In many ways, Jonathan Xie is a typical young man from New Jersey: a recent high school graduate who played in a school band, worked at a retail store and was active on social media.

But instead of run-of-the mill selfies, the 20-year-old from Basking Ridge allegedly live-streamed videos of himself wearing a ski mask and railing against Israel and the U.S. government on Instagram.

His YouTube account included a playlist of 114 videos – many of them terrorist propaganda, authorities claim.

Xie was arrested by the FBI on Wednesday, leaving neighbors in the wealthy Somerset County community where he resided with his parents dumbfounded as law enforcement officials carried boxes from his family home and news helicopters circled overhead.

Authorities claim the young man, who had no obvious cultural or religious ties to the region, became fixated on joining an extremist faction of Hamas, the Palestinian fundamentalist group designated a terrorist organization by the United States.

Xie said little during his first public court appearance on Wednesday, and his parents declined to speak with the media. He is now being held on federal charges of providing material support to a designated terror group, making false statements and transmitting threats against Jews and Trump Tower.

Experts in counterterrorism and online extremism told NJ Advance Media that the facts alleged in Xie’s case follow a familiar pattern.

“It’s absolutely consistent with the current threat environment we find ourselves in,” said John Cohen, a former high-ranking federal counterterrorism official who now serves as a senior advisor at the Rutgers University Institute for Emergency Preparedness and Homeland Security, after reviewing the federal complaint in Xie’s case.

U.S. Attorney Craig Carpenito, whose office brought the charges, called Xie a “homegrown violent extremist,” a term that has come to apply to people from many walks of life who, instead of belonging to some clandestine terror cell, typically become radicalized in isolation.

Rather than highly trained fighters from far-flung places, homegrown extremists are typically “disaffected, mentally unwell individuals who self-connect with an extremist or terrorist cause primarily from what they view online,” Cohen said.

The 2017 Ridge High School yearbook includes this photo of Jonathan Xie, who was arrested by federal authorities Wednesday.

New Jersey’s Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness has consistently ranked such extremists the top terror threat to New Jersey in recent years.

Jon Lewis, who studied homeland security at Rider University and now serves as a research fellow at the George Washington University’s Program on Extremism, said that while the paths they follow to radicalization often overlap, there is no “common profile” for potential extremists.

He pointed to the example of John Walker Lindh, better known as “The American Taliban,” who was released this week after serving 17 years in prison following his capture in Afghanistan. Lindh, who was raised Catholic in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. and California, converted to radical Islam as a teen and joined the cause of the Taliban.

Lewis cautioned that it’s early in criminal proceedings and the government has not yet presented its evidence against Xie, but said the details of the complaint may point to a person who fell down a rabbit hole of terrorist propaganda and emerged a true believer who, authorities say, openly discussed intentions to carry out an attack.

Federal prosecutors say Xie came onto their radar in January, when an unidentified person “who interacts online” with him tipped them off about his activity on social media and in group chats.

They later obtained video recordings of Xie ranting on Instagram railing against "Zionism” and “the neo-liberal establishment” and brandishing a handgun, according to charging documents. They determined he wired a $100 donation to a faction of Hamas and exchanged e-mails with the group asking how he could join, the documents say.

They claim he attempted to join the U.S. Army to “learn how to kill" and weighed whether to “do a lone wolf."

And he allegedly visited President Donald Trump’s skyscraper in Manhattan under the eye of FBI surveillance, posting a poll on Instagram that asked his followers: “should I bomb Trump Tower?”

The explosive allegations raised an obvious question: How did a young man from New Jersey end up apparently converting to a radical interpretation of Islam and deciding, seemingly over the course of just a few months, authorities allege, to become a “political soldier” who was “not afraid to die"?

“Today, in so many of our cases you just have someone online who’s just interested," said Lewis, whose group tracks the domestic activities of the Islamic State as well as other other religious extremist organizations.

“It’s very difficult to say with authority what that first step is, but once that door is opened, it’s wide open," he said. "It’s very easy to find more information that furthers those beliefs that you’re developing.”

Authorities said that while Xie presented a “clear and present” threat, law enforcement intervened before he anything happened. A federal prosecutor disclosed during a court hearing they believed he intended to carry out an attack on pro-Israeli demonstrators at a May 31 event in Times Square in New York, where Xie wanted “to shoot everybody.”

Lewis said the primary charge against Xie – legally, an “attempt to provide material support and resources to a foreign terrorist organization” – is an increasingly common and effective tool for prosecutors seeking to apprehend individuals before they may strike.

“Anything that can be proven that you did to provide support to a group designated a terror organization, whether you sent $10, or $10,000 worth of bitcoin, or bought a plane ticket to join Hamas, it’s all material support," he said.

In Xie’s case, after allegedly wiring $100 to Al-Qassam Brigades, authorities say he chatted online with an FBI undercover operative, helping and encouraging them to donate money as well.

The false statement charges stem from his statements on the Army application that he had not associated with anyone engaged in terror activities, authorities said, and the single threat charge resulted from a number of the comments he made on social media.

Cohen, the Rutgers professor, said his group is increasingly focused on working with law enforcement and faith and community leaders to develop strategies to intervene before troubled or radicalized individuals carry out their threats of violence.

“People will read the (federal prosecutors’) announcement and say, ‘Oh, he sent $100, big deal,’” Cohen said. “The goal here is to prevent a person who’s been deemed high risk from conducting an attack.”

Staff writers Cassidy Grom and Karen Yi contributed to this report, which also contains material from the Associated Press.

S.P. Sullivan may be reached at ssullivan@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter.

Have a tip? Tell us. nj.com/tips

Get the latest updates right in your inbox. Subscribe to NJ.com’s newsletters.