Amplified by the Internet, timeworn myths have inspired lone attackers and small groups in a growing wave of anti-religious terror. In a manifesto attributed to the suspect in Saturday’s synagogue shooting, the writer said he attacked to “help the European race” defend itself against “international Jewry.”
A San Diego County sheriff’s deputy stands in front of the Chabad of Poway synagogue in California on Sunday. A man opened fire Saturday inside the synagogue near San Diego as worshipers celebrated the last day of a major Jewish holiday.
The suspect in the Poway shooting, a 19-year-old nursing student who was arrested and identified by police as John T. Earnest, apparently published a manifesto online, an increasingly common way for assailants to spread their ideologies and offer their versions of an explanation for the unthinkable. This one is a lengthy, rambling document markedly similar to the one posted by the avowed white supremacist who was charged with killing 50 people in New Zealand last month.
Heather Foy and her son Marshall, who live in the neighborhood, place a sign at a memorial across the street from the Chabad of Poway synagogue. Poway’s population is 81 percent white, according to U.S. Census data, with 16 percent of the city reporting Hispanic heritage. Thirteen percent are Asian and 2 percent black.
The shootings and bombings at places where people go to feel unified, comforted and inspired are, in one sense, nothing new. Religion, one of history’s most powerful uniting forces, always has served as a source of contention and bloodshed. From the Crusades to the Holocaust, nations, leaders and movements have waged war against people because of what they do or don’t believe.
“Anti-Semitic attitudes have been historically low, but it’s difficult now to feel anything other than alarm,” Greenblatt said. “Society is just more complicated — technology has empowered individuals and has disempowered states.” He noted that although the Islamic State, a chief ideological enemy of the United States, was defeated on the battlefield, “they were untouched, unchallenged in their online marketing.”
In the nation’s Jewish communities, especially in places where Jews are a tiny minority, the Poway shootings generated a new wave of fear. Chabad synagogues generally operate on a principle of radical openness to Jews of all denominations and to non-Jews. The shootings had some members wondering how to maintain that openness given the threat of violence.
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