The most recent use of the term was about the young mother shot and killed by ICE Goons in Minneapolis….she was labeled even before her name was known.
Cute definition but to me it sounds more like Donny and his ICE Goons than protesters.
Anyone who suggests Trump, his administration, or his policies are authoritarian. This regime believes they have the right to behave like fascists, but calling them fascists is an act of violence.
Vice President JD Vance, who once called Trump “America’s Hitler,” now says, “If you want to stop political violence, stop telling your supporters that everybody who disagrees with you is a Nazi.”Stephen Miller has repeatedly accused liberals of “incitement” for suggesting that this administration’s policies are authoritarian: Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX), he claimed, was engaging in “pure incitement” when she compared ICE to slave patrols; Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) comparing ICE to the modern-day gestapo is “vile anti-American language [that] can only be construed as inciting insurrection and violence;” California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) telling Stephen Colbert that we are living under an authoritarian president “incites violence and terrorism;” Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker (D) calling for mass protest “could be construed as inciting violence.”This is important, because criticism is legal under the First Amendment; inciting violence or insurrection is not. Miller understands this. And he’s trying to broaden the definition of “incitement” wide enough to encompass criticism of this regime.
Journalists and historians have repeatedly observed that Trump uses the language of fascists, despots, and other authoritarians, comparing people he dislikes to insects and vermin and garbage, saying that immigrations are “poisoning the blood of our country,” and arguing “They’re not human; they’re animals.”
Under this memo, observations like these are dangerous ones. It’s not the actions of the authoritarian that are waging “a violent assault against democratic institutions, constitutional rights, and fundamental American liberties;” it’s the people who criticize the authoritarian’s dismantling of democratic institutions, his quashing of constitutional rights, and his evisceration of fundamental American liberties.
Democratic Socialists, anyone who criticizes American capitalism, and any liberal who wants a more robust social welfare state. Accusing liberals of being commies is a conservative tactic that predates Trump by about a century. But Trump and his followers have taken it to a new level.
There are of course actual anti-capitalists in America, and holding that view is their constitutional right. There are also a lot of capitalism critics in America — people who don’t necessarily want to go full Communist, but wouldn’t mind if America were a little more like Denmark, with affordable healthcare and a stronger social safety net.In Trump’s telling, these people are anti-capitalist turncoats. And so are any of his opponents: Those who criticized him for absconding with classified documents he left in a Mar-a-Lago bathroom are “communists” who can’t get away with this, he told supporters. Kamala Harris, he said, was a “communist.”
Last year, Stephen Miller took the podium in the White House press briefing room and went on a truly unhinged rant about “communist woke culture” destroying America. And the broader MAGA right has a deep obsession with “cultural Marxism,” which is basically just a bunch of different progressive ideas — including feminism, anti-racism, and queer theory — that they think are a globalist (read: Jewish) plot to undermine… something. Point being, targeting “anti-capitalists” is very much about targeting anyone who expresses any dissatisfaction with America’s lack of social support or our economic conditions.
Religious minorities and those who criticize right-wing Christians. Not long after he was sworn in to his second term in office, President Trump released a memo on “Eradicating Anti-Christian Bias.” Evidence of this alleged scourge — in a country where every president and the overwhelming majority of national elected officials has been a Christian or at least pretended to be — included the Biden Administration recognizing Transgender Day of Visibility.
This administration’s definition of “anti-Christianity” tars as “anti-Christian” an enormous number of religious Christians — just those who are not part of the fundamentalist white Evangelical sets that largely support Trump.Criticizing religious bigots, or religion itself, is indeed protected speech and expression. But according to this administration, it might also be evidence of domestic terrorism.
Those who might question the legitimacy of Trump’s presidency. Donald Trump was elected fair and square. I don’t like that fact, but he is the legitimate president of the United States. He would not be the legitimate president of the United States, though, if his 2020 attempts to subvert the results of a free and fair election had succeeded.
We don’t yet know what kinds of shenanigans Trump and his team will pull with the upcoming midterms and possibly with the 2028 presidential election, but this seems to be setting the stage to punish anyone who either rightly objects to election meddling, or who does what Trump and his own supporters did in 2020 and questions legitimate election results.
Immigrant rights advocates, racial justice activists, LGBT activists, and feminists. In my view, the most telling and troubling ideologies included on the list of potential domestic terrorism motivators are “extremism on migration, race, and gender.
It is absolutely true that extremism on migration, race, and gender have fueled significant acts of violence and terror in the United States: the Tree of Life synagogue massacre at the hands of a virulent anti-Semite who believed Jews were bringing migrants in to take over America; the Mother Emanuel AME massacre in which white supremacist Dylann Roof murdered nine Black churchgoers; the Buffalo, NY grocery store mass shooting in which a different white supremacist murdered 10 Black people; the Isla Vista killings carried out by a misogynist incel; the thousands of violent attacks on abortion clinics, including several murders, carried out by people (mostly men) who oppose women’s rights.A great many acts of domestic terrorism have been carried out by people with extremist views on migration, race, and gender. But almost all of those terrorists held right-wing views on those issues.
This administration is instead claiming that it’s people who support immigrants’ rights, advocate for racial justice, and believe in gender equality who are the potential terrorists — and it’s these groups the Trump administration is watching and investigating.
Feminists. Sure, feminists may have been captured in the above, but Trump singles them out for good measure, branding as potential terrorists those who demonstrate “hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.”
This is, of course, shockingly ahistorical: Traditionally, “American views on family, religion, and morality” have never been monolithic. The founders argued about all three quite a bit, especially religion and morality. The American family has never been perfectly nuclear (when the Heritage Foundation trumpets the number of children begat by the Founding Fathers in its proposal to save America by saving the family, one wonders if they’re counting the children born to enslaved women who were impregnated by the men who had total control over their lives and bodies and routinely raped them).
(whowhatwhy.org)
Apparently I am….I must be in real trouble for I fall into 4 of the categories….
Good for I will not stop until I have no life left in my old body.
