America has a dangerous nexus between antisemitism and political violence

NJ Attorney General Dana Nessel, a long-time Michigan attorney general, was arrested and charged with anti-defamation on the internet

The man was arrested last month, and is accused of making a death threat against Jews on the internet. Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said on Thursday she was among those targeted.

Reports of increased antisemitic incidents throughout the country add to concerns about threats against public officials. It also evokes the plot to abduct the governor of Michigan, and at times threatening demonstrations against Covid-19 protocols.

A complaint was filed in US District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan against a man called Jack Eugene Carpenter III, who has a protection order against him and was previously arrested by state police.

Carpenter also had three 9mm handguns registered in Michigan’s Law Enforcement Information Network (LEIN), the complaint said. One of the guns in his possession Carpenter had “stolen” from his girlfriends, according the complaint.

Although there were no references to Nessel by name in the court papers, the attorney general said she was one of the targets.

“The FBI has confirmed I was a target of the heavily armed defendant in this matter. It is my sincere hope that the federal authorities take this offense just as seriously as my Hate Crimes & Domestic Terrorism Unit takes plots to murder elected officials,” she tweeted.

Moon added that the government is concerned Carpenter might flee because he “does not believe he is subject to the jurisdiction of this court.” Prosecutors will argue for Carpenter’s continued detention at a court hearing on Friday.

“When the defendant was arrested, in his vehicle they found approximately a half dozen firearms and ammunition,” federal prosecutor Hank Moon said in court Wednesday. “One of the threats he made was to shoot somebody.”

The threat is the latest of several high-profile threats and violence against Jews in America. According to the Anti-Defamation League, antisemitic attacks reached a record high in the US in 2021 – up 34% from 2020.

“Putting myself out there openly as a Jewish representative, when I have already received death threats on a daily basis, was one of the scariest things I’ve ever done,” Steckloff told “CNN This Morning” on Friday. I am prone to some today because of the horrible tragedy that could have been, and I spoke out against it.

The lessons of the Holocaust were brought to the attention of top American officials just a few years ago, and now it is threatening the security and peace of mind of millions of Americans who are ostracize as outsiders because of their faith.

If it is in Michigan or other areas, we see the confluence of anti-government, Covid and other conspiracy theories together with antisemitism and we see how people are going to action.

Individual’s actions are their own and they may be swayed by heated political rhetoric. Politicians often use this to claim plausible deniability that their words caused violence. But the House January 6 committee aired video of Trump supporters on the day of the riot saying they were inspired by his false claims of election fraud. And a poll from The Washington Post and the University of Maryland in January 2022 found that 34% of Americans – and 41% of Republicans – think violent action against the government is sometimes justified.

The threats against Jewish officials in Michigan are just one example of a rising tide of antisemitism. Last month, San Francisco police arrested a man who allegedly made political statements and fired apparently blank rounds in a synagogue. A man threw a Molotov cocktail at a New Jersey synagogue. A 63-year-old man was attacked in New York’s Central Park in December by a group that police described as antisemitic. The string of antisemitic incidents included a dinner that Trump had with a White supremacist and Ye, the rapper formerly known as West. Last year, demonstrators gave the Nazi salute and held banners with anti-Semitic slogans on a Los Angeles bridge. Shocking antisemitic messages were also projected onto buildings in Jacksonville, Florida.

“This is right in the wheelhouse of what the FBI and Director [Chris] Wray have told us. They face the greatest threat on the counterterrorist side, and that is the threat from domestic violent extremists. He added that such offenders were often “motivated by racial animus, they’re motivated by antisemitic feelings, by anti-immigrant feelings, charged sometimes with political grievance and then motivated to act violently on their own.”

Outside Michigan, two Georgia election officials testified last year to the House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, insurrection how verbal attacks on them by Trump and his aides had ruined their lives, with one saying, “There is nowhere I feel safe.” A Republican former candidate for the New Mexico legislature was arrested on suspicion of orchestrating shootings that caused the homes of Democratic elected leaders to be damaged. And Paul Pelosi, the husband of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, is still recovering from a late October assault, allegedly by a man with a hammer who told police that Democrats had committed crimes against Trump, using rhetoric popular with the ex-president’s supporters.

Democrats are just one of many who have been affected by extremism. In 2017, Republican Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana, who now serves as House majority leader, was seriously injured in a shooting at a congressional baseball practice by a man claiming to be a Bernie Sanders supporter. The man was charged with attempting to kill the Supreme Court justice after he was arrested near his home.

A New York State Representative, Marjorie Taylor Greene, has been arrested for allegedly attacking an election official with anti-semitic material

On Thursday a New Hampshire woman pleaded guilty to threatening an election official after the 2020 election. She faces up to 10 years in prison when she is sentenced in July, according to the Justice Department.

As was revealed in court this week, antisemitic attacks and violence are coming at a time when the ex-president and his supporters have made false claims about stolen elections, which have been amplified by powerful media organizations like Fox News.

Just this week, Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who also has a record of spreading antisemitic material, showed up at a meeting on election integrity and berated Gabriel Sterling, a Republican election official from the Peach State who resisted Trump’s baseless claims that he won the swing state in 2020. Greene fired off a flurry of claims and conspiracies for the cameras, which were almost all false.

Since it comes with some dangerous consequences, it is important for local public officials like Michigan’s Nessel to ensure that Americans can vote.

“It’s happening in almost every state. It’s happening against regular people,” said Rachel Kleinfeld, a senior fellow in the Democracy, Conflict and Governance Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

“Who is willing to take these jobs?” She warned that democracy is only as good as the people we put in charge and that they must be willing to run. People are stopping running when they have to add this to a stressed out job that isn’t paying very well, and put them in the same position as their fellow citizens.