An Anarchist’s Conviction Offers a Grim Foreshadowing of Trump’s War on the ‘Left’

by value San Francisco Bay Area hard left, by Casey Gunnan crime It was wonderful. A police SUV was partially burned by an incendiary device on UC Berkeley’s campus A bush planter caught fire after Goonan threw a firebomb at the federal building in downtown Auckland in an unsuccessful attempt to break the glass windows of Goonan’s office.

But thanks to a series of news reports claiming Goonan carried out the attack in the summer of 2024 in solidarity with Hamas and the East Bay native’s anarchist beliefs, federal prosecutors claimed Goonan was charged with “intent to promote” terrorism on top of a felony count for using an incendiary device. Gunan’s original charge did not include significant terrorism counts. In late September, U.S. District Court Judge Jeffrey White sentenced Goonan, whom they called “a domestic terrorist” during the hearing, to 19 and a half years in prison and 15 years of probation. Prosecutors also asked for him to be sent to a Bureau of Prisons facility that has a Communication Management Unit, A highly restricted task is reserved for what the government claims are “extremist” prisoners with terrorism-related offenses or affiliations.

Although Gunnan’s case began under the Biden administration, it offers a glimpse of the approach the Justice Department may take in President Donald Trump’s upcoming offensive against the “left,” formally announced in late September. National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7)An executive order targeting anti-fascist beliefs, opposition to immigration and customs enforcement operations, and criticism of capitalism and Christianity as potential “indicators of terrorism.”

In addition to Gunan’s alleged admiration for Hamas, a designated terrorist organization since 1997, and co-founding of True Leap, a Little Anarchist PublishersThe 35-year-old’s doctorate in African-American studies biography includes another feature targeted by the Trump administration and its allies: Gunnan identifies as a transgender person. While the NPSM-7 cites “radicalization, race, and gender” as indicators of “this pattern of violent and terrorist tendencies,” the Heritage Foundation seeks to link gender-fluid identities to mass shootings and is urging the FBI to create a new, specialized one. Domestic Terrorism Classification of “Transgender Ideology-Inspired Violent Extremism” or TIVE.

The executive order, meanwhile, directed the American security state’s elaborate post-9/11 counterterrorism apparatus to steer clear of neo-Nazis, Proud Boys, white nationalists, Christian nationalists, and other far-right actors. Too responsible For most of the political violence in the last few decades, and against opponents of ICE, anti-fascists, and large writs of administration. In addition to potentially violent actors, NSPM-7 directs federal law enforcement to monitor non-profit groups and philanthropic foundations that espouse amorphous ideologies, ranging from “advocacy for the overthrow of the United States government” to “hostility to those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.”

“NSPM-7 is the natural culmination of ‘Fundamentalism theory‘As the bedrock of the American approach to counterterrorism,’ says Mike German, a retired FBI agent who spent years infiltrating violent white supremacist groups and left the bureau in response to the post-9/11 shift in terrorism tactics. German explored the trajectory of radicalization theory in his 2019 book, Disrupt, Discredit, and Divide: How the New FBI Damages Democracy.