J.Z. Ness | Red Phoenix correspondents | Colorado–
In a sweeping expansion of the national security apparatus, the Trump administration has released a new National Counterterrorism Strategy that places left-wing activists, anti-fascists, anarchists, and those holding what it calls “radically pro-transgender” in the same category as drug cartels and Islamist groups. Penned under the direction of counterterrorism adviser Sebastian Gorka, the document calls for identifying threats “before they happen” and using law enforcement tools to “cripple them operationally” ahead of any crime. It highlights supposed “Red-Green alliances” between the far left (red) and pro-Palestine (what it calls “Islamist” or “green”) voices, framing solidarity with oppressed peoples and fellow workers abroad as a security risk.
In reality, this is pre-crime policing aimed squarely at working-class organizing. In a system where a tiny layer at the top controls the economy and government, growing anger over wages, housing, endless wars, and inequality threatens the stability of profits. When profit margins tighten and crises deepen, those in power respond by expanding the tools of control and oppression rather than addressing the root causes that fuel discontent.
Workers produce the wealth of this country, but see little of it returned in decent pay, stable jobs, or an affordable cost of living. Corporate consolidation, union-busting, offshoring, and inflation have left millions squeezed while the wealthy few amass unprecedented fortunes. Protests, strikes, campus encampments against foreign policy disasters, and tenant actions are natural responses to these conditions. Instead of addressing them through reforms, the strategy treats ideas challenging endless profit-seeking or U.S. military adventures as dangerous precursors to violence. The recent National Security Memorandum, NSPM-7, links “anti-capitalism,” criticism of traditional power structures, and certain social views, to potential terrorism. This expands the post-9/11 surveillance apparatus to domestic dissent. It literally criminalizes particular types of thought as terrorism!
History shows that these powers rarely stay limited to one sector. Tools tested on one group soon sweep wider. By spotlighting left-wing currents and identity-related ideologies while downplaying other domestic threats, like the very real threat of right-wing violence, the approach seeks to split working people. It offers the promise that if you avoid “extremist” circles—protests, certain online speech, or organizing with the “wrong” allies—you’ll be left alone. Yet the machinery of monitoring networks, mapping associations, and preempting activity builds a broad infrastructure of control. After they have finished with Transgender people, they will move to other sections of the population. Labeling broad swaths of opposition thinking as terror-adjacent makes it easier to isolate militants, chill participation, and justify surveillance on entire communities and movements.
Past programs like COINTELPRO targeted civil rights, anti-war, and labor activists with infiltration, disruption, and worse. However, today’s digital tools (data harvesting, social network analysis, financial tracking) make preemptive action far more powerful and pervasive. The result is a chilling effect on the very organizing working people need to defend their living standards and rights.
This strategy ultimately weakens the ability of ordinary people to push back collectively. Strong unions, tenant unions, anti-war efforts, and community defense against austerity require open debate, broad participation, and solidarity across lines of race, gender, and background. When the state brands certain viewpoints or associations as “pre-criminal,” a nebulous legal category which can be used as a pretext for suppression, it raises the personal cost of involvement and discourages the unity essential for real gains.
Working people have the most to lose from a society where power answers economic anxiety and policy failures with expanded policing of thought and association rather than solutions to inequality and insecurity. The drive to neutralize potential opposition before it strengthens reveals a system that prioritizes preserving concentrated wealth and influence over genuine public safety or democratic participation.
The working class must recognize this for what it is: a defensive move by those at the top who sense swift eroding consent and support, and an escalation of the class war by the ruling class. The answer lies in building independent, class-rooted organizations that cannot be easily divided or preempted—deeper workplace solidarity, community mutual aid, and persistent pressure that connects daily struggles to the larger forces shaping them. Our shared conditions demand collective resistance, not submission to pre-crime watchlists. The fight for better lives cannot be surrendered to fear.