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I don’t particularly want to get serious on a Saturday night, but the bellends in Dover have p***ed me off. Watching a bunch of numpties in balaclavas block roads, intimidate people and then lecture everyone else about who is supposedly threatening British values is just f***ing ridiculous. The hypocrisy would be funny if the whole thing wasn’t so ugly.
Half my ancestors were Litvak Jews. Around 90–95% of that community was murdered by the Nazis. Britain was one of the places people could flee to, and the fact that this country offered refuge from persecution is something we ought to be proud of.
So watching masked men complain that Muslim women shouldn’t be allowed to cover their faces is f***ing absurd. Complaining that Muslims are “intimidating” while standing in the road in balaclavas intimidating strangers isn’t patriotism. It’s hypocrisy.
And underneath all of this is the oldest trick going: persuade people with very little that their problems are caused by people with even less. Fill their feeds with rage about migrants, Muslims and refugees, and they’ll spend their time punching down instead of looking up.
These guys aren’t rebels. They’re sheep. They are a dream come true for extremely rich and powerful people who would much rather have ordinary people raging at penniless migrants than asking awkward questions about wealth, tax, power and who is actually running the country.
If they genuinely think Britain’s problems are being caused by the people arriving here with virtually nothing, they haven’t seen through the system.
I was reading this piece from Michael Rosen on Facebook this morning about the 90th anniversary of the Battle of Cable Street, a confrontation that took place on October 4th 1936. Oswald Mosely and his British Union of Fascists had planned a march through London's East End and area with a significant Jewish population. In response, Jews and their allies fought open battles with the fascists and drove them back.
Rosen points out that there were different currents and views within the group that fought the fascists that day, including Jewish organizations and included in his comments a warning from the Jewish Chronicle urging the Jewish community not to attend or protest the march. But the general consensus was to confront the fascists and stop them.
I am familiar with the event and have read a little about it but found the video above really interesting as it deals with the wider class issues, the various radical groups that were involved and what was happening in Europe at the time. It's also important as the BUF picked immigrants and in this case, Jews, many of them victims of the pogroms and violence they faced in Easter Europe. In times of economic crisis the state, its security apparatus including fascist and nationalist organizations, direct the anger at the "other" among us.
I was at a similar protest when I was in London in the 1980's and it was the right wing anti-immigrant forces directing their hatred toward Bangladeshi's. The area where the Cable Street battle took place has since been populated by East Indians, Bangladeshi's and other ethnic groups.
With the absence of a working class alternative and a unifying force in society that can direct the anger at the social and economic crises people are facing at the state and its security apparatus, there are people that will be drawn to the racist anti-immigrant position.
Immigrants that have saved Britains precious NHS from the privateers ax are now being blamed for destroying it. Behind the most innocuous statements on the cost of immigration are the fascists elements and the British state. Immigration does need to be addressed but from the perspective of the working class both at home and abroad. The capitalist state cannot solve a crisis of its own making. The flow of people from the Middle East and North Africa in to Europe and the UK is a product of colonialism and the continuing support of US imperialism's wars in the region from the British government.
It's insanity people telling immigrants to "go back where they came from" when they have no homes to go back to.
I see that the Board of Deputies are organising an event for the 90th anniversary of the 'Battle of Cable Street'. Obviously, anyone can organise what they want to commemorate what they want, when they want (within the confines of the law etc etc). In 2026, there are people walking about, living their lives who stand in various traditions. We aren't prisoners of them (if we don't want them to be) but they exist in our minds, our memories and in our political acts. We 'negotiate' them. That's to say, we work out how we stand now in relation to those past traditions.
As I understand it, the group that I'm part of who are organising commemorations of Cable Street owes its origins to the Jewish People's Council which was the prime mover of the resistance to Mosley and the fascists. Within that Council were many strands of opinion, as Dave Rosenberg has shown in his book 'Battle for the East End'.
However, opposed to organising a demonstration on that day was a group of people who said, no, don't demonstrate. This is not hearsay or rumour. There was a note in the Jewish Chronicle telling people not to go and I've posted it here.
Now, I don't know for sure which people now, in 2026, belong to that tradition, but I'd say that whoever is organising commemorative events, part of that history is to acknowledge, who was there, who wasn't there, who was in favour of it, and who was against it - actively against it in some cases.
I would hope (but don't know) that the Board of Deputies event would acknowledge what the official 'line' seems to have been towards people going on the demonstration that day. Perhaps they'll acknowledge who said that kind of thing and why, and whether it put people off going, off taking part.
As people will know, my parents were there and it was an important part of their personal, social and political education - and through them, mine too. They felt that they belonged to that tradition, all their lives, even after they left the Communist Party in 1957.
Benjamin Netanyahu has remained in office for years by empowering the far right of his coalitions, including religious fundamentalist parties. The outlook of Netanyahu – arrogant, military supremacist, with no strategies but endless wars and his own political survival – is a perfect fit for the religious zealots and bigots in and around his cabinet. These are people who see the necessity of asserting Jewish religious traditions at the expense of those of other faiths.
These same politicians, who warn the west against the encroachment of ‘Islamic fundamentalism’, are themselves the authors par excellence of religious intolerance and oppression. They are the ‘Taliban’ of the Jewish faith: blind and ignorant, misogynistic men.
Zionism was originally a largely a secular, non-religious political nationalist movement, although there was an obvious historical association with Jerusalem. But nowadays, the stories from the Torah are being cynically used to boost that nationalism; its embrace of ultra-religious ideology and the rise of the religious neo-fascists is a relatively new development.
Goaded by the apocalyptic myths of the Hebrew bible – and they are mostly myths – these newly unleashed fanatics would be happy to see the Middle East plunged into a religious war, one which they are confident they would win.
The religious right are on the point of provoking a powerful reaction from Arab states in the area, by repeated incursions into the compound of the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. The area has great significance in Islamic tradition, but also has great significance in Judaic tradition.
Western wall revered today
The compound is on the site of what was the huge so-called ‘Second’ Temple, active around two thousand years ago, but utterly destroyed by the Romans after an unsuccessful revolt, in 70CE. What remains of the Temple – its lower foundation walls – are revered by Jews today as the Western Wall, and the area above it, where the Temple used to stand, is known to Jews as Temple Mount.
However, fourteen centuries ago, during the period of the rise of the first Arab empire, and at the time of the establishment of Islam, the area was put to a new use. Here, the Dome of the Rock was built at the end of the seventh century, by the Caliph Abd Al-Malik. It was Islam’s very first monumental place of worship, built to rival the great cathedrals of Byzantine Christianity.
This was at a time when early Islam had not clearly and decisively differentiated itself from Judaism or Christianity – it is a faith that shares many influences with both religions – and the Dome of the Rock was of a design meant to express the majesty and grandeur of the Caliphate.
Being first-ever major site of worship, the Dome of the Rock was not built in what became the style of later mosques, but it is still revered by Muslims as the third most holy site, after mosques built later in Mecca and Medina. Tradition has it that Mohammed ascended to heaven from the Dome of the Rock.
Al-Aqsa is a huge mosque and is filled regularly…when allowed
In more modern times, a large mosque was built nearby – the Al-Aqsa Mosque and this used to be the place where thousands of Palestinians would gather for Friday prayers. “Used to”…because the Israeli authorities are increasingly asserting their rights to decide how many and which Palestinians are allowed into the compound on Fridays and the entry to the mosque has become a flashpoint of conflict between the IDF and local Palestinian worshippers.
The Jordanian government has an axe to grind on this issue because it is ‘legally’ the custodian of the Al-Aqsa compound, from an Israeli-Jordanian treaty of 1994, not that the Israeli government takes much notice of that fact.
In modern times, Jews have been forbidden from entering the Al-Aqsa compound at all, much less worshipping there, but in recent years there have been repeated encroachments by ultra-religious Jewish groups, goaded by politicians from the far right. Last month more than 2,000 Israelis, many of them settlers – the same groups organising murderous pogroms against Arab villages – stormed the Al-Aqsa compound, alongside Israel’s national security minister, Itamar Ben Gvir. Here, they prayed and performed religious rituals.
There are those on the far religious right in Israel who would be happy to take over the Al-Aqsa compound altogether, in the hope of somehow restoring the area to its “former glory”. The essential thing for them is to ‘liberate’ the area – like the whole of ‘Greater’ Israel – from the yoke of the Muslims. It is the stuff of messianic politics, but it pervades an entire spectrum of Israeli right-wing politics, including many in the army and the state machine.
Ben Gvir – the same ‘security’ minister who gave out ten thousand assault rifles to Jewish settlers – made no bones about who had the whip hand in Jerusalem. “Everywhere”, he toldHaaretz, “people understand that Israel is in charge. There is still more to do, and with God’s help, we will move forward”. The plan to forces changes to the protocols around the Al-Aqsa compound, we should add, are fully endorsed by Netanyahu and his cabinet.
Unsurprisingly, there is growing anger among Muslims, over what is seen as the repeated desecration of a holy Islamic site. There is also a fear that in the weeks approaching the general election in Israel – due in October – that the Israeli religious right would use the issue to provoke religious conflict in the hope of shoring up their position in the polls.
Jordanian government has reasons to worry
Last week, the Jordanian government convened a meeting of foreign ministers of Muslim countries to express their alarm at the developments in Jerusalem. “We warn that tampering with the status quo”, the Jordanian foreign minister, told the Guardian, ”could trigger a religious conflict that will reverberate beyond Palestine and Jordan into the whole Muslim world.”
Jordan has special reason to worry, because half of its population of twelve million are Palestinian, and what happens on the West Bank of the River Jordan will sooner or later have a major impact on what happens on the East Bank.
Ben Gvir, ‘security’ minister, the person who armed settlers and who is, in effect, the main proponent of terrorism in the West Bank
Jordan is a monarchy, but hardly a constitutional one – political activity is severely limited and opposition is actively suppressed by the authorities. There is a parliament, but its powers and activities are strictly curtailed. Nonetheless, opposition is growing, as a result of the genocidal destruction of Gaza and the Israeli depredations on the West Bank. To add insult to injury, Israel has reneged on a previous agreement to share the waters of the Jordan River with the result that there are shortages affecting Jordanian agriculture.
The “normalisation” of relations between the Jordanian monarchy and Israel, established now for decades, has come under considerable strain and the Jordanian monarchy is finding that repeated suppression cannot block opposition forever. The encroachment of Jewish worshippers onto a Muslim holy site in Jerusalem is only increasing support for new, radical Islamic parties in Jordan, the largest of which now has around quarter of the MPs in parliament.
Aggression and hubris pervades the whole Israeli state
Dima Tahboub, a member of parliament and spokesperson for Jordan’s Islamist Umma (‘Community’) party told the Guardian. “Anti-normalisation sentiment here has grown even larger than before due to the Zionist state’s plans of annexation of the West Bank, the denial of Jordan’s share in the water agreement and also the daily challenges to the custodianship at al-Aqsa mosque…Every day there is penetration by settlers into al-Aqsa mosque and at the same time, [Palestinian]Jerusalemites are prevented from entering the mosque.”
Whether or not the religious arsonists around Ben Gvir are successful in provoking a religious fire remains to be seen, but it is yet another indication of the aggression and hubris that pervades the whole Israeli state and establishment at the present time.
We might also add that the political establishment of the west – including most of the leadership of the Labour Party – are complicit in this process. They wring their hands over the pogroms conducted by armed Jewish settlers against Palestinian villages and they sigh over the ferocity and scale of the killings of tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza. But they continue to arm Israel and trade with Israel as if it were a ‘normal’ country, living by ‘normal’ rules, and not a vicious theocracy bent on wiping out all traces of other faiths and traditions in ‘its own’ territory.
Feature picture shows the Dome of the Rock in the Al-Aqsa compound, from Wikimedia Commons, here. Inset picture of Ben Gvir, from Wikimedia Commons, here]
See more on the history of the Dome of the Rock and early Islam, inThe Origins of Judaism, Christianity and Islam,here.
A new State Department report on Cuba’s “campaign of subversion against the United States” is a virtual government blacklist against left-wing Americans and groups. Linked to last week’s Rubio-led summit on “political terrorism,” the report is unusually candid about the government’s targets.
“Many of the most significant upheavals in recent American political history — from the George Floyd riots to the rise of Antifa to the explosion of pro-terrorist activism on American college campuses — can be linked, in some way, shape, or form, to Cuban influence,” the report says.
As for who these supposed American agents of Cuba are, the report is remarkably explicit. It names people like Ben Cohen (of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream fame), Mayors Zohran Mamdani and Karen Bass, media figures like Amy Goodman and Hasan Piker, and organizations like the Democratic Socialists of America and the Amazon Labor Union.
The implication is clear: Secretary of State Marco Rubio thinks there should be a modern-day blacklist of the political left in America. In fact, the report explicitly mentions the “blacklists, McCarthy-era investigations and prosecutions” of the 1950s and their effectiveness at dismembering the Communist Party USA.
The 100-page report, titled “Cuba: The Capital of 21st Century Communism,” was released this morning.
An entire section of the report — numbering over three pages long — is dedicated to the Democratic Socialists of America.
“The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) serves as a particularly potent illustration of the ideological victory of Cuba’s effort to position itself as the spiritual capital of Third Worldist Radicalism,” the report says. “This represents a significant advance for the Cuban influence operation: Havana no longer needs to rely solely on intelligence penetration or asset cultivation to exert influence over the United States.”
Though the report concedes that “DSA was not shaped by the direct and tangible influence of the Cuban government” and that it has “organic ideological commitments,” it insists that “None of that is to say that the group has no ties to the Cuban regime and its influence network.”
Instead, the report points to the group’s delegations to Cuba as evidence of Cuban influence.
“For more than six decades, the Cuban regime has been the leading sponsor of radical leftism and Third Worldism in the United States,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a post on X/Twitter linking to the report.
Whatever you think of DSA, it is hardly fringe. It claims as members prominent politicians like New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani and has helped to nominate dozens of politicians like him to office in recent years. Senator Bernie Sanders identifies as a Democratic Socialist — having himself popularized the term — as do Reps. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and Rashida Tlaib, who are card carrying members (as well as Mamdani).
The Cuba report follows last week’s Rubio-led international summit on “political terrorism.” That summit, as I reported, introduced the new term “Far-Left Terrorism” (abbreviated “FLT”), a term it never really defined.
A White House press release summarizing the event said that “far-left extremism will be treated with the same seriousness and ferocity the world has long reserved for jihadist terrorism.”
Speaking at the summit, Rubio vowed that further new terrorist designations for left-wing groups would be coming “soon.”
Jeremy Lewin, the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Assistance, linked last week’s political terrorism summit to today’s Cuba report, saying on X: “For seven decades, the Cuban regime has been behind both the ideological underpinnings of third worldism and subversive organizing structures of the new radical left political terrorists that @SecRubio called out with clarity last week.”
But virtually all the summit could do to substantiate the supposed scourge of political terrorism was to focus on groups that are almost comically dated — like the 70’s era Symbionese Liberation Army or the Weather Underground. The summit was vague about what are the equivalent groups today.
Today’s Cuba report, however, “names names,” in an obvious attempt to stigmatize American citizens who are very much politically active today.
In some cases these are even sitting politicians, from congresswoman Maxine Waters to Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass.
I read the 100-page report and counted references to at least 43 contemporary American groups and individuals, which the report identifies as follows:
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Antifa: A decentralized group of self-described “Anti-fascist” political activists
Assata’s Daughters: A Chicago-based Black Lives Matter abolitionist offshoot that trains young activists in the radical spirit of Assata Shakur.
Association for Investment in Popular Action Committees (AIPAC):A California-based umbrella nonprofit that funds left-wing media and delegations to Cuba and Venezuela.
Bass, Karen: The current Mayor of Los Angeles and former Congresswoman who was a Venceremos Brigade organizer in the 1970s.
Benjamin, Medea (Susan Benjamin): A co-founder of Code Pink and Global Exchange who previously lived in Cuba and frequently organizes solidarity efforts for the regime.
Black Alliance for Peace: An activist group that maps U.S. military bases and police training facilities as targets for radical agitation.
Black Lives Matter (BLM) (including Global Network Foundation, Grassroots, and at School): A sprawling racial justice network whose leaders and offshoots express solidarity with the Cuban regime and radical figures like Assata Shakur.
Boudin, Chesa: The former District Attorney of San Francisco and son of Weather Underground member Kathy Boudin.
changingFrequencies: A Black Queer Feminist-led abolitionist project aiming to disrupt waht it calls the “Medical Industrial Complex”.
Claudia Jones School: A Washington, D.C.-based organizing collective that conducts popular education and pro-Cuba lobbying.
Code Pink: Women for Peace: A left-wing protest group that describes itself as anti-war and organizes solidarity delegations to Cuba.
Cohen, Ben: The co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s who attended the wedding of Neville Roy Singham and Jodie Evans.
de la Cruz, Claudia: The co-founder of the People’s Forum, IFCO executive director, and 2024 presidential candidate for the Party for Socialism and Liberation.
De Los Santos, Manolo: The co-founder and head of the People’s Forum who the report says maintains deep relationships with Cuban regime elites.
Democratic Socialists of America (DSA): A major socialist political organization that formally advocates for the Cuban regime and organizes official delegations to the island.
Ensler, Eve (V): A prominent playwright who attended the wedding of Neville Roy Singham and Jodie Evans.
Equality for Flatbush: A Brooklyn-based Black Lives Matter abolitionist group fighting gentrification, police, and ICE.
Evans, Jodie: The co-founder of Code Pink who married billionaire Neville Roy Singham and heavily praises anti-American foreign states.
Floyd, George: A man whose 2020 death sparked nationwide uprisings that were celebrated and supported by the Cuban regime.
Garza, Alicia: The co-founder of Black Lives Matter who credited Assata Shakur as a key influence in her organizing work.
Goodman, Amy: The host of Democracy Now! who the report notes attended the wedding of leftist billionaire Neville Roy Singham and Jodie Evans.
Haitian Women for Haitian Refugees: An activist group led by Black women that organizes to defend Black migrants and stop deportations.
Hirsi, Isra: A campus activist and daughter of Ilhan Omar who was suspended from Barnard College for organizing anti-Israel encampments before traveling to Cuba.
IFCO / Pastors for Peace: An ecumenical foundation that organizes aid caravans to leftist regimes and serves as a fiscal sponsor for numerous radical U.S. groups.
Larudee, Paul: A U.S. citizen based in San Francisco who serves as the North American coordinator for the pro-Iranian “Resistance Axis” coalition Al-Tajammu.
Mamdani, Zohran: Mayor of New York
National Lawyers Guild (NLG): An association of radical lawyers that provides legal defense and “legal observers” for various left-wing groups
National Network on Cuba (NNOC): A coalition of over 60 American groups dedicated to lobbying for the Cuban regime and coordinating nationwide direct actions.
Omar, Ilhan: A Democratic Congresswoman and mother of campus activist Isra Hirsi.
Party for Socialism and Liberation: A leftist political party that fielded a 2024 presidential candidate and conducts protests.
People’s Forum, The: An activist hub for anti-ICE and pro-Cuban agitation.
Thousand Currents: A progressive nonprofit that served as the fiscal sponsor for the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation.
Villaraigosa, Antonio: A former Mayor of Los Angeles and Speaker of the California Assembly who was a Venceremos Brigade alumnus.
Viva Palestina US: The American branch of an international network that, the report notes, previously provided convoys and funds to Hamas.
Waters, Maxine: A Democratic Congresswoman who, the report notes, once wrote a letter urging Fidel Castro not to extradite fugitive Assata Shakur.
Wilson, Diane: A co-founder of the anti-war protest group Code Pink.
Witness for Peace Solidarity Collective: An organization that runs recurring U.S. solidarity delegations to Cuba.
Guilt by association at its finest. But what exactly are they guilty of?
What the report shows isn’t that any of these people are knowingly taking directions from a foreign power — only that they disagree with the U.S. government on Cuba policy (or at most, agree with Cuba).
Their views can be wrong — aggressively, offensively wrong even — but it’s their goddamn right as Americans to hold them.
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Secretary of State Marco Rubio will be hosting a big diplomatic summit in Washington on Thursday — not about the Iran war, but about “political terrorism.”
Sterile as that may sound, it’s a resurrection of an obscure Nixon-era term pointed squarely at the political left and recruiting foreign governments to assist its war on domestic political opponents. As a U.S. diplomatic cable leaked to me puts it, all of this is about combatting “far-left terrorism.”
To the extent that media have noticed the summit at all, they’ve focused onthe confusion and wariness among some of the over 60 countries invited; but the significance of the term has been completely overlooked. Put simply, it’s a more powerful attack on protest, free speech and the Democratic Party than Trump’s designation of “Antifa” as a domestic terrorist group or NSPM-7.
The summit is called the “Ministerial on the Resurgence of Political Terrorism.” Unlike familiar organized terrorist groups like Al Qaeda or ISIS, “political terrorism” refers to domestic opposition, here and abroad.
Leaked diplomatic cable
If you’ve never heard the term, it’s because the Trump administration has up to now never used it. In fact, this is the first time it’s been used by the federal government in decades.
“This summit is a vital first step in countering rising political violence worldwide, including far-left terrorism, through international collaboration,” a U.S. diplomatic cable dated July 13 says.
Leaked diplomatic cable
“Political terrorism” is a term first adopted by the Nixon administration for its war on “subversives,” carried out in the darkest days of the Vietnam war and a period of intense public protest. Sometimes referred to as “COINTELPRO” (an acronym for Counterintelligence Program), it was a series of covert and illegal actions by the FBI from 1956 through the early seventies that aimed to surveil, infiltrate, entrap and undermine leftist political organizations, everything from civil rights and anti-war groups to the Black Panthers.
State Department spokesman Tommy Piggot hinted at the historical significance last week.
“The resurgence of violent far-left political terrorism is not a new phenomenon — it is an old threat re-emerging with strong transnational links and new convergences,” Piggot said in a statement on the summit.
The administration’s obsession with left-wing terrorism was precipitated by the murder of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk — a personal friend of Trump’s and many in the administration. In my reporting at the time, based on interviews with friends of the alleged gunman, Tyler Robinson, I warned that there wasn’t any evidence that the murder was a partisan act, nor that he was a leftist or even political in general.
That reporting, criticized at the time in an environment where seemingly everything was polarized into Team Red White and Blue, has now been vindicated to an extent that I did not anticipate.
Just last week, Robinson’s lover, Lance Twiggs, who is cooperating with federal prosecutors, testified that Robinson barely ever discussed politics and had never once mentioned Kirk before the shooting.
It’s an extraordinary revelation, made under the clearest penalty of perjury one can imagine, given the Trump administration’s investment in framing the killing as an act of “political terrorism.” After the shooting, FBI Director Kash Patel even testified before Congress that the Bureau was investigating every other member of Robinsons’ discord chats and even the possibility of a foreign nexus. This was based on his suspicion that the killing was carried out by some kind of organized cell, a theory that promptly fell apart.
The killing was, by all appearances, just a young man with a gun, pissed off about what Charlie Kirk said about the LGBT community.
To the Trump camp, Kirk’s killing solidified their thinking that a vast conspiracy existed amongst the left to destroy the nation. Their counter to this imagined national security threat has been to link Trump’s NSPM-7 national security directive, the nihilist violent extremism label, and the executive order designating “Antifa” as a terrorist organization into a larger umbrella: “political terrorism.”
Or as I call, POLTERGEIST, because the “political-terrorism” term is an attempt by the Trump administration to summon a ghost from the Nixon years.
Perhaps the only official definition of political terrorism appears in a declassified 1970 CIA intelligence report.
Cover of declassified CIA intelligence report
“Political terrorism is symbolic action, by those out of power, designed to achieve political ends through the systematic use of violence,” the report says.
It goes on to differentiate political terrorism from other forms of violence, saying:
“It is distinguished from intimidation (which emphasizes threats), mob violence (normally unplanned and uncontrolled), mass insurrection (larger in scale, later in time), and governmental terrorism (presented as law-enforcement). It may be practiced by anarchists, by nihilists, by their successors the modern totalitarians, by nationalists, and by a variety of social groups with genuine or fancied grievances.”
In 1972, responding to the Black September terrorist attack at the Munich Olympic Games, Nixon issued a formal presidential memorandum that officially institutionalized counter-political terrorism by creating a Cabinet Committee. Nixon’s 1972 mandate explicitly ordered the heads of the State Department, DOJ, CIA, FBI, Treasury and other agencies to coordinate government-wide actions to “prevent terrorism here and abroad.”
Again, not terrorism as we normally think of it, but political opposition.
In response to the memo, the State Department appointed its first-ever Special Assistant to the Secretary of State and Coordinator for Combating Terrorism. Within days, the new Special Assistant was peppering the term “political terrorism” in internal memos.
Unlike the Kirk assassination, the Munich Olympics massacre really was carried out by a terrorist group. Black September was a highly structured, centrally-commanded paramilitary with the explicit political goal of compelling the release of Palestinian political prisoners and forcing global visibility onto the Palestinian nationalist cause. It counted among its leaders the intelligence chief of the Palestinian Authority, Amin al-Hindi.
Now compare that with Tyler Robinson, an angsty 23-year-old from a Mormon family who was dating Lance (known to him as “Luna”) Twiggs and was upset enough about Charlie Kirk’s rhetoric on LBGT people to take action, allegedly.
In Trump’s National Security Presidential Memorandum 7, or NPSM-7, the president directs the Departments of State Treasury, Justice and various other federal agencies to prioritize investigating and preempting left-wing violence. Sound familiar?
In a section examining the effectiveness of terrorism in different political environments, the CIA report from 1970 says:
“Terrorism can pose a serious challenge to free societies in which great social injustices or severe economic problems exist (e.g. Guatemala), but terrorism does not do well in free societies in which serious grievances are not widespread [redacted].”
Good thing Americans perceive no “great social injustices” today!
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