The run-up to the election featured fearful talk about the potential rise of fascism, of Hitler and of internment camps. Yet the most infamous marks of those governments — vile antisemitism and hatred of Jewish people — have been rising precipitously in the meantime. And not just in far-flung countries overseas, but here at home.

We witnessed waves of anti-Jewish violence in Amsterdam. The first wave occurring after a soccer game in the city seems to have been planned in advance. A second round of violence resulted in property damage and arson. These latest incidents come at the 86th anniversary of Kristallnacht, a series of pogroms the Nazis directed against Jews in 1938.

Americans may think such anti-Jewish violence couldn’t happen here. But it is happening — with growing frequency — right here in the U.S.

Christopher Wray, director of the FBI, testified in October 2023 that the level of antisemitic crime is reaching “historic levels.” He continued: “In fact, our statistics would indicate that for a group that represents only about 2.4% of the American public, they account for something like 60% of all religious-based hate crimes.”

The problem has only grown worse. FBI statistics released in September show an increase in antisemitic incidents in 2023, jumping to 67% of all religious-based hate crimes. The 1,832 crimes against Jews is a number almost eight times larger than the 236 hate crimes committed against Muslims.

Statistics like these often don’t include the harassment we see on elite college campuses such as Northwestern, Harvard and Columbia, where administrators equivocate on student safety only to release violent demonstrators without consequence. The Anti-Defamation League casts a wider net to include things such as vandalism, and recorded 8,873 antisemitic incidents across the United States in 2023, an increase of 140% over 2022.

The ADL publishes a map of American antisemitic incidents. Here they show the 2,500 incidents they have recorded so far in 2024. Shootings in bigger cities — such as the attack on the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018, in which 11 people died — get a great deal of attention, as they should. But no place is immune.

It’s been just 10 years since the shootings at a Jewish community center and retirement community in a Kansas City suburb that killed three. An arsonist burned a synagogue in Austin in 2021. The next year, a man took hostage four members of a Fort Worth-area synagogue. One was released, and the remaining three managed to flee to safety. The rabbi who engineered the escape credited his years of security training.

Jewish communities everywhere have had to invest in much more than training. They’ve borne the costs of making their facilities more secure and resistant to attack. This includes hardening windows and doors against blasts and bullets, concrete bollards to stop vehicles, security cameras, magnetometers and in some places even armed guards. It’s a big expense for people just seeking to exercise their constitutional rights to worship or assemble.

In August, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas announced an additional $454 million — an increase of $150 million over 2023 — to allow nonprofit institutions to “strengthen their security and guard against terrorism and other threats.” Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the ADL, said the effort “remains critical to protecting the Jewish community, our institutions, and other at-risk groups.”

Welcome news. But we should be a little ashamed that it is necessary.

After learning of the horrors of the Holocaust, the world swore, “Never again.” How are we doing? Antisemitic hatred and violence against Jews isn’t a far-away problem. It’s here in our big cities and small communities, on the right and on the left, with populists and elites.

And if you think it isn’t? You are part of that problem.

Patrick Tuohey is co-founder of Better Cities Project, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit focused on municipal policy solutions, and a senior fellow at the Show-Me Institute, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to Missouri state policy work.