Casey Babb

Casey Babb writes for The Free Press on antisemitism, political violence, and security threats, with a particular focus on how these forces are reshaping Jewish life in Canada. His pieces blend security-policy expertise with ground-level reporting and first-person observation, giving a granular view of fear, vulnerability, and social retreat in communities under pressure. Alongside this work, he holds roles in the security-policy world as director of the Promised Land Project at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute’s Center for North American Prosperity and Security and as a fellow with the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv.

Antisemitism in Canada

Babb’s core body of reporting tracks a sharp rise in antisemitism in Canada and its effect on everyday Jewish life.

In “Canada No Longer Feels Safe for Jews,” he describes a series of incidents - synagogues riddled with bullets and shots fired at the U.S. consulate - that have turned security drills into routine and heightened anxiety inside Jewish institutions. He uses detailed scene-setting, recounting talks on Israel and antisemitism at major synagogues, to show how public gatherings now unfold under the shadow of potential violence. In “Jews Are Leaving Canada in Droves,” he follows individual decisions to leave, including the case of a long-time academic who publicly announced he was giving up on Canada, and situates those stories within national data on antisemitic incidents and hate crimes.

That piece combines interviews with statistical reporting, citing figures from community watchdogs and law-enforcement data to argue that the scale and intensity of antisemitism have moved the country into a new phase. Earlier work such as “A Pogrom Is Brewing in Canada” extends this theme, using conversations with experts on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to frame Canadian developments as part of a broader global pattern of hostility toward Jews.

Across these articles, his distinguishing trait is the way he ties individual decisions - whether to stay, speak out, or leave - to specific incidents and trend lines, treating migration, self-protection, and withdrawal as political outcomes of antisemitic pressure rather than private choices.

Political Violence and Media Coverage

Babb’s coverage of political violence focuses not only on the attacks themselves but on how they are described - or omitted - in mainstream reporting.

In “Why Is the Media Ignoring the Montreal Shooter’s Antisemitism?”, he dissects the manifesto of a shooter whose writings explicitly targeted Jews, Zionists, and Israel, and contrasts that with domestic coverage that largely failed to mention these themes. He points out that while the suspect’s text contains clear antisemitic content, much of the reporting treated the attack in more generic terms, effectively erasing the ideological motive from public understanding.

He places this omission within a wider context, quoting the prime minister’s characterization of a “crisis of antisemitism in Canada” to show that official rhetoric has moved ahead of some media treatment.

Babb’s work in this area often appears under tags such as “Antisemitism” and “Political Violence,” signaling that he approaches violent incidents as part of an ongoing political story rather than isolated crimes. The newsletter “The Front Page” has highlighted his pieces as examinations of “the elephant in the room after a shooting in Canada,” underscoring his emphasis on what is left unsaid in conventional accounts. This combination of close reading of primary texts, attention to editorial choices, and insistence on naming antisemitic motives marks his political violence coverage as more forensic and combative than a generic crime or politics beat.

Transnational Security Threats

Beyond antisemitism, Babb writes about transnational security threats, especially the reach of Iran’s regime and its implications for refugees and dissidents.

In “They Could Come Here and Try to Silence Us,” he reports on Iranians living in Canada who fear that lenient refugee policies might allow regime-connected officials to settle nearby and continue intimidation or worse. The article weaves together testimonies from exiles with high-level geopolitical signals, including remarks by Israel’s prime minister that senior Iranian leaders are “packing their bags” in anticipation of military action.

By linking individual fears to strategic movements of regime figures, he portrays Canada not as a distant observer of Middle Eastern conflict but as a potential arena for its spillover effects. This transnational framing recurs in his antisemitism coverage, where he connects homegrown hostility, state-sponsored terrorism backed by Iran, and the evolving security posture at diplomatic and communal sites.

The through-line is his focus on how global conflicts and foreign regimes shape domestic risks, turning immigration, asylum, and diaspora politics into live security questions.

Personal Essays on Family and Loss

Alongside his political and security reporting, Babb writes personal essays that apply the same observational rigor to intimate subjects. “This Is My Dad’s Last Father’s Day,” part of The Free Press’s culture and ideas series The Zeitgeist and tagged under “Death,” chronicles the final days of his 80-year-old father after the discovery of an aggressive brain tumor.

The piece emphasizes what he calls the “extraordinary gift” of having time to say goodbye, turning a story about terminal illness into a reflection on fatherhood, the transmission of values, and the clarity that comes with proximity to death. The essay is structured around moments and lessons rather than argument, but it shares with his political work a close attention to mood, language, and the way people respond to looming catastrophe.

Social posts promoting the story highlight that he writes about what his father taught him and what he has learned about death in recent months, reinforcing the sense that he uses personal experience to probe themes of courage, legacy, and resilience. Taken together, his personal and political pieces show a writer who moves between policy analysis, community reporting, and first-person narrative, with the common focus on how people live under sustained threat - whether from illness, antisemitism, or transnational violence.