There are an increasing number of large-scale protests across the United States. I’m writing this after the No Kings protest on Saturday, October 18; I haven’t yet checked on how things went elsewhere across the country, but in here Chicago, it was both massive and overwhelmingly peaceful. On October 22, the day before the article would be published, there are also major protests against police brutality scheduled. And every day there’s some wild new image coming out of Portland, Oregon.
But as these are starting to pick up energy, another major story has been developing. Increasingly, more and more populations and groups are getting labelled terrorist organizations. These overwhelmingly target leftist protests – the same groups coordinating events like No Kings Day or the Day Against Police Brutality that are rapidly gaining steam. I wanted to go through and catalog the groups that, under current government policies, might be labelled terrorists at these (despite the fact that, again, these protests have been overwhelmingly peaceful).
The first one is Antifa. First of all, Antifa is not (nor has it ever been) a formal organization. The various executive documents discussing Antifa seem to waffle back and forth on this, with some documents like “Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Designates Antifa as a Domestic Terrorist Organization” being very explicit about them being an organization, “President Trump Isn’t Backing Down from Crushing Radical Left Violence” primarily focusing on the people who self-identify Antifa members, and “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence” (National Security Presidential Memoranda/NSPM-7) often acknowledging these are decentralized movements without formal organization.
But okay, with the mandatory fact check out of the way, if there’s no formal Antifa organization, who is considered part of “Antifa”? According to NSPM-7, it’s any “movements [that] portray foundational American principles (e.g., support for law enforcement and border control) as ‘fascist’ to justify and encourage acts of violent revolution.” (I’m going to come back to what defines “violent” later.) The issue here is that, while whether or not law enforcement is a “foundational American principle” is complicated at best (from slave patrols, to the riots and treason founding the country, to the Constitutional requirement for the President to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed”), the first restrictive immigration laws were passed in 1882 – more than a century after the founding of the country (“Major US Immigration Laws, 1790 – Present”, Migration Policy Institute). Setting aside the conversation about whether we should uphold “foundational American principles” (those would include slavery, which is in the Constitution, but I don’t think we should be doing that), this memo includes things that categorically were not “foundational American principles”. We therefore do not know who is “Antifa”. It is not tied to any specific ideology. “Antifa” can be whoever the government says it is.
That said, NSPM-7 does list certain views as “common threads” of antifascism. These “include anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity; support for the overthrow of the United States Government; extremism on migration, race, and gender; and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.” Again, we have a lot of questions about what “traditional American views” even mean in this context. Extremism in this context appears to be supporting immigration, supporting Diversity Equity and Inclusion or Black Lives Matter, and acknowledging the changing science on gender as we learn more about how people work (and that intersex people means that, even if you believe gender and sex are the same, there are more than two sexes). That said, this could mean that anyone helping immigrants gain citizenship, anyone who has posted support for Black Lives Matter, and any trans person could be a terrorist. Given the Constitutional requirement for a postal system (Article 1, Section 8) is a form of socialism, listing anti-capitalism here has broad implications. And it is entirely unclear what even defines “anti-Americanism” or “anti-Christianity”. And there has never been a consistent standard of morality in the United States, so this is trying to instill a new moral code.
One of the common threads that has made this extremely hard to write is that so many of these topics are incredibly broad. Anything that, say, promotes the Establishment Clause (which gives us the separation of church and state) could be seen as “anti-Christianity” depending on context. Additionally, many of the categories are self-contradictory. Black churches have long been a space for organizing for racial justice (Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a preacher), but those are also inherently Christian organizations – they’re churches. Where exactly does this fall in the line? Is supporting a Black church that does racial activism promoting racial extremism? Would opposing them be promoting through anti-Christianity? These categories are so broad and vague that actually even trying to identify what would or wouldn’t be a terrorist viewpoint is all but impossible.
Also, I highly recommend reading the text of NSPM-7 for yourselves. It’s borderline incomprehensible at points, but it is a direct and blunt list of current administrative priorities. If you want to understand the current administrative mindset, NSPM-7 is a good place to start.
At this point, it’s pretty clear that the real definition of terrorist ideologies is just “any ideology that opposes the current administration”. There is no logic or pattern to any of these and many of them actively contradict the Constitution and historical precedent. But I wanted to go back to an early question I set aside: What exactly defines “violent” in these contexts?
Going back to the “Fact Sheet” memo, there are four specific actions that are listed as examples of Antifa violence, under the heading “Dismantling Antifa’s Use of Political Violence”. Now, there is not enough information on any of these incidents for me to go through and fact-check what these stories are actually about. So, for a moment, I’m going to be taking these at face value, and assume these stories are true as described. I highly doubt that to be the case, but I’m going to do it anyway.
The fourth, if true, probably is a form of violent terrorism. It alleges Antifa protesters assaulted people “[u]sing pepper spray, baseball bats, and tasers” at a pro-Trump rally. Whether or not you agree with the views expressed, those are violent efforts to suppress certain viewpoints. That is a form of terrorism. Similarly, the third, which says “[a] journalist was violently assaulted by Antifa protestors while reporting on a protest in Portland,” could potentially be terrorism if the intent was to silence the journalist’s reporting. I’m not sure that’s clear from what’s given in the fact sheet, but it’s plausible.
This is where stuff starts to go downhill. The first bullet point is “ICE officers are now facing a 1000% increase in assaults against them.” The issue here is that, well, there’s not even an effort to connect that to Antifa. That’s the entire bullet point. I didn’t leave out any context. They’re just blaming Antifa for this without any attempt to connect them. The second bullet point is even more ridiculous: “An Antifa-affiliated group in Portland, Oregon, doxed ICE officers, publishing their names, pictures, and personal addresses online.” Again, while this time it is “Antifa-affiliated”, there’s no attempt to call them directly Antifa. There’s also nothing violent about this. You can disagree with whether or not they should have done this, but doxing is non-violent.
So, you don’t need to be part of antifa. You don’t even need to be affiliated. And it doesn’t need to be violent to be labelled “political violence”. So if you oppose capitalism, disagree with a religious state, oppose a police state, support racial minorities, support queer people, support immigrants, or have a different moral code, you could be labelled a terrorist. That is the logical conclusion of a situation where anyone can be labelled Antifa even when there is no connection between them, and any Antifa actions, even non-violent ones, can be considered political violence, and Antifa is a terrorist group. There is no other way to say it.
I’m not going to discourage anyone from protesting. I actually have multiple books on community organizing and how to protest effectively. It’s something I absolutely believe in and support as a way to express your viewpoints. But if you are going to be protesting, know that this is the actual current standard for terrorism. It’s entirely possible anyone and everyone at said protests could be labelled terrorists, even if it is entirely nonviolent.