President Trump’s sweeping new national security memorandum will likely double the FBI’s domestic terrorism watchlist from 5,000 people to 10,000, according to journalist Ken Klippenstein.
Trump issued the National Security Presidential Memorandum 7, or NPSM-7, titled “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence” last week. The memo directs the federal government to investigate and prosecute any person, nonprofit, or entity displaying what Trump calls “indicia” of political violence: anti-capitalism, anti-Americanism, anti-Christianity, and “extremism” on race, gender, and migration.
The memo continues:
This political violence is not a series of isolated incidents and does not emerge organically…. 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.
These broad categorizations would incriminate millions of people, hence the doubling of the domestic terrorism watchlist. The watchlist was created directly after the attacks on September 11, 2001, and also includes the no-fly list.
“Individuals, including U.S. persons (i.e., U.S. citizens, nationals, or lawful permanent residents), may be nominated for inclusion in the terrorist watchlist if they are known or reasonably suspected to be engaged in terrorism or terrorist activities, or are associated with known or suspected terrorists, among other criteria,” the Government Accountability Office wrote in a study just last month. Now President Trump has greatly expanded the parameters, allowing the government to label everyone from George Soros to a few leftists with a Signal chat as domestic terrorists.
In that same study, the GAO acknowledged that “some U.S. persons (i.e., U.S. citizens, nationals, or lawful permanent residents) have been misidentified as being on the watchlist or remained on the watchlist when no longer warranted.” It’s unfortunately likely that this unfortunate, authoritarian trend will only increase tenfold now.
There’s no other way around it—McCarthyism is so back.
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