BEIJING, Dec. 17 (Xinhua) -- Two deadly attacks over the past weekend have again shocked the West and the world. One was a shooting at Brown University in the United States, and another was a mass killing at a Hanukkah gathering in Australia.
Neither incident stands alone. They reflect the scale of gun violence in the West, especially in the United States, which accounts for the overwhelming majority of firearm deaths and mass shootings among high-income nations.
Beyond the familiar gun-control debate, these attacks point to deeper political, social and cultural stresses shaping patterns of violence across the West.
RISING EXTREMISM
Australia's Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has said the deadly shooting at Bondi Beach, which left at least 16 people dead, appears to have been motivated by "Islamic State ideology," the Australian Broadcasting Corporation has reported.
"The ideology that has been around for more than a decade that led to this ideology of hate, and in this case, a preparedness to engage in mass murder," he said.
The perpetrators had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State, the broadcaster reported, citing counter-terrorism officers. An Islamic State flag was found in their car at Bondi Beach.
The incident reflects "a growing tide of antisemitism" around the world, especially after the start of the war in Gaza in October 2023, said Shashank Joshi, The Economist's defence editor.
David Omand, a former senior British intelligence officer, noted that antisemitic incidents hit the second-highest recorded level in the first half of this year in Britain. In the United States, he said, antisemitic incidents reached well over 9,000 in 2024, the highest level recorded in the 46-year history of the data.
Foreign conflicts and perceived geopolitical injustices increasingly spill into domestic security matters, offering extremist groups ready-made narratives for recruitment and mobilization.
Extremist groups, like the Islamic State and al-Qaeda, are "once again becoming more ambitious" and "personally encouraging and indirectly inciting would-be attackers," Ken McCallum, the head of Britain's security service MI5, warned in October.
SOCIAL INEQUALITY
A separate shooting that drew global attention saw U.S. young man Luigi Mangione accused of killing UnitedHealthcare's CEO Brian Thompson in New York City in December 2024, an act allegedly motivated by deep resentment toward the health insurance industry and corporate greed.
Following the death of Thompson, UnitedHealth Group disabled comments on its condolence post on Facebook, which a dominant majority of users reacted to with laughing emojis, showing people's grievances over industry practices. In addition, there was a surge of popular posts across social media glorifying the incident, some calling for additional acts of violence or even a "Class War."
Economic frustration and structural inequality can incubate desperation and retaliatory violence, experts have noted.
"We have a growing number of people who believe that violence is the only way to express their beliefs," said John Cohen, a former U.S. Department of Homeland Security official. "An increasing number in our society are mistrustful of government, businesses and other institutions. They believe they are the victims of inappropriate behavior."
"The use of violence to express one's ideological views or sense of disagreement is becoming fully baked in our society," he added.
The consequences of economic inequality are not evenly distributed across society. In the United States, longstanding structural disparities mean that certain communities bear a disproportionate share of the resulting violence.
Despite accounting for only 14 percent of the U.S. population, Black people account for 60 percent of those killed by firearm homicide each year, according to a report by Brady, an organization that advocates gun control.
Gun violence is both a cause and a consequence of systemic structural disadvantage. A report by the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions notes that "most community gun violence is highly concentrated within under-resourced neighborhoods impacted by a legacy of discriminatory public policies."
"UNHEALTHY DEMOCRACY"
Brown University student Mia Tretta, who survived the 2019 mass shooting at Saugus High School in California, said she feels a mixture of fear, confusion and anger. Americans shouldn't accept mass shootings as a fact of life, she told media reporters.
The Brown University shooting followed at least 75 school shootings in the United States this year. So far in 2025, there have been at least 391 mass shootings and 13,929 shooting deaths nationwide, Gun Violence Archive reports.
The incident exposed broader governance challenges. Authorities said investigators lacked video footage of the shooter in part because Brown's older engineering building is equipped with few security cameras, but it also highlights tensions between privacy considerations and the growing demand for preventive security in public institutions.
In contrast to the Brown case, other recent attacks have been more directly shaped by deepening political polarization. On Sept. 10, U.S. conservative activist Charlie Kirk was assassinated by a gunshot to the neck while speaking at an event at Utah Valley University, an incident widely viewed as emblematic of escalating political polarization in the United States.
Tyler Robinson, the accused shooter, had subscribed to "left-wing" ideology in recent years, according to Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Kash Patel.
U.S. netizens traded blame fiercely following Kirk's death. Some accuse the "radical left" of suppressing free speech and even resorting to violence against those who invite peaceful debate, while others fault conservatives for fueling hatred and for their hypocritical silence when Democratic leaders were attacked.
"We have deeply polarized politics, with many Americans viewing the other party not as wrong but as an existential threat," Christopher Galdieri, a political science professor at Saint Anselm College in the northeastern state of New Hampshire, told Xinhua.
Barbara Walter, a professor of International Affairs at the School of Global Policy and Strategy at the University of California, San Diego, said that political violence becomes far more likely under four conditions: when democracy is declining rapidly; when societies are divided by race, religion or ethnicity; when political leaders tolerate or encourage violence; and when citizens have easy access to guns.
"The United States checks all four boxes, and none of them are getting better," she said.
Walter continued to accuse the algorithms that amplify conspiracy theories, disinformation and hate. "The radicalization pipeline runs through a handful of American tech companies that remain almost entirely unregulated," she said.
The Charlie Kirk case is not a single incident but part of a broader pattern of political violence in the United States that began with the insurrection at the Capitol in 2021, said Erica Frantz, an associate professor of Political Science at Michigan State University.
She criticized what she described as an "unhealthy" state of democracy for fueling political violence.
"Ruling party personalism -- where the party exists as a vehicle to further the leader's career rather than advance a clear policy platform -- is harmful for democracy ... making them more likely to justify the use of political violence," Frantz said, "particularly in elections in which the party loses." ■