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Trickle-Down Suppression: Local Cops Echo Trump’s “Terrorist Org” Attacks on Antifa

Local authorities accused the same legal assistance group targeted by Joseph McCarthy a half century ago of being part of a vast antifa conspiracy.

A month after Donald Trump issued an executive order purporting to designate antifa as a domestic terrorist group, an intelligence unit inside the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office in Florida sent out a confidential bulletin.

Trump’s announcement was widely criticized as a legally baseless attempt to criminalize his enemies on the left, but the Southeast Florida Fusion Center took it very seriously.

Citing sources that included right-wing social media accounts, the bulletin described antifa as a “decentralized autonomous network of cells” that “stand against capitalism and want to overthrow governments they feel are oppressive through violence and silence their opposition by any means necessary.”

“Antifa has been very active, their most prevalent presence during the George Floyd riots and recently during the anti-ICE protests,” it said, citing the 2020 national uprising against police brutality and the protests against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement that followed Trump’s rise to power.

The Miami-Dade bulletin went on to describe the National Lawyers Guild — a left-leaning collective once villainized by Joseph McCarthy — as the “legal representative” of antifa. It also warned about the danger of zines as tools to “recruit new sympathizers” and of inflatable animal costumes as a “form of propaganda implemented by Antifa to soften their image.”

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It was just one example of how, as the administration accelerates its crackdown on left-wing organizers, Trump’s push to paint antifa as a terror group has seeped into local law enforcement.

Previously unreported documents obtained by The Intercept show how local fusion centers are borrowing the tone and some of the language of Trump’s invectives against the left. They draw on his September 22 executive order designating antifa as terrorists and on prosecutions launched after a similar but more wide-reaching directive issued three days later, known as National Security Presidential Memorandum 7, or NSPM-7.

“The tone set by leadership is important,” Brendan McQuade, a University of Southern Maine professor who studies fusion centers and domestic surveillance, said of the documents obtained by The Intercept. “In the Trump administration the incentive structure is clear: Trump wants to mobilize the security apparatus against his perceived enemies, and in some sense the FBI and the Florida fusion center are both responding to that incentive structure.”

A White House spokesperson said the administration’s approach was part of a “new law enforcement strategy.”

“The President’s Memorandum is focused on investigating, disrupting, dismantling, and prosecuting individuals and entities engaged in organized political violence and domestic terrorism,” said White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson. “The Trump Administration will get to the bottom of this vast network inciting violence in American communities.”

The Florida report was among a trove of scores of such documents obtained by The Intercept that were distributed through a national network of fusion centers.

Fusion centers were created after the September 11, 2001, attacks to facilitate information sharing about terror threats between federal and local law enforcement. Independent reviews, however, have found few tangible results after more than two decades in operation and countless dollars of federal funding for the centers. Critics say they have often been used to cast dissent as suspicious.

Many of the fusion center memos and bulletins focus on mundane topics of interest to local cops, such as the latest trends in ATM card “skimming.”

Others focus on foreign terror threats, such as the latest edition of “Inspire,” Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula’s magazine.

Some of them, however, echo the Trump administration’s obsession with the left.

The Florida report, which is marked “for official use only,” stretches 28 pages. It starts off by defining antifa as terrorism and stating that the “goal of Antifa is the violent overthrow of the United States government.” (The Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office, which houses the Southeast Florida Fusion Center, did not respond to a request for comment.)

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Then it reproduces in full Trump’s executive order claiming to designate........

© The Intercept