Trump is using 'domestic terrorism' to target political opponents

He's been at it for as long as he has been in politics.

When you think of domestic terrorists, do you think of Timothy McVeigh who, in 1995, blew up a building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people? Or Robert Bowers, who, in a 2018 shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pa., killed eleven Jewish people in the greatest act of antisemitic violence in American history?

Maybe you think of Dylann Roof, who killed nine Black people a Charleston S.C., church? Maybe you think of Patrick Wood Crusius, who killed 23 people at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas.

Each surely qualifies as a domestic terrorist. As the Federal Bureau of Investigation defines it, domestic terrorism covers “acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State … intended to: Intimidate or coerce a civilian population; Influence the policy of government by intimidation or coercion; or Affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination or kidnapping.”

Those acts must occur “primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States.” They include “Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremism” of the kind seen in Oklahoma City, in Pittsburgh, in Charlestown, and in El Paso.

That kind of domestic terrorism involves the “use or threat of force or violence in furtherance of ideological agendas derived from bias, often related to race or ethnicity, held by the actor against others or a given population group. Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists purport to use both political and religious justifications to support their racially- or ethnically-based ideological objectives and criminal activities.”

If that is your definition of domestic terrorism or your image of a domestic terrorist, you are behind the times.

On Sept. 25, President Donald Trump made that clear when he added two unlikely names to the rogues’ gallery of people who in his view are domestic terrorists: George Soros and Reid Hoffman. Both happen to be financial supporters of liberal causes. Neither has advocated, let alone used, violence to intimidate any person or group, including the government.

Soros is 95 years old and a patron of the Open Society Foundations, which promote democracy and social justice in the United States and around the world. Hoffman, one of the largest donors to the Democratic Party, established “the Aphorism Foundation, a California-based private grantmaking group that focuses on noncontroversial causes such as supporting universities and hospitals.”

They have nothing in common with McVeigh, Bowers, Roof, or Crusius. But guilt-by-association is a powerful tool to cast suspicion where there is no other basis for doing so.

And, last week, the president again showed that he is a master of guilt-by-association politics. He signed a memorandum directing the federal government to investigate and dismantle domestic terrorism networks and, when asked for examples of who might be targeted in those investigations, offered up Soros and Hoffman as examples.

As Democracy Docket observed, “The move appears targeted at left-leaning progressive nonprofit groups, which Trump days ago vowed to dismantle, falsely claiming they fund and support political violence and terrorism in the U.S.”

Painting political opponents with the broad brush of extremism has a long lineage in the United States. Here, think of the tactics of the late Sen. Joe McCarthy, who made unfounded accusations that innocent people were members of the Communist Party.

Trump has been at it for as long as he has been in politics. And, as CNN explained, “Soros has repeatedly drawn the ire of President Donald Trump, who has accused him, without evidence, of funding everything from Black Lives Matter protesters in the summer of 2020 to Trump’s own indictment in New York in 2023.”

“George Soros, and his wonderful Radical Left son, should be charged with RICO because of their support of Violent Protests, and much more, all throughout the United States of America,” Trump said after protests broke out over the use Immigration and Customs Enforcement for its mass deportations and of the National Guard in Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles.

The tragic death of Charlie Kirk propelled this tendency into overdrive.

The president reacted by saying, “We’re going to look into Soros, because I think it’s a RICO case against him and other people. Because this is more than like protests. This is real agitation.”

The president’s Sept. 25 memo stated that “(P)olitical violence is not a series of isolated incidents and does not emerge organically. Instead, it is a culmination of sophisticated, organized campaigns of targeted intimidation, radicalization, threats, and violence designed to silence opposing speech, limit political activity, change or direct policy outcomes, and prevent the functioning of a democratic society.”

“A new law enforcement strategy that investigates all participants in these criminal and terroristic conspiracies — including the organized structures, networks, entities, organizations, funding sources, and predicate actions behind them — is required,” the memo continued.

It asserted that “there are common recurrent motivations and indicia uniting this pattern of violent and terroristic activities under the umbrella of self-described ‘anti-fascism.’ These movements portray foundational American principles (e.g., support for law enforcement and border control) as ‘fascist’ to justify and encourage acts of violent revolution. This ‘anti-fascist’ lie has become the organizing rallying cry used by domestic terrorists to wage a violent assault against democratic institutions, constitutional rights, and fundamental American liberties.”

The president directed the Department of the Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service to go after “anti-fascist movements” in the United States. In addition, he ordered the commissioner of the IRS “to ensure that no tax-exempt entities are directly or indirectly financing political violence or domestic terrorism…. In addition, where applicable, the Commissioner shall ensure that the [IRS] refers such organizations, and the employees and officers of such organizations, to the Department of Justice for investigation and possible prosecution.”

Following up on the order from the top, the Justice Department sent a directive to U.S. attorneys’ offices around the country to launch investigations into the Open Society Foundations.

This is just the latest example of the president’s use of the domestic terrorism label to tar and feather his opponents. But it is one of the most troubling.

It is almost unimaginable that anti-fascism is associated with an attack on democratic institutions. But there it is.

And by implying that anyone who opposes the administration is somehow responsible for domestic terrorism, the administration risks draining that term of any meaning. If everything falls under that umbrella, then nothing really does.

When Americans should be uniting against real domestic terrorism of any kind, that is a price that people of any political stripe should be unwilling to pay.

Austin Sarat is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College.

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