FAIR
Right-wing terror is a feature of daily life in present-day America. Ostensibly spontaneous violence incubates in the same ideological ecosystem as organized reactionary political associations.
Robert Bowers, the man arrested for a rampage that killed seven at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue, was seemingly steeped in the ultra-right’s internal online debates, blaming Jews and Muslims for what he sees as the “certain extinction” toward which Americans and “Western Civilization” are supposedly headed. Right before the killing spree, Bowers posted on Gab, a social media platform used by white nationalists, that he “can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered,” singling out HIAS, a pro-refugee organization that Tree of Life supports, as a particular villain.