Donald Trump’s new security directive labels anti-capitalist beliefs as a predictor of political violence. The irony: left-wing structural analysis actually pushes people away from lone-wolf attacks and toward mass organizing for change.
As defined by the FBI and DHS, anarchist violent extremism encompasses the potentially unlawful use or threat of force or violence in furtherance of an anti-government or anti-authority violent extremist ideology that considers capitalism and centralized government to be unnecessary and oppressive.
Work backwards from that: if you’re a leftist who considers capitalism to be oppressive, and you “threaten” to use your force (applying pressure, withholding labor, explicitly not violence as implied by "force or violence) to challenge government authority, congratulations, you’re an anarchist violent criminal!
The document includes just one mention of “anarchist violent extremists” — the term the FBI uses when describing terror threats from people who view “capitalism and centralized government to be unnecessary and oppressive,” according to a May 2021 threat assessment.
But in congressional hearings, FBI Director Christopher Wray — who Biden chose to keep in place, restoring a tradition Trump broke — has extensively discussed the bureau’s work investigating people in that category.
“Antifa is a real thing,” Wray added at that hearing. “It’s not a group or an organization, it’s a movement or an ideology, maybe one way of thinking of it, and we have quite a number — and I’ve said this consistently since my first time appearing before this committee — we have any number of properly predicated investigations into what we would describe as violent anarchist extremists. Some of those individuals self-identify with antifa.”
I took that to mean anarchists, since they specifically call them “anarchist violent extremists” but I suppose that’s an appropriately disingenuous take from the likes of Wray.
Neither of those articles mention anti-capitalism.
Try to do more than just cntrl+F.
Work backwards from that: if you’re a leftist who considers capitalism to be oppressive, and you “threaten” to use your force (applying pressure, withholding labor, explicitly not violence as implied by "force or violence) to challenge government authority, congratulations, you’re an anarchist violent criminal!
You know it tracks that Wray wouldn’t be able to distinguish anti capitalism from anarchism. This is the dumbest fucking timeline.
Not true?
Straight from the Politico article:
I took that to mean anarchists, since they specifically call them “anarchist violent extremists” but I suppose that’s an appropriately disingenuous take from the likes of Wray.