Canada’s increasing violent radicalization of its children and youth

There’s a well-known saying about leaders of countries who live in a state of fear, either due to economic pressure or to the fear of being attacked from outside their borders. Simply put, it’s said these maligned leaders don’t retreat, they attack whomever they fear. In essence, it has a two-fold effect.

One is to show their own population that they had better not revolt against their leaders, or else they will be persecuted or slaughtered, as in Iran; the second is to attack external adversaries. Combined, these two measures have a deranged, gargantuan appeal to Iran’s theocratic government, its military and those Jew-bashing, morally defunct, hate-mongering, antisemitic misfits, living amongst us, all clamouring for attention in such cities as Toronto, Rotterdam, Amsterdam, and suburban Detroit, where this month synagogues and schools have been attacked.

And how do these events affect our children and youth?

Canada’s spy chief warns of increasing violent radicalization of Canadian children.

Yesterday, in Canada’s National Post, they reported that “Gen Z Canadians more likely to support terrorist-backed Iranian regime.” They added, “The 18-24 cohort is increasingly ‘susceptible to following direction from influencers on selected social media,’ theorized Jack Jedwab, head of the Association for Canadian Studies.”

“According to recent Association for Canadian Studies polling, one-fifth (20 per cent) of respondents in the 18-24 cohort said Ottawa should “politically support” the current Iranian leadership.”

Misguided power is dominant in our children and youth.

And for the Gen Alpha’s (born 2010-2024), who have been born into a world never knowing a world without social media and smartphones and their future children, the Gen Beta’s (born 2025-2039), who will be born into a world of always-on technology, what is in store for diaspora Jews who remain stoic in their traditional obsessions of yesteryear unable to clearly communicate on social media to today’s youth in their own language? Utter disaster? It has begun.

In my article published during November, 2025, in The Times of Israel, I referred to Canada’s spy chief warning “of increasing violent radicalization of Canadian children.” He said that he’s increasingly concerned by growing violent extremism in Canada, particularly among those under 18 years old.

He said, “The extremism is motivated by different ideologies such as antisemitism, xenophobia, misogyny, ‘extreme interpretations’ of religion or accelerationism (the desire to accelerate the collapse of society) that spread faster and easier than ever due to online content.”

He added, “That means children and teenagers are much more susceptible to falling into the trap of violent extremists online. Worryingly, nearly one in 10 terrorism investigations at CSIS [Canadian Security Intelligence Service] now includes at least one subject of investigation under the age of 18,” he told his audience.

To quote Elie Wiesel: “Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”

As diaspora Jews, have we become helpless?

Our silence and our indifference in countering the effects of online cyber anti-Jew-anti-hate directed at our children and youth is utterly shameful!

As individuals, on social media, are we at a loss to know how to fight the hate that spews from branding terror as redemption, terrorists as martyrs, and condemnation of terror as racism?

To paraphrase a friend’s comment, how do we contend with the forces of evil that look to frame extremism as justice, terror as resistance, radicalism as activism, criticism as racism, and terrorism as a right of free speech?

Nowhere was this clearer than this past Sunday’s Al Quds Day. Al Quds, “The Holy” in Arabic. There’s nothing holy about it. Initiated in Iran in 1979 by those who are intent on wiping out and erasing every Jew, it is an annual day of feasting on bigotry, hate and vile intolerance, a group of morally defunct antisemitic raving pro-Iranian, Hamas and Hezbollah supporters.

How long will it be before Canada’s children and youth are seized as an opportunity by the Jew bashing misfits of this world as a valid source of promoting antisemitism, hate and intolerance on social media? How long? It is already amongst us, and little to nothing is being done by our leaders to counteract it.•