Special Investigations

Press Freedom Defense Fund

I Wrote a Movie Review. Cops Took It From A Protester’s Home to Make the Case That He’s a Terrorist.

My little horror movie review was introduced to prove a conception of antifa that — like many of the monsters we scream at in horror flicks — isn’t quite real.

Sophie Lewis is an author and independent scholar based in Philadelphia.

It was a Saturday in February, and I was checking my email inbox on my phone for no particular reason, during a conference. A Mother Jones reporter had written a note, so I opened it.

It’s not so unusual for me to receive press inquiries ­— I am a feminist writer who touches on hot-button issues — but this particular email I never could have predicted. It was about an infamous federal case against people arrested in connection to a protest against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Last July 4, a group of people had gathered for a demonstration against ICE’s Prairieland Detention Facility in Alvarado, Texas. It was a noise demo during which a police officer was shot. Some 18 people were arrested and charged for the protest.

Prosecutors had introduced my analysis of feminism’s relationship to horror cinema as “evidence of ideologically driven intent.”

Prosecutors had introduced my analysis of feminism’s relationship to horror cinema as “evidence of ideologically driven intent.”

The government’s indictment against the Prairieland protesters stood as a chilling development in President Donald Trump’s war on dissent: It was the first time that terrorism-related charges had been brought against people for allegedly being part of an “antifa cell.”

Did I have any thoughts, the Mother Jones reporter wanted to know, on the prosecution using an essay by me in a terrorism trial?

The essay in question: a film review I wrote in 2019 about the horror movies “Hereditary” and “Midsommar.”

I blinked twice, rubbed my eyes, and then began digging around on the internet to understand.

To my astonishment, prosecutors had introduced my seven-year-old analysis of feminism’s relationship to horror cinema as “evidence of ideologically driven intent” the previous day.

Although I published the piece in “Commune” magazine, the review had been printed in zine format — and that was what authorities seized from the Dallas home of one of the defendants, Daniel Sanchez Estrada, last summer.

“Guilt by Literature”

The appearance of my review in the trial is a brazen attempt at conjuring “guilt by literature” — just one of the tactics prosecutors have used to criminalize speech and use First Amendment-protected speech as a legal weapon against the Trump administration’s political enemies.

Nobody, by the way, is suggesting that Estrada shot or conspired to shoot the officer. He stands accused of two crimes:........

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