Radical Islam Is America’s New Nazism—And It Must Be Defeated

Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian Arab graduate student at Columbia University, was recently arrested by federal authorities for his overt support of Hamas—a U.S.-designated terrorist organization. Khalil was more than a protester; he was an ideological operative using the American university system as a staging ground for anti-Semitic intimidation, radical Islamist propaganda, and subversion of the very civilization that offered him shelter.

Under Khalil’s leadership, student protests at Columbia became increasingly hostile, targeting Jewish students with organized harassment campaigns, chants glorifying terrorist violence, and the desecration of Israeli and American symbols. These rallies were not spontaneous acts of political dissent but carefully orchestrated events rooted in the ideological playbook of Hamas. These acts reflect a broader pattern: the use of elite universities as recruitment and indoctrination hubs for radical anti-Western ideologies.

Shortly after Khalil’s arrest, another Palestinian Arab student at Columbia, Leqaa Kordia, was detained for overstaying her visa. An Indian student, Ranjani Srinivasan, had her visa revoked for participating in activities "supporting Hamas." These were not isolated administrative actions—they were part of a strategic effort by the Trump administration to sever the link between academic privilege and ideological sedition.

President Trump has since ordered Columbia University to cede control of its Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies (MESAAS) to an external authority, citing the department’s role in incubating radical ideologies under the guise of academic freedom. The administration’s demands include dismantling Columbia’s internal judiciary, banning masks at protests, and enforcing a stricter federal definition of anti-Semitism—proposals that reflect an existential recognition: the American academy, long the fortress of Western liberal thought, is now being used to undermine the West itself.

But this is only the surface. The ideological radicalization of American youth is not confined to campus lawns. It is being systematically engineered in digital spaces, particularly through platforms like TikTok, Reddit, and Wikipedia, which have quietly become some of the most powerful weapons in the soft power arsenal of America’s enemies.

TikTok, owned by Chinese parent company ByteDance, has already been exposed for its opaque and highly politicized algorithm. In the context of the Israel-Hamas war, TikTok’s "For You" feed has shown a marked tendency to promote pro-Hamas, anti-Israel content to millions of Western users, especially adolescents. Videos glorifying the October 7th terror attacks, demonizing Israel as a "colonial state," or repackaging Hamas propaganda into digestible "social justice" soundbites routinely go viral, while pro-Israel or moderate perspectives are buried in algorithmic obscurity.

This isn’t accidental—it is by design. The algorithmic architecture of TikTok has been gamified and politicized in ways that make it a breeding ground for radicalization. The app rewards outrage, favors emotional manipulation over factual analysis, and creates self-reinforcing echo chambers that shape the worldview of users too young—or too naive—to recognize the manipulation.

Ashley Rindsberg, a journalist and author known for his forensic media analysis, has provided equally damning insights into Wikipedia and Reddit. In a series of investigative reports and public essays, Rindsberg has exposed how ideological operatives exploit Wikipedia’s open-editing model to flood key pages—especially those related to Israel, Hamas, and Middle Eastern history—with biased narratives. These changes are often subtle: word choices that cast Israel as the aggressor, downplaying terrorist acts by Hamas, removing context from quotes, or selectively citing fringe sources to legitimize anti-Western views. Over time, these micro-edits amount to narrative capture on a mass scale, cloaked under the guise of neutrality.

Reddit, too, has become a haven for algorithmically amplified disinformation. Forums like r/Palestine and r/antiwar have become echo chambers of misinformation, frequently upvoting and algorithmically promoting posts advancing conspiracy theories, Holocaust denial-adjacent narratives, and blatant anti-Semitic content. Rindsberg has highlighted how moderators of these forums often have opaque affiliations and how Reddit’s internal systems do little to curb the coordinated spread of extremist material—as long as it aligns with a fashionable anti-Western ideology.

Radical Islam has long recognized the incompatibility of its ideology with Western liberal values. Yet, rather than rejecting these values outright, it has proven exceedingly adept at manipulating them to subvert the culture from within. By exploiting the freedoms enshrined in liberal democracies—freedom of speech, academic autonomy, and the right to protest—radical Islam seeks to undermine the very principles that allow such freedoms to exist in the first place. This manipulation of liberal values is the mechanism by which radicalism quietly permeates Western societies, particularly in university settings and online spaces, where young minds are most impressionable.

For the first time in U.S. history, an administration has recognized this threat—not as an isolated incident of radical protest but as part of a larger ideological war against the values that undergird the Western world. President Trump’s executive order to deport foreign nationals who exhibit "hostile attitudes" toward American culture and institutions is a direct response to the weaponization of liberal values by those who seek to destroy them from within. This is not a rejection of pluralism but a defense of it—a line in the sand drawn to safeguard the future of American civilization.

Khalil’s arrest, and the broader campaign against radicalism on campus, is not merely a political gesture—it is a defining moment. The First Amendment protects dissent, not sedition. Citizenship and residency are privileges, not entitlements. And the university, once the crown jewel of Western enlightenment, must not be allowed to become the vanguard of its decline.

What we are seeing now is a test of the West’s civilizational immune system. Will it recognize the pathogens invading its institutions? Will it respond before they metastasize? Or will it remain paralyzed by relativism until the very values that sustain it are extinguished from within?

The battle for the mind of the West is underway—and the time for passive spectatorship is over.

Ziya H. is a Contributor for Liberty Affair. He lives in Warsaw, Poland. Follow him on X: @hsnlizi