Antisemitic Radicalization Isn’t a ‘Dark Web’ Phenomenon Anymore

By Noah Rothman

Thursday, March 12, 2026

 

It’s too early to determine whether the attacker who drove a truck into a Detroit-area synagogue and childhood learning center — before he was engaged by security officers and neutralized — sought to kill as many Jews, young and old alike, as he could. That’s not an unreasonable inference, though.

 

Reports indicate that the attacker made it as far into the building as he could before he was eliminated, resulting only in the injury of one security officer. “Something” in the vehicle “ignited” during the attack, according to police, but there is no word yet on whether that something was an incendiary or explosive device. Still, preliminary but educated assessments of the attacker’s motives and methods suggest that this was the sort of antisemitic attack that has become all too familiar.

 

At least, it is familiar to some. CNN’s in-house national security expert, Juliette Kayyem, was, however, quick to attribute the attack to blowback from the war in Iran:

 

 

As provided by NewsBusters’ managing editor, Curtis Houck, Kayyem continued:

 

And so, all of that is part of this horrible stew of terrorism and incitement that we live in now in a world online and in a world where, where violence is — is — is too prevalent and so, once again, the fact that the sheriff said two weeks, that’s not a — that’s not a coincidental two weeks. Every — Every law enforcement agent knew or leader knew that this war was going to have consequences in the homeland in ways that — that we are seeing. Well, we don’t that we could be seeing today I’ll be careful, but in ways that we should anticipate the longer this war goes.

 

Now, Kayyem could be correct in her assumption that the Iran war inspired, in part or wholly, this act of addlebrained violence. But no one should labor under the delusion that, prior to two Saturdays ago, this sort of violence was entirely exotic. Anti-Jewish violence has been on the rise in the United States almost from the moment Hamas executed the October 7 massacre. Even prior to it, antisemitic narratives and the violence that so often accompanies them had become a mournfully prominent feature of the domestic threat environment.

 

Nor do we need to look to shadowy networks of anonymous online agitators to see a possible connection to the Iran war, as Kayyem has. The notion that American service personnel are dying in an unnecessary conflict with Iran only to spare Israel the hardship is no longer relegated to the fringes. Indeed, the allegation is practically mainstream, as is the claim that anodyne Jewish youth organizations are hotbeds of sedition and conspiracy.

 

We don’t have to reach back into the archives or go searching as far afield as the remnants of the Islamic State to find “incitement to radicalization” to “lure people to violence,” to which Kayyem remains open as a potential motive in this attack. The incitement to radicalization and violence isn’t relegated to the so-called dark spaces of the internet anymore. It’s right there on your TikTok feed and wherever you listen to your podcasts.