From San Diego to Montreal: Antisemitism Serves as a Throughline in Recent Extremist Shootings

A shooter opened fire in Montreal’s Côte-des-Neiges neighborhood on June 22, resulting in two deaths and one injury before responding law enforcement killed the perpetrator. 

The perpetrator was identified by law enforcement as a 25-year-old Canadian man. ADL analysis of a lengthy manifesto reportedly left behind by the shooter reveals a range of extremist views, including antisemitism, incel-linked ideas, and anti-capitalist beliefs, including:

• Referring to the corrupting influence of “Zionist Jews” on the Western world.
• Calling for “influential Zionists" and “the headquarters of all corporations with ties to Zionism” to be “liquidated” by an all-male paramilitary.
• Portraying women as manipulative, shallow, and hostile toward “common males” and calling for restrictions on women’s rights.
• The perpetrator accuses powerful individuals and corporations of exploiting and enslaving the "common" man through pornography, video games, and immigration, stating that powerful capitalists “are the reason why there is no more culture, no more human connection, and no more meaning in the daily life of the common male."

This incident follows a disturbing pattern that ADL has closely tracked for years: Mass shooters are often motivated by a range of extremist beliefs, and antisemitism is often part of their apparent worldview. Even when Jews or Jewish institutions are not the intended targets, antisemitic conspiracy theories and tropes frequently appear in attackers’ writings, online activity, and stated motivations. Antisemitic beliefs are often a warning sign of broader extremist worldviews. Conspiracy theories about Jewish or Zionist control, influence, or power are often used by extremists to justify violence against a wide range of perceived enemies, making antisemitism a critical indicator for understanding and preventing acts of mass violence.

In just the last six weeks, there have been two other cases that illustrate the complex nature of these threats. Seven people were arrested in June in connection to a plot to carry out a mass-casualty attack at UFC Freedom 250. The defendants allegedly drew from a volatile mix of accelerationism, antisemitism, anti-government conspiracism and anti-elite grievance.

A few weeks earlier, two teen gunmen attacked the Islamic Center of San Diego in May, killing three people. Their manifesto expressed hatred for Muslims, but also for Jews, Black people, Hispanic people, and the LGBTQ+ community, while positioning their attack as a tribute to the 2019 white supremacist Christchurch killer.

This is not a new phenomenon, as the 2022 Tops supermarket shooting in Buffalo, New York, poignantly underscores the complex nature of these threats. There, a gunman killed 10 and injured three in a Tops supermarket in a predominantly Black neighborhood. The shooter's ideology was explicitly motivated not only by white supremacist beliefs, but also by antisemitic and accelerationist ones. His gun included references to “Black-on-White” crime, capturing a favorite white supremacist talking point.

Several other recent deadly incidents underscore the persistence of this threat: 

• In Evergreen, Colorado, a teen opened fire at his high school in September 2025, wounding two others before killing himself. The shooter exhibited an ideology that incorporated white supremacy, antisemitism, neo-Nazism, incel ideology, and nihilistic accelerationism.  
• A shooter fired into Annunciation Catholic Church during a morning mass in Minneapolis in August 2025, killing two children and injuring over two dozen others before committing suicide. The shooter’s online footprint expressed a hybrid ideology that combined a mass-shooter fixation with anti-Christian hostility, racism, and antisemitism. 
• A gunman killed a classmate before killing himself in Antioch High School’s cafeteria in Tennessee in January 2025. His online footprint contained a history of anti-Black racism, accelerationist rhetoric, and antisemitism. 
• A shooter opened fire in a mixed-grade study hall at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wisconsin, killing two and wounding six before killing herself in December 2024. Prior to her attack, she embraced white supremacy online and expressed anti-Black and antisemitic hate. 
• A shooter attacked a Dollar General in Jacksonville, Florida, in August 2023, killing three Black victims before taking his life. According to his manifesto, he was driven by a racist and white supremacist ideology that also promoted antisemitic tropes, including the Jews controlling the media, which he claimed they did to hide evidence of Black criminality. 
• A gunman killed eight people and wounded seven others in the parking lot of the Allen Premium Outlets in Allen, Texas, in May 2023, before he was killed by responding law enforcement. Though authorities said that the victims appeared to have been randomly selected at the location, online, Garcia embraced a range of extremist ideologies, including white supremacy, violent misogyny, antisemitism, and anti-LGBTQ+ hate.