In a new national security memorandum, Donald Trump has warned of thoughts and opinions that are “motivations and indicia” of political violence.
Amid the noise and clamour of the headline-grabbing budget fight that shut down the US government (which US president Donald Trump blamed on Democratic Party obstructionism before celebrating the opportunity it presented to “clear out dead wood”), yet another executive action attracted little notice.
This wasn’t just an ordinary executive order or memorandum, though. It was the seventh “National Security Presidential Memorandum”, directed at senior cabinet members, and it put the state’s enforcement spotlight on people who entertain anti-American, anti-capitalist and anti-Christian views, among other thought crimes.
Its subject was countering domestic terrorism and organised political violence. It made good on Trump’s promise to go after the supposed left-wing “domestic terrorism networks” which he blamed for the assassination of Charlie Kirk and the attempts on his own life.
His memorandum added that these attacks were “preceded by the 2024 assassination of a senior healthcare executive and the 2022 assassination attempt against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh”.
Assassinations
He did not bother to mention the assassination of Minnesota’s House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her spouse Mark in June this year, by “outspoken evangelical Christian” Vance Boelter, a conservative who opposed abortion, but evidently not post-birth murder. Boelter is also being charged with stalking and shooting Minnesota Senator John Hoffman and his wife Yvette, and for attempting to shoot their daughter, Hope Hoffman. He had a hitlist of dozens of Democratic Party political targets.
Trump did not bother to mention the arson attack on the residence of Pennsylvania’s Democratic Party governor, Josh Shapiro, earlier this year, while he was home with his family.
He did not mention the attempted murder of Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul, by a Trump-supporting alt-right conspiracy nut, David DePape, in 2022.
He did not mention Solomon Peña, an ex-convict and Trump supporter who stood as a Republican for the New Mexico legislature in 2022, but went on a shooting rampage against multiple Democratic Party politicians when he lost the election, and was sentenced to 80 years six weeks ago.
These cases did not fit his narrative.
“Heinous assassinations and other acts of political violence in the United States have dramatically increased in recent years.”
That’s not entirely untrue, but political violence is actually rare in the United States. It also helps to see the data broken down by motive (courtesy of the Center for Strategic and International Studies):
The left-wing plot
Says Trump’s memo: “This political violence is not a series of isolated incidents and does not emerge organically. Instead, it is a culmination of sophisticated, organized campaigns of targeted intimidation, radicalization, threats, and violence designed to silence opposing speech, limit political activity, change or direct policy outcomes, and prevent the functioning of a democratic society. A new law enforcement strategy that investigates all participants in these criminal and terroristic conspiracies – including the organized structures, networks, entities, organizations, funding sources, and predicate actions behind them – is required.”
Trump blames “anti-fascists” for all of the violence. He designated “Antifa” as a terrorist organisation a few days earlier). He goes on: “Common threads animating this violent conduct 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.”
He directs law enforcement “to investigate and disrupt networks, entities, and organizations that foment political violence so that law enforcement can intervene in criminal conspiracies before they result in violent political acts”.
Odious
The suggestion that anti-American, anti-capitalist or anti-Christian sentiments are precursors of political violence, and should be nipped in the bud by law enforcement, is odious.
That political disagreement over, or protest against, controversial policies such as the Trump administration’s cruel anti-immigration dragnet – which extends to stripping women naked and repeatedly arresting innocent American citizens – and suppression of gender-non-conforming individuals is a threat to the peace is absurd.
That merely being hostile to “traditional American views” (read: fundamentalist Christian views) on family, religion, and morality should be a reason for the government’s brownshirts to sit up and take note, is preposterous.
The ghouls of Joe McCarthy and J. Edgar Hoover lurch across the American political landscape again. Armed law enforcement has been instructed to prevent violence before it happens by policing “anonymous chat forums, in-person meetings, social media, and even educational institutions” for thought crimes.
And they’re going only after “the radical left”, even though the government’s own research indicates that this is not the sole, or even primary, origin of political violence.
Far-right violence
A 2024 research study is relevant here. It has been memory-holed by Trump. He instructed the Department of Justice to remove it from its website, which it has done.
It has been preserved by the Internet Archive, and begins as follows: “Militant, nationalistic, white supremacist violent extremism has increased in the United States. In fact, the number of far-right attacks continues to outpace all other types of terrorism and domestic violent extremism. Since 1990, far-right extremists have committed far more ideologically motivated homicides than far-left or radical Islamist extremists, including 227 events that took more than 520 lives. In this same period, far-left extremists committed 42 ideologically motivated attacks that took 78 lives.”
The research found that one of the most important precursors to political violence is a history of military service, and offenders with a military background largely endorsed right-wing values and were likely to be associated with white supremacy groups. These are indicators Trump conveniently ignored.
Enemies among us
Trying to prevent political violence is, of course, a commendable goal. Targeting such a campaign only at your political opponents, however, when your own side causes the majority of the violence, is the act of a tyrant.
Trump has been adept at creating groups of “enemies among us”. He started with transgender people. Although most MAGA supporters probably have never met a trans person in their lives, Trump whipped up hatred and prejudice against them. He turned them a boogeyman that threatened America’s children, while ignoring the real boogeymen, like family members, caregivers, teachers, coaches, pastors, priests and friends of Jeffrey Epstein).
Then he did the same with immigrants. Now it’s anti-capitalists, anti-Americans and anti-Christians.
Whether these groups are right or wrong, worth defending rhetorically nor not, they are not “the enemy within”. They can, however, serve as convenient scapegoats a populist strongman can exploit to centralise ever more power around himself.
Reds under the bed
Ironically, Trump’s neo-McCarthyism is as likely to backfire as McCarthy’s original campaign. Once the courts comprehensively dismantled the McCarty-era witchhunt, it became a badge of honour to have been a target, and to this day, opposing communism gets snidely dismissed as paranoia about “reds under the bed”.
The threat of communism was real, just as the threat of socialism is real today. By making martyrs of left-wingers, however, Trump risks making the socialist movement far stronger.
It would have been hard to decide who to support in civil conflicts between fascists and communists in the 1930s. It will be much easier this time around, with the memory of left-wing atrocities having largely faded from living memory.
Young Americans are already alarmingly enamoured with the idea of socialism. Watching masked government agents round up brown people and clamp down on “anti-capitalists” is only going to make them more likely to resist.
If what Trump is doing is “capitalism”, or represents “traditional American values”, then no young voter in their right mind will want anything to do with it.
Trump’s swaggering partisanship will set back the cause of free market capitalism by decades. It will cause a resurgence of the tired wokism of the left, more virile and militant than ever.
Once he’s done persecuting the anti-capitalists and anti-Christians under the bed, Trump will pass on (as geriatric perverts do), but he will leave behind an unrecognisable America. It will take generations to undo the damage.
On the other hand, perhaps I shouldn’t underestimate the resources and reach of the radical left-wing conspiracists who managed to insert a fraudulent page in a custom-printed birthday book 22 years ago, just to discredit the great president Trump in 2025.
No wonder the Don is running scared.
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
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