I am a terrorist

At least, according to the White House

Update: In the last few hours, the White House has changed the tone of the document somewhat. Amazing. Maybe a few other people saw what I read (and screenshot below). The tone may be slightly different, but the substance remains the same: antifascism remains suspect.

The White House just published a document called “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence”. You can find it here.

According to the document, a snapshot of which is in the image below, as I hold pretty strong anti-fascist views, I am a terrorist. Don’t believe me?

Anti-Fascists are now classified as a terror group. Hmmm.

As I don’t want to be a terrorist, I need to now figure out what the definition of anti-fascism is. Because I am a nerd, I need to dig deeper into this definition. So, where better to start than the Merriam-Webster definition of anti-fascism? It is, after all, an American reference source.

So here we have it:

opposed to fascism.

Well, that doesn’t help much. We need to find out what fascism is. Back to the dictionary:

Fascism : a populist political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual, that is associated with a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, and that is characterized by severe economic and social regimentation and by forcible suppression of opposition

Also:

…a tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control…

OK. So, for me NOT to be a terrorist, that seems to mean that I will need to adopt fascist behaviour. Would that be a problem if I lived in America?

I remember something called the “Bill of Rights”… Let me recall what it says in this context.

Now, here is where to stumble on a teensy problem. If, as the White House document suggests, “Anti-Fascism” is categorised as terrorism, then the state — by logical extension — creates a binary choice: either embrace the label of “terrorist” or adopt the behaviours of the very ideology the state is ostensibly countering. If one chooses the latter to avoid the former, they immediately collide with the foundational protections of the U.S. Bill of Rights.

Fascism, defined by the “forcible suppression of opposition” and the exaltation of the state over the individual, is inherently incompatible with a legal framework designed to limit state authority and protect the individual.

We can go into some detail here. Those pesky Amendments are annoying.

The First Amendment: This is the primary point of failure for any fascist project. Fascism is characterised by the “forcible suppression of opposition”. To maintain the “centralised autocratic government” required by the fascist model, the state must necessarily dismantle the rights to free speech, a free press, and peaceable assembly. You cannot have a regime that exalts the nation above the individual while simultaneously permitting the free exchange of ideas that dissent from that state-sanctioned narrative.

The Fourth Amendment: Autocratic control relies on the state’s ability to monitor, intimidate, and regulate the populace. The Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable searches and seizures, acts as a critical barrier to the “severe economic and social regimentation” required by fascist governance. A state that demands total regimentation cannot tolerate a populace that maintains a “right to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects.”

The Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth Amendments: These amendments establish the bedrock of due process, ensuring that the state cannot arbitrarily punish the individual. Fascism, by definition, is governed by a “dictatorial leader” and relies on the “actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control”. This is functionally impossible if the state is bound by the requirements of grand jury indictments, the right to a speedy and public trial by an impartial jury, and the prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment. Forcible suppression cannot be “legal”; it must be arbitrary, rendering these amendments the first casualties of a dictatorial regime.

The Ninth and Tenth Amendments: The core of the fascist philosophy provided is that it “exalts nation… above the individual”. The Ninth Amendment — which acknowledges that the enumeration of certain rights shall not be construed to deny others retained by the people — and the Tenth Amendment — which reserves powers to the States or the people — are existential threats to such an ideology. These amendments explicitly vest sovereignty in the people, directly contradicting a regime that demands the individual be subordinated to the state’s centralised control.

Ultimately, the logic is inescapable: you cannot maintain the structure of the Bill of Rights while simultaneously adopting the behaviours of a system that defines itself by the destruction of the individual’s autonomy. To avoid the “terrorist” label by becoming the thing you oppose is to surrender the very mechanisms that keep the American state from descending into autocracy.

My quest to avoid being labelled a terrorist is becoming problematic. I need to turn myself into logical knots to abide by the US Constitution and NOT be a terrorist.

This is not a logical error on my part; it is a feature of the administrative design. We have effectively entered an Orwellian ‘doublethink’ scenario. By classifying those who oppose fascism as ‘terrorists’, the state has successfully decoupled the word from its traditional meaning. If I must choose between being a ‘terrorist’ by the state’s definition or adopting the ‘dictatorial control’ and ‘forcible suppression of opposition’ required by the state’s own definition of fascism, I am being forced to perform a political lobotomy. It is a classic Catch-22: to prove my innocence, I must become the very thing the document claims to despise.

Perhaps I shouldn’t take it personally. In an era of algorithmic governance, I suspect this classification wasn’t the result of some sinister, cigar-chomping cabal in a basement, but rather the result of a mid-tier ‘threat-detection’ algorithm that conflated ‘anti-fascist’ sentiment with ‘threat to infrastructure.’ We are now at a point where the state is outsourcing its morality to a database. If I am a terrorist, I am a terrorist in the same way my smart fridge is a ‘culinary expert’ — it’s a technical classification that has absolutely nothing to do with reality.

So, there it is. I need to update my LinkedIn profile to include ‘State-Identified Terrorist.’ It’s surprisingly difficult to get that specific job title, but I suppose if the White House insists on it, who am I to argue with a government document? I can only hope that when they come for me, they appreciate the irony of the paperwork involved.