In an act deemed “going apeshit against enemies of the Reich,” two judges just levied brutal prison sentences of 30 to 100 years, a combined penance of 450 years, on eight anti-ICE members of a scary if imaginary “North Texas Antifa cell” convicted of terrorist-abetting “crimes” like protesting, lighting fireworks and moving a box of zines. The case, widely seen as a test of regime efforts to criminalize dissent or any unwelcome speech, moved one defendant to muse, “What kind of people are not against fascism?”

The grievous injustice against the group, dubbed The Prairieland Defendants for the ICE concentration camp they were protesting, comes amidst almost daily court victories elsewhere against the regime. Last week, three key rulings in federal district courts saw judges strike down administration election meddling, abuses against immigrants and, in a blistering 29-page decision, “blatantly unlawful and unethical use” of a grand-jury subpoena targeting Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. To date, there have been at least 272 wins against Trump, several from judges he appointed; after one especially irksome loss, Stephen Goebbels memorably whined, “Judge Sparkle (sic) decrees that America belongs to any random alien on Planet Earth.”

Faced with mounting losses in other endeavors - wars, pools, polls - more regime lackeys are also getting testy. Newly back from having a baby but still hyper-toxic, Press Barbie went on Hannity to shriek about “deranged leftists desecrating our federal monuments” with algae: “Only the Democrats could hate beautifying our Capitol.” Of six people arrested for “vandalism” - more than for raping minors - many are “longtime donors to the Democrat Party,” who “completely destroyed our country,” also to “Barack Hussein Obama” and, gasp, ACTBlue. With fear-mongering truly all they’ve got, Hannity joined in on Dem “radicals...You’ve got Mr. Nazi Tattoo Platner, and six-gender, God-is-non-binary Talarico, and Pocahontas, and Mamdani...”

Amidst a “rolling coup“ in an increasingly fascist America, where threats from the left have always loomed larger than on the right and today’s despots cling frantically to a power they somehow know is illegitimate, it’s little wonder righteous citizens protesting vulnerable brown people being locked up in concentration camps have become ”the new Red Scare.“ It’s helpful to remember that everything earlier autocrats did - Hitler, Stalin, Pinochet - was legal; they just changed the rules to do it. ”This is Soviet shit,“ wrote one observer, summoning the terror of Stalin’s staged show trials in the 1930s to eliminate most of Lenin’s staff and other ”saboteurs“ from Bukharin to, via pickaxe, Trotsky exiled in Mexico, until only ”Stalin the Executioner“ remained.

The “legal,” in Trump’s case, was last year’s national security directive “NSPM-7: Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence,” which explicitly declared the fictional Antifa - in fact any American who opposes fascism, supports the rule of law and uses their First Amendment rights to defend it - a “MAJOR TERRORIST ORGANIZATION” and “SICK, DANGEROUS, RADICAL LEFT DISASTER,” whether “it exists or not.” Prairieland, the first case brought under NSPM-7, tests the state’s ability to quell dissent by the regime’s perceived “enemies,” and could determine an upcoming playbook for using the Antifa label - and “creative and highly theoretical claims by the state” - as “a catchall designation to criminalize activists writ large.”

The surreal sentences inflicted this week on eight Prairieland activists came three months after their convictions on terrorism and other charges stemming from a July 4 protest last year at the for-profit Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas. The action began as a noise demonstration, a typically safe, festive event where fireworks are set off "to remind people inside they are not forgotten." That day, it devolved into vandalism - of a few cars, a guard shack, a security camera - by several protesters. Some had brought guns - a red flag to many activists, but common in open-carry Texas where queer or trans people can face violent, armed counter-protesters. When one cop drew his weapon, a protester in nearby woods shot him in the shoulder.

At trial, eight defendants - Autumn Hill, Zachary Evetts, Benjamin Hanil Song, Savanna Batten, Meagan Morris, Maricela Rueda, Elizabeth Soto, and Daniel Rolando Sanchez-Estrada - were convicted of rioting and explosive charges, and "providing material support to terrorists." They are much like protesters anywhere: teachers, engineers, tattoo artists, animal-lovers, anti-ICE advocates, parents, straight, queer, trans, vegan. Some had organized the action together, some produced anarchist zines and belonged to a book club named for anarchist Emma Goldman, who 99 years ago this month was arrested on conspiracy charges for organizing against the First World War draft; some were members of a Socialist gun club; some weren't even at the protest.

From the outset, the regime played hardball. The DOJ called them “members of a North Texas Antifa cell“; the indictment said Antifa "is a militant enterprise made up of networks of individuals and small groups primarily ascribed to a revolutionary anarchist or autonomous Marxist ideology.” They were held on multimillion-dollar bonds in squalid jail cells, denied medical care, frequently strip-searched; two trans women were held - unsafely, illegally - in men's facilities. State agents ransacked homes, detained children, used flash-bang grenades to intimidate, went after anyone in their political orbit, often unearthing new charges. It was, one defendant said, "a nightmare made real...seeing the prosecution jump from lie to lie," abuse to abuse.

The case became a sinister "laboratory" where constitutionally protected free speech and civil disobedience became "rioting" and solidarity became "conspiracy." Fireworks were “explosives," a home where friends gather a "staging........

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