On Thursday afternoon, prosecutors in Texas announced that terrorism charges had been filed against two people for alleged involvement in a shooting during a July 4 protest against the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas, in which a local police officer was injured.

This is the first time federal terrorism charges have been deployed in association with the “antifa” label, just a month after President Donald Trump announced that he was designating antifa a “major terrorist organization” — a designation that does not exist under law for domestic groups.

The Prairieland case is setting a chilling example for how the government will use so-called counterterrorism efforts to crush anti-fascist dissent. Neither of the people named in the indictment are accused of shooting the gun. Instead, Zachary Evetts and Autumn Hill are accused of “providing material support to terrorists” and having “aided and abetted” the alleged attempted murder of government officers.

The federal indictment accuses Hill, who prosecutors dead-named, and Evetts as being part of an “antifa cell.”

The terrorism charges are an escalation of government efforts to criminalize protest movements by attempting to attribute collective guilt.

  • carlossurf@lemmy.ca
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    1 day ago

    Step one of fascist government label anyone that doesnt agree with them as antifa

    • Lka1988@sh.itjust.works
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      1 day ago

      Well, I mean, are they not?

      The real problem is the people in charge taking a common abbreviation of an arguably positive ideology, twisting that abbreviation into a “scary” name, calling it a violent group, packaging it all up with a neat little bow, and then parroting it to the brainwashed masses.

    • MourningDove@lemmy.zip
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      8 hours ago

      Agreed.

      And, it’s a bit uncanny how eerily close this is to that of the far left when they accuse anyone that’s a hair’s width right of the bat-shit insanity of Stalin of being in support of genocide.

      They have distanced themselves so far from an alt-right ideology- that they have circled all the way back around to being comparatively identical in their absence of logic.

      EDIT: take note how well my point was made in the responses I’ve received. I’ve been accused of both being “programmed” and being a member of truth social- just for points out the fact that there are people who will immediately accuse you of being something you’re not- just because you disagree with them.

      (For the record: this was purposefully done to net these results. Some people are so predictable, you can essentially get them to prove your point for you).