their approval, need to understand that the “wake-up call” that is truly needed is not about forcing the country to adopt their policy choices. Rather, it is the recognition that on Israel and other issues, their misguided rhetoric has created an atmosphere in which murder and terror are not just imaginable but perhaps inevitable.

Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of JNS (Jewish News Syndicate). Follow him: @jonathans_tobin.