"For decades, Muslim and Arab communities have been positioned within American political discourse as permanent sites of suspicion. The so-called “War on Terror” normalized mass surveillance, racial profiling, and the framing of entire communities as security threats. In recent years, anti-Muslim and anti-Arab rhetoric has increasingly merged with broader far-right conspiracy culture, anti-immigrant politics, and anti-Palestinian dehumanization.
The result is a political atmosphere in which extremist violence does not need to invent hatred from scratch. It inherits narratives that already circulate openly across media, politics, and digital culture, then pushes those narratives toward their most violent conclusions.
The attack itself is now the subject of a criminal investigation. But understanding how two teenagers arrived at a worldview that celebrated Nazi symbolism, glorified mass killers, and called for the extermination of Muslims requires looking beyond the events of May 18."
https://www.wewillfreeus.org/sandiegomosqueattackpt1/