I keep seeing people talking about NSPM-7 which directs all federal agencies to basically monitor, disrupt, preemptively arrest leftist activists.
In my mind this has always been a thing. This isn’t so much a policy change as voicing out loud what the policy has been. Materially US spying and abusing their citizens is pretty much par for the course.
Is this something I am not taking seriously enough or are the libs whipped up into a frenzy again?
NSPM-7 doesn’t just say to disrupt leftist activities. It designates leftist activities and even liberal activities as a indicator of terrorism.
The terrorism designation means “the government wants to kill you” and “you don’t get to have a trial”. The US sends designated terrorists to Gitmo. The US government kills designated terrorists without trial.
Why does Israel say that all of its enemies are Hamas? Israel says that Hamas is a terrorism organization. Israel has crafted a permission structure that Israel is allowed to kill anyone who is Hamas. When Israel says that somebody is Hamas, that is a death threat.
Trump is saying that his political enemies are Hamas. Trump is saying that you are Hamas.
Yes, but the United States government has been calling leftist activists terrorists for the longest time and terrorist supporters for the longest time, even without the official designation. Not only that, the three letter agencies of the United States constantly do their own shit anyway and often treat these activits as hostile.
What point are you making? There were events in the past where leftist activists were treated as terrorists and it was really fucking bad. There have been many times in that past when leftists were persecuted by the US government and it was really fucking bad. Now with NSPM-7, the MAGA regime is saying that they are going to persecute leftists and people are predicting that it will result in something really fucking bad.
Your post presumes that other people are overreacting. You mock people for reacting to it. Do you think that because something happened before then it won’t be bad when it happens again? Do you think that things can’t get worse? Maybe you’re not afraid because you know you personally won’t be affected.
The whole point of analyzing history is to figure out how things will change in the future. History is a pattern of changes. If you look at modern events and you think “nothing is happening”, then you have failed.
Had not consider this point of view, I appreciate it.
Will chew on this for a little while.
DSA members have been going to their meetings without much problem. I imagine that could start to change now. Maybe it gets them to start taking security and opsec seriously, but I doubt it.
I mean, I don’t think Trump’s gonna really interrupt DSA.
I was thinking that he was gonna go for, like, cpusa, or the people protesting on the street.
I don’t even think I’ve heard Trump mention the DSA.
remember he’s a fucking moron who actually believes the propaganda
he’s gonna go after dems, not leftists
Yeah, that’s kind of what I’m thinking. He’s going to go after Democrats.
As far as actual leftist politics go, it’s pretty much par for the course.
And who’s a democrat according to them? Nonwhite, gay, trans, college kids, muslims, homeless people…
Oh definitely, right wingers can totally tell the difference
that’s the exact point they’re making, they think the dems are violent communists
It really doesn’t matter
cpusa
Other than having ‘communist’ in the name (which ain’t nothing), CPUSA is to the right of DSA.
Oh I know but I don’t expect Trump to know or care. I figured he would target them because of the name communist
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That’s got an ACP watermark on it
yeah it has the ACP hammer/sickle logo and RTSG is an ACP account.
the CPUSA hammer/sickle is vertical.
Ah shit, I mixed them up, my mistake.
Fuck, this exactly what those shitheads wanted to happen when they named themselves ACP
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they’re salami slicing by going after PSL and related groups first
the DSA-right could panic and gum up the works to prevent the org from acting in solidarity (or split to save their own hides)
other orgs might have their own reasons
meanwhile the dems could start doing their own crackdowns to deal with their left flank and keep the heat off themselves
This. They’ve already named PSL and groups like them in depositions related to ICE. They’re going to start with the most “radical” groups that have less power to withstand, then go after the bigger ones. The old Nazi playbook, first go after the actual commies, then start slicing off trade unions and one at a time go after everyone else.
This. They’ve already named PSL and groups like them in depositions related to ICE. They’re going to start with the most “radical” groups that have less power to withstand, then go after the bigger ones. The old Nazi playbook, first go after the actual commies, then start slicing off trade unions and one at a time go after everyone else.
Orgs using Google forms everywhere lmao.
The time to start taking shit seriously was decades ago. Everything they do seems like a silly baby step because we already live at the heart of an empire that at any given time has been involved in multiple mass murders across the globe and in its own backyard. The water has been boiling your entire life, froggies.
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Yeah, that’s something I noticed when arguing with Radlibs on Twitter. They are very loathe to put any amount of blame on the democratic party.
Everything is orchestrated by the lib media to make you think the racists are especially bad. The budget that makes ICE bigger than the entire US intelligence apparatus has always been a thing, the halving of research and education is just fearmongering, the gutting of public utilities is not so that private industry can gobble it up.
More and more I’m thinking ‘it’s always been a thing’ is less an expression of consciousness and more a selfdefeating excuse you all can use to sit on your ass and do nothing while stroking your own egos
“it’s always been a thing” is hypernormalization.
Truly is, so tired of reading this 2016 era trite, discussing ending bullshit. It’d be fine if it was just memery but it’s always said under the guise of a serious conversation
The GOP just this year invented increasing the ICE budget, cutting education funding, privatizing utilities, and more! To say otherwise is self defeat!
What’s even your point, that since they didn’t invent these things the changes are unremarkable?
They’re not unremarkable in the slightest
My point is that acknowledging that these things have been an ongoing process for decades isn’t self defeat. It’s acknowledging reality.
It undermines any sense of urgency.
I for one do not need to reject historical fact in order to find a sense of urgency, but I didn’t just fall out of a coconut tree. I exist in the context.
Who’s rejecting historical fact? And why is an academic understanding of how we got here even needed, on this site?
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Hey, again, sorry about the tone of my post. Didn’t mean to direct any ire towards you
With all of these policies, I’m not really worried about the Trump admin doing anything beyond chasing their own tail. What I’m worried about is when the dems get back in power and try to do all of these policies more competently in an attempt to win over racist suburbanites who hate them.
maybe dems will take back house / senate in midterms or maybe trump will solidify power and disband dems before then. Still two sides of the same imperialist coin
I just don’t care
Like wow if you deteriorate conditions further we’re either doing barbarism or America’s toast. Go ahead, push me and everyone else. Let’s get it over with.
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You seriously said what took me about 4100 words to say in about 5% of that. Good post.
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Thanks!
I think we’re talking about a few slightly different things so it feels like there’s a dissonance when there isn’t.
In the most broad sense of history and theory, yes, leftists have and will always be targeted by capital. Trump targeting leftists in that sense, is not new. In the 90s there was this shift to focus on domestic terrorism in the wake of the OK bombing. The right didn’t like this and made it their mission to eventually dismantle it. 9/11 brought a refocus to foreign terrorism, which gave the perfect excuse to start shuttling domestic terror programs. During both of these times, feds could and would go after leftists if they were a threat. They never stopped going after leftists, it’s just leftists weren’t the primary target. Each time this shift of focus happens, there is an escalation because the counter measures and punishments ramp up in parallel. To use the previous examples, the shift from Feds tracking and going after right wing cults in the 90s to Islam in the 00s is accompanied by the PATRIOT act. These increases in surveillance and enforcement make it harder for everyone and also apply to leftists.
During Obama’s terms, there was a return to focus on right wing domestic terrorism due to the Tea Party and other big right wing donors pushing it. Obama being Obama also wanted to maintain the focus on foreign terrorism because those same right wingers were calling him a “Muslamic” terrorist. Coincidentally the domestic surveillance program also blows up with new technologies created by companies that are now (in 2025) the very center of our economy. At that point we have massive domestic surveillance so good that they officially shut down COINTELPRO and go all-in. Once more, leftists are still there and are victim to all this, but they are not a main concern.
Once Trump got in, there is a refocus on the left. All the adult-in-the-room feds didn’t really like it because Trump being Trump didn’t finesse it with all the aplomb of Obama and Clinton and without the institutional expertise of the Bush family. He’s just a guy saying it because he’s a Cold War boomer without having actually had a hand in intelligence like people in the Bush Admin. But eventually, people got on board with this refocus enough to set the stage for Trump II.
Biden did nothing except try to whiplash it on Jan 6. He did it in a way that just so happened to also apply to leftists.
Now we’re here in Trump II and seeing the work laid out in Trump I coming to fruition. The focus seems to be domestic leftist terrorism only. Don’t focus on right-wing terrorism at all (which is why right wingers keep doing shootings). Also, to some extent, back off of foreign terrorism despite it being one of the big campaign promises. Probably because it’s harder to see and for Americans to care when it’s happening overseas. The hogs get a bigger thrill out of watching skirmishes break out in the big lawless cities. The escalation is making all the previous scary stuff public and being like “and that’s a good thing” to every norm or violation of rights. The refocus to leftists and then making everyone who says boo a leftist.
This isn’t unprecedented. We’re essentially returning to the J Edgar Hoover days of the FBI where leftists and anti-capitalists were a prime concern. The difference is that we had labor riots, a strong civil rights movement, etc during that time. We do not have those things now. So who is the reanimated corpse of Hoover going after? Anyone. The refocus on leftist domestic terrorists doesn’t mean anything because there are no leftist domestic terrorists. Capital won, got it’s way, and now they need a domestic enemy to protect the regime. To some extent, having a healthy leftist insurgency in the US is load-bearing for empire. That kind of thing props up a lot of jobs and laws required to be this nakedly corrupt. Without it, you start losing ground. This is why I think they’re going to pull back more on foreign policy. They’re going to sacrifice one pillar to bolster another.
It’s going to get worse for everyone. Their strategy is to break the law and make the courts try to stop them, and the right wing dominated courts clearly don’t give a shit, so they are just going to keep ramping up the political repression and disappearing people.
Dont we do this anyway? Like, what happened with Aaron Sorrell?
It’s going to get worse. I wouldn’t be surprised if he orders a military strike on civilians in the US, or ice starts doing death squad shit.
Bro it literally declared 90% of Americans terrorist and the peoples vanguard is basically nonexistent
Bro we do this everytime we have mass surveillance.
The people’s vanguard in this country has never really existed.
Trump has been declaring anybody who doesn’t agree with him a terrorist since day one. How is this any different? Again, it’s a vocalization of unofficial policy.
Remember comrades no black pill
