WASHINGTON—Shades of Joe McCarthy. Shades of J. Edgar Hoover. The Trump administration is singling out left-leaning political groups nationwide for organized persecution and repression, and more than 20 congressional Democrats now demand the demonization immediately halt and be reversed.
But first, they want to show the evidence to the country. So, Reps. Jim McGovern and Ayanna Pressley, both D-Mass., and Delia Ramirez, D-Ill., are demanding all e-mails, letters, memos, and notes about who the targeted groups are and why they’re being singled out. That may well include unions.
The concerted campaign is jointly carried out by President Donald Trump’s Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Trump’s Homeland Security Department, and the White House, led by Steven Miller, Trump’s Deputy Chief of Staff and overseer of ICE’s U.S. invasions and roundups.
The lawmakers point out that authorities on radical threats to democracy in the U.S. consistently testify that the biggest threats come from the radical right and white supremacist groups. That’s consistent with much of U.S. history that has been swept under the rug, but Miller, Bessent, Rubio and Trump ignore the experts.
Directed from the White House
At a conference the White House hosted on July 16, Bessent and Rubio called the left a threat to democracy, without offering proof. Miller went even further.
“Miller went so far as to describe leftists as ‘the enemies of civilization’ and a ‘cancer’ that can ‘destroy a society’ if not dismantled,” in remarks at the White House conference, the Democratic lawmakers said. His language was similar to that used by Adolf Hitler and the Nazis in the 1930s.
At the same event, “Bessent named leftists as a terrorist threat on par with ISIS and al-Qaeda, declaring: ‘The unified front between international Marxism and the radical Islamic movement need not share the same ultimate vision to share the same immediate enemy of free and self-governing societies.’”
Rubio’s State Department has implemented a “visa restriction policy [which] bars foreign nationals from entry” into the U.S. if he decides—without revealing evidence or proof—that the targeted people “finance, recruit, incite, or otherwise enable terrorist, violent, and criminal Far-Left Terrorist networks” in the country.
What makes the situation even worse is that people barred from entering the U.S. are often dissidents in their home countries, the lawmakers point out. And, in turn, their authoritarian home governments may copycat the U.S. repression, or worse.
“What specific organizations has the department already designated or plans to designate as ‘Far-Left Terrorist’ or ‘aligned’ groups under this policy, and what evidentiary standard and process was used to reach each designation?” the Democrats’ letter asked.
“Given documented data on the prevalence of far-right and white supremacist violence in the United States, why does this policy, and the broader NSPM-7 (National Security Presidential Memorandum) framework, contain no parallel visa restriction mechanism targeting foreign nationals who support far-right or white supremacist violent networks?” they ask next.
“Please explain the analytical or evidentiary basis, if any, for treating far-left networks as a unique or disproportionate threat.”
The allegations of foreign financing and links are an echo of Red Scare rhetoric. It started in the 1920s after the Russian Revolution, exploded again in the 1950s under McCarthyism, and heated up again at various times, such as the late 1980s charges of “Moscow Gold.” The endless accusation then was that domestic radicals, notably Communists, were really financed by, and clandestine agents of, a foreign power, namely the USSR. This time, Rubio has asserted that it is Cuba which is supposedly pulling the strings of the U.S. left.
While more overtly ideological, the Trump administration’s campaign also shows similarities to an earlier effort by the Chamber of Commerce to cripple corporate “enemies,” especially unions, but also including students, law firms and academics. The project arose in an infamous 1971 memo from corporate lawyer Lewis Powell; the chamber and its corporate clients eagerly adopted it.
Powell, who was later named a U.S. Supreme Court justice by President Richard Nixon, recommended not just destruction of so-called “foes of capitalism” but also the creation of an immense propaganda apparatus to push the corporate line, coupled with enormous increases in political spending. Companies did both.
There has been no reply to the Democratic lawmakers’ demands, despite their Aug. 18 deadline.
Democracy’s supporters in labor speak up
The sheer breadth of the Trump administration’s effort to silence and sideline dissent doesn’t surprise Trina Tocco, the network coordinator and de facto head of a relatively new organization, Labor For Democracy. Her group includes more than a dozen unions, even more union locals, and many rank-and-file unionists.
Labor For Democracy is sounding the alarm over the constitutional violations inherent in the widespread surveillance and infiltration of all Minnesota demonstrators by Trump’s ICE troops in Operation Metro Surge. The group believes many unions and leaders aren’t taking the constitutional crisis seriously enough, if they’re discussing it at all, Tocco said in an interview with Press Associates and People’s World.
ICE and Border Patrol agents were violent and vicious on the streets of the Twin Cities, and killed Alex Pretti and Renee Good, Tocco pointed out. They also spied on and infiltrated everyone else, and seized financial records of Communications Workers and Service Employees locals in Minneapolis-St. Paul.
Detroit native Tocco, a former organizer with Change To Win and director of Michigan Education Justice Coalition, said that in constitutional violations, what happened in Minnesota is looming nationwide.
“The ground is being laid” for a plan to silence dissent and endanger if not eliminate union rights and protections everywhere, she said. That goes for other progressives, too. “They realize we are susceptible to an effort to intimidate us and shut us all down.”
Some unions were initially reluctant to fight back against Trump when he re-entered the Oval Office, Tocco said, politely not naming names. “But we all know that we don’t level the playing field by backing down. And the reason they’re going after us is because we have the resources…to disrupt the status quo.
“There is a critical need” to educate workers “not only about what and how our democracy and elections are under attack, but connecting that to our rights being taken away at the workplace. But we don’t hear that being talked about in our unions, and that fundamentally needs to change.”
“Fascist statecraft”
Such silence is what Trump, Bessent, Rubio, and Miller want to produce—not just in unions, but among everyone on the progressive side whom they perceive as enemies and threats, the Democratic lawmakers said.
And while Reps. McGovern, Pressley, Ramirez, and their colleagues didn’t say so, that goal is a constant, if often forgotten, strain of U.S. history: The right, not the left, is responsible for the overwhelming share of political violence the U.S. has suffered through the centuries.
Earlier right-wing repression and violence—the very repression the Trump administration is ignoring—came from the Ku Klux Klan, the creators of Jim Crow, the anti-worker Pinkertons, the Southern slaveholders who started the Civil War, racist militias, and others across generations.
“Rather than relying on law enforcement data—which consistently identifies right-wing violent extremists and white supremacist organizations as the predominant domestic terrorism threat—this administration has instead taken actions that manufacture an ideological enemy,” the lawmakers said when they demanded all the data.
“This rhetoric and policy embody the core characteristics of fascist statecraft—using the security apparatus of the state to repress and criminalize political opponents and dissenters rather than specific violent acts,” the Democrats warned.
So far, however, the administration seems determined to carry on with its campaign, ignoring the demands of these congressional Democrats.
We hope you appreciated this article. At People’s World, we believe news and information should be free and accessible to all, but we need your help. Our journalism is free of corporate influence and paywalls because we are totally reader-supported. Only you, our readers and supporters, make this possible. If you enjoy reading People’s World and the stories we bring you, please support our work by donating or becoming a monthly sustainer today. Thank you!
CONTRIBUTOR
