Trump targeting ‘Antifa’ isn’t about terrorism, it’s about destroying liberty
Donald Trump and his Department of Homeland Security (DHS) are targeting a non-existent entity known as “Antifa” — “anti-fascism” is an ideology, not an organization — in the name of fighting terrorism. However, the reality is that Trump is using the Antifa designation as way to label and destroy his political enemies and, ultimately, destroy our God-given right to liberty.
When Donald Trump signed his Executive Order formally designating “antifa” a domestic terrorist organization last month, he vowed to spare no expense to take down the imaginary organization for being “a militarist, anarchist enterprise that explicitly calls for the overthrow of the United States Government, law enforcement authorities, and our system of law.”
Of course, when Trump uses the words “United States Government, law enforcement authorities, and our system of law,” he’s engaging in Orwellian “doublespeak” to hide his true intentions. In Orwell’s novel, 1984, the authoritarian ruling party used doublespeak to control thought and manipulate the truth. It this case, government, law enforcement, and system of law are substitutes for his political enemies and those who oppose his authoritarianism.
“Antifa” is a concept, an idea, a decentralized belief that fascism is wrong. Based on recent history, it could be argued that the men and women who made up the Greatest Generation were Antifa. After all, Hitler was a fascist, and that means, in essence, that my grandfather, your grandfather, and everyone who fought for liberty and against Nazi Germany in World War II were aligned with “antifa.”
As stated above, Trump uses the word “antifa” to describe his political opposition (via The Haake Take):
It should be clear by now that ‘antifa,’ to Trump, means anyone who opposes him politically. Trump’s chief henchman Stephen Miller said as much on Fox when he called the Democratic Party, “an entity devoted exclusively to the defense of hardened criminals, gang-bangers, and illegal, alien killers and terrorists. The Democrat Party is not a political party. It is a domestic extremist organization.” Miller called “Democrats” a domestic terrorist organization back in August, before they hatched the “antifa” plan in September.
Trump and Noem, aided by Fox News, are spreading panic and fear about ‘antifa’ preparing to “kill” as a political strategy. If the public truly believes ‘antifa’ threatens them, they will support Trump’s unwarranted aggression in rounding people up. If they truly believe ‘antifa’ wants to kill them, they will be supportive when ICE and the National Guard start killing protestors.
Noem hit it home at the antifa roundtable, telling the influencers, “This network of Antifa is just as sophisticated as MS-13, as TDA, as ISIS, as Hezbollah, as Hamas, as all of them. They are just as dangerous. They have an agenda to destroy us just like the other terrorists.” (Emphasis mine)
As John Whitehead wrote last week, when Trump declared “Antifa” to be a domestic terrorist organization, he gave his authoritarian government a green light to treat speech, belief, and association as criminal acts. With this one executive order, political dissent was rebranded as terrorism and free thought recast as a crime.
Critics who support Trump’s abuse of power have argued that “Antifa” means rioting and property destruction, but violent acts are already crimes, handled under ordinary law. The danger in Trump’s case is that he’s not punishing people for being violent, he’s punishing people for what they believe, say, or with whom they associate. Peaceful protest, political speech, and nonviolent dissent are now being lumped together with terrorism.
Violence should be prosecuted, but when peaceful protest and dissent are treated as terrorism, the line between crime and thought crime disappears. When the government polices political belief, we’re no longer talking about crime—we’re talking about thought control. This opens the door to guilt by association, thought crimes, and McCarthy-style blacklists, making it possible for the government to treat peaceful protesters, critics, or even casual sympathizers as terrorists.
Protesters who identify with anti-fascist beliefs—or who, under this administration, simply challenge its power grabs and overreaches—can now be surveilled, prosecuted, and silenced, not for acts of violence but for what they think, say, or believe. Under this executive order, George Orwell—the antifascist author of 1984—would become an enemy of the state.
This is how dissent becomes labeled as “terrorism” in a police state: by targeting political thought instead of criminal conduct. Once you can be investigated and punished for your associations or sympathies, the First Amendment is reduced to empty words on paper.
Without sounding like I’m defending Trump’s authoritarianism, it’s important to remember that the “domestic terrorism” angle was used by Joe Biden to silence people opposed to his COVID policies. In February 2022, Biden and his Department of Homeland Security (DHS), domestic terrorists were people who spread “misinformation” about COVID.
In an article about a DHS bulletin released in August 2021, I documented how government had identified “domestic terrorists” on its list as pushers of “anti-government rhetoric,” who stood in “opposition to COVID measures.”
Then, as now, Biden lumped people who believe in small government and limiting its power together with real terrorists. Then, as now, Biden expanded government power over the people when his Department of Justice launched a new unit within the DOJ to deal exclusively with domestic terrorism.
Ironically, the preamble to the Declaration of Independence contains language that would be considered antifa by Donald Trump:
“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, —That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”
For those planning to send me nasty messages or threats over today’s post, I’m not discounting domestic terrorism, nor am I dismissing the reality that antifa-inspired events can be violent. What I’m pointing out is how Trump’s domestic terrorism agenda has nothing to do with terrorism and everything to do with destroying the liberty of people who are guilty of nothing more than disagreeing with authoritarianism and fascism and are exercising their free speech right to say so.
Redefining free speech as Antifa-inspired domestic terrorism is the fulfillment of a promise Donald Trump made during the 2024 campaign to exact revenge on his political enemies. And if things continue as they are now, turning the military into a national police force and eventually declaring martial law are all but a done deal.
David Leach is the owner of the Strident Conservative. He holds people of every political stripe accountable for their failure to uphold conservative values, and he promotes those values instead of political parties. He the author of The New Axis of Evil: Exposing the Bipartisan War on Liberty.
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