Politically opposed extremist networks seek US government overthrow. Both are anti-Israel

Last month, a 19-year-old in Ohio, Tycen Proper, told his online network that he had a “possible target” for a terrorist attack the group was planning against a White House event — a US senator from Tennessee.

Asked why the senator should be assassinated, Proper allegedly told the group that she had received money from “the pro-Israel lobby and supports them.”

He followed up by naming four more Congress members affiliated with the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC, according to court filings.

The purpose of the planned attack, Proper said, was to “jumpstart” a revolution in the US.

At the same time, law enforcement was preparing to arrest members of an anti-Zionist network centered around the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

The Michigan suspects allegedly discussed killing, “terrorizing,” and torturing university regents, other targets connected to Israel, and their targets’ families.

The campaign’s end goal was a “revolution” and an “overthrow” of the United States, prosecutors said.

The two groups appeared to come from opposite ends of the political spectrum, however. The network targeting the White House event espoused a far-right Christian ideology, while the alleged Michigan conspirators aligned with the far left.

The cases illustrated how fringe activists on both the far left and far right see violent opposition to Israel and its US affiliates as a means to domestic revolution and overthrowing the government.

“Whether it’s Israel or Jewish issues, they’re often part of the worldview of those who take it to the next level to want to engage in violence,” said Oren Segal, the head of the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism. “It’s part of the fabric of a conspiracy.”

Shared antipathy toward Israel and Jews

In addition to their shared revolutionary goals, the two groups converged in their antipathy toward Israel and Jews.

The Michigan activists idolized Hamas. They had the terrorist group’s propaganda stored on their electronic devices and traded “Hamas killing videos” with each other, prosecutors said in court filings.

On the first anniversary of the October 2023 Hamas invasion of Israel, they allegedly carried out a vandalism spree against University of Michigan officials and the Jewish Federation of Detroit, including with inverted red triangles, a Hamas symbol.

One of the suspects, Colin Weger, had patches for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and a sticker that said “Tie me to a missile and fire it at Tel Aviv,” a Hamas slogan.

Zainab Hakim, the group’s “ringleader,” wrote protest chants for the group, such as “Al Qassam make us proud,” referring to Hamas’s military wing.

One of the suspects had a flag in his apartment showing the late Hamas spokesperson Abu Obeida and another, an aspiring doctor, said he had been thinking about “joining [the] Hamas medical wing.”

Suspect Jonathan Zou had images on his phone that said “death to the Jewish bastards.”

Proper’s family said he had been posting antisemitic content and statements in support of Adolf Hitler on social media.

His call to target members of Congress affiliated with Israel included information about how much money each lawmaker received “from pro-Israel PACs,” a court filing said.

Another defendant, Michael Alan Thomas, blamed government corruption on Jews and blamed Jewish people and Israel for the war with Iran.

One of the Michigan suspects had a painting showing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s bloody, decapitated head, while the White House plotters believed Netanyahu would attend the targeted event and put him on their hit list.

“Sharing extremist messaging is acting as a kind of lubricant to proceed to real-world violence or to consider real-world violence,” Segal said. “It’s the way that antisemitic and anti-Israel conspiracies work. They help nudge people over the edge in many of the cases that we’ve seen.”

“Anti-Israel and antisemitic conspiracies fit nicely into the worldview of most extremists, one way or another. It’s the thing that brings folks together,” he said.

Neither group appeared to have expressed antipathy toward any other foreign country.

In both cases, the charges remain allegations, not convictions, and the investigations are still in relatively early stages.

An assassination plot and a family on a hit list

Proper’s network targeted a mixed martial arts event attended by US President Donald Trump on the White House lawn earlier this month.

The group planned to dispatch small, explosive-laden drones that would detonate over the event, forcing an evacuation.

Attackers armed with rifles, stationed near an evacuation point, would shoot their victims as they fled the UFC event, according to the plan described by federal prosecutors.

Proper’s family called local police to report their son’s concerning behavior, such as stockpiling weapons, body armor and survival gear, his social media activity, and his plans to meet his online co-conspirators in person.

The family’s call led to the FBI preventing the planned attack and the arrests of at least eight suspects around the US.

The FBI described the plan as “a plot to assassinate federal officials.”

In Michigan, federal authorities charged five anti-Zionist protesters for allegedly threatening Jews, University of Michigan leaders and law enforcement after the start of the war in Gaza.

The activists made demands of the University of Michigan leadership, such as divestment from Israel, investigations into university policy, and statements against Israel.

When the university did not comply, the suspects prepared “autonomous actions” to further their agenda. They researched and surveilled the targets and discussed using poison, bombs, vehicular attacks and “psychological torture” against their opponents.

In one message, in May 2024, two of the defendants agreed to “kill,” “torment,” and “terrorize” their targets. One of the suspects said a target’s “entire family” was on his “hit list,” that people “gotta die,” and another said the alleged conspirators should “get” the children of two targets, according to court filings.

The activists vandalized homes with Hamas symbols, broke windows and hurled glass jars filled with butyric acid, used as a “stink bomb,” into homes where children were sleeping.

Seeking revolution from different sides

The two groups both sought revolution, but from different angles. The White House conspirators had a nationalist agenda, while the Michigan network expressed affiliation with international communist, anarchist and Islamist groups.

The White House conspirators’ ideology appeared related to accelerationism, an extremist, white supremacist belief that violent acts can accelerate societal collapse to make way for a white nationalist state.

The group “believed that the United States needed to be torn down so that it could be rebuilt,” prosecutors said.

“I believe we are at the ‘trigger event’ point. Meaning to set this off, we need an event or events that cause people to realize the revolution has officially begun,” one of the suspects said.

Thomas said “the aim of this and subsequent attacks was to create enough chaos to bring about the overthrow of the US government,” according to prosecutors.

Proper’s mother said Proper had adopted a “Christian-based” and “ultra-religious” ideology.

“Our goal is to in a general sense ‘restore the old republic’ our constitutional republic has been stolen by corporations, politicians and foreign actors they have usurped the power from the people,” one of the suspects said in a group chat.

The Michigan network’s ideology appeared to align with the far-left anti-Zionist movement’s beliefs.

The group targeted those they deemed “fascist,” “imperialist” and “colonialist,” an assistant US attorney said in a briefing.

Ringleader Hakim said that divestment from Israel was “the goal but in the sense that it brings about revolutionary change.”

“She expressed concern that their actions would have only a limited impact on divestment and possible ‘overthrow and revolution,’” prosecutors said, adding that the group was “working toward a total ‘revolution.’”

One of the suspects had a booklet described as an anarchist guide to “committing crimes aimed at overthrowing governments.”

The suspects said they wanted to build something like the Weather Underground, a far-left 1960s domestic terror group that sought to overthrow the US government.

Weger allegedly had paraphernalia for communist and terrorist groups, such as a headband for the Chinese Red Guards, along with patches for communist insurgencies in Turkey and the Philippines, and a Syrian guerrilla group.

Like the White House conspirators, Weger was heavily armed. He allegedly bought an AK-47, a silencer, scopes and other tactical gear.

Both groups had resorted to violence because they believed peaceful measures to implement change had been ineffective, and shared their grievances and plots on encrypted messaging apps.

‘Death to the USA’

Segal said that conspiracies about Israel or Jews have long alleged Jewish control of American policy and have been used to promote broader concerns or opposition to the US. Extremists also view the US as enabling Israel and Jews, or being culpable for their actions, he said.

“For those that believe Israel and/or Jews have a hand in controlling our government, who view the US as a tool of the Jews or Israel, the idea that going after the hand that controls the government could help start a revolution is not all that surprising,” he said.

The two networks are not the only anti-Israel groups that have sought a revolution in the US in recent years.

Last year, federal prosecutors charged a far-left group in California called the Turtle Island Liberation Front with plotting a mass bombing campaign.

The group, like the Michigan suspects, also identified with Palestinian terrorists — its ringleader identified as a “Hamas fangirl” — and had targeted Jewish institutions due to connections to Israel.

They repeatedly hoped for an end to the US. In one message, a suspect wrote to the group, “death to israel death to the usa death to colonizers.”

On the other side of the spectrum, the white supremacist Terrorgram Collective targeted Jews, US officials, other minorities and infrastructure to accelerate government collapse.

The so-called horseshoe theory describes the fringes on the left and right nearing a convergence, particularly when it comes to Jews and Israel.

The alleged White House conspirators and the Michigan activists borrowed from the other end of the political spectrum, for example.

Investigators said Proper appeared to have taken images from Track AIPAC, a group founded by anti-Israel leftists.

Paige Feyock, one of the Michigan suspects, suggested burning a cross on a “brown” professor’s front yard. When she was asked if that was a tactic used by the Ku Klux Klan, she said, “They were onto something.”

Hostility to Israel, Jews and Zionism also extends beyond the familiar left-right divide, appearing in ideologies such as Islamism and Third Worldism that differ in doctrine but overlap in treating Jews or the Jewish state as a symbol of the enemy.

Many extremists are also motivated by multiple ideologies. In one example, last month, a Tennessee man inspired by neo-Nazi and white supremacist ideology pleaded guilty to firebombing a civil rights group and supplying information to Hezbollah about Israel-linked terror targets.

Segal said that, for many extremists, antisemitism often acts as an “accelerant to taking it to even more violent actions.”

“I think we ought to anticipate more plots, whether they are targeting the Jewish community or just elsewhere Americans, to feature this type of rhetoric because it is so compelling for those who are attracted to it,” he said.