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'Decades of National Security Policy Have Gotten Us to Where We Are': Janine Jackson ([link removed])


Janine Jackson interviewed Defending Rights and Dissent's Chip Gibbons about Trump's plan to crush the left for the October 17, 2025, episode ([link removed]) of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

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FAIR: Under Trump, Criticism Is Now Criminal

FAIR.org (10/3/25 ([link removed]) )

Janine Jackson: “They think Antifa is an organization with a leader who has a girlfriend. They're so dumb…." Yes, threats from the Trump White House to, in Stephen Miller's words ([link removed]) , "identify, disrupt, eliminate and destroy" what they call “a network of domestic terrorists” might sound vague unto nonsensical for people who understand that “Antifa" means "anti-fascist," and think that being anti-fascist should not be controversial. Ah, but it is. And the weird vagueness of the descriptor? Not so much a bug as a feature.

When it comes to defending our baseline right to free expression and dissent—and that is where we're at ([link removed]) —we need to know what we're fighting if we're going to fight it, and that means looking, not just at the users, but at their tools.

Chip Gibbons is policy director of Defending Rights and Dissent ([link removed]) , where he edits the Gaza First Amendment Alert ([link removed]) . He's also the author of the forthcoming book The Imperial Bureau: ([link removed]) The FBI, Political Surveillance and the Rise of the US National Security State. He joins us now by phone. Welcome back to CounterSpin, Chip Gibbons.

Chip Gibbons: Thank you so much. It's always a pleasure to be on CounterSpin. It's a vital news resource.
Drop Site: Trump’s Blueprint to Crush the Left Draws from Decades of Counterterrorism Policy

Drop Site (10/23/25 ([link removed]) )

JJ: Well, thank you. And I want to start by saying: I think of this as dipping a cup in the river of the conversation that we need to have. But in your recent piece ([link removed]) for Drop Site News, you indicate that, yes, something new is happening in this government's crackdown on dissent to their authoritarianism, but it's not resting on air. What do we need to understand as some of the precedents, historical or legal/political precedents that the Trump administration is relying on, in what feels like a wildly dystopian abuse of law? What steps got us here?

CG: Yeah. So let's start with what Trump has done. Trump has issued an executive order ([link removed]) portraying Antifa to be a domestic terrorist organization. As you mentioned in your intro, Antifa is not an organization; it is an idea or ideology. It stands for "anti-fascist," and there is no statutory domestic terrorism organization designation. Of course, Trump can call anything anything he wants, but it doesn't have the same effect as designating someone a foreign terrorist organization ([link removed]) , which opens up a whole range of criminal penalties for providing material support, providing banking to them.

He also issued a memo called National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 ([link removed]) , which is basically building on the Antifa executive order to lay out Trump's blueprint for crushing what he claims is an organized movement of left-wing political violence.

And the way they talk about Antifa is a lot the way in which counter-subversives used to talk about the Communist Party. If there was a protest against police brutality in Milwaukee, or an anti-war protest in Tampa, they are both part of the same sinister Communist plot that was centrally orchestrated, and not at all organic. That was the conspiratorial mindset, and that sort of mindset continued on, with the nonexistent Antifa replacing the phantom Communist Party.

The thing about the memorandum that's really important to note is, for the most part, there are no new laws here. There are no new agencies. There are a couple of bureaucratic restructurings, giving Stephen Miller a greater role in national security policy, which should horrify everyone ([link removed]) . But for the most part, Trump is building off of previously existing frameworks, previously existing bureaucracies and previously existing laws.
CounterSpin: ‘The Bureau Is Once Again Profiling Black Activists Because of Their Beliefs and Their Race’

CounterSpin (10/20/17 ([link removed]) )

And we have to remember that decades, decades of national security policy have gotten us to where we are. I've had a couple people say to me, “Wow, this is unprecedented, using the FBI to go after domestic political groups!”

JJ: Hmm…

CG: Yeah, I know! And this was a left-wing journalist, too. It's like, no, it's not unprecedented ([link removed]) . A lot of what he's doing is building on what the FBI has already been doing.

Let me give you an example: In the executive order, he said, “Antifa is a militaristic anarchist enterprise.” I think they meant "militant," but they said “militaristic” anarchist enterprise. Well, the FBI has a type of investigation it carries out called an enterprise investigation, and of its enterprise investigations into domestic terrorism, it has a subcategory of investigation called “Domestic Terrorism Terrorist Enterprise Investigation: Anarchist Extremist."

What's an anarchist extremist? It's somebody who's against capitalism or corporate globalization. Janine, the FBI has not updated their anarchist definition ([link removed] help educate the public,globalism%2C and anti%2Durbanization.) since the World Trade Organization protests ([link removed]) . You can tell, by that one.

But then you look at what Trump does: In the memo, he lists all of these ideologies. What's on there? Anti-capitalism, anti-Americanism, anti-Christianity, “extremism on gender.” (I don't know what that means.)
Rethinking Schools: COINTELPRO: Teaching the FBI’s War on the Black Freedom Movement

Rethinking Schools (Spring/16 ([link removed]) )

So they’re taking certain ideologies, very broad ones, whether it's opposition to corporate globalization, then saying these ideologies are the ones that are engaged in violence, and we're going to prevent and disrupt the violence before it occurs. A number of astute people have pointed out ([link removed]) that the memo, by using the phrase “disruption,” very clearly monitors the old Hoover description of COINTELPRO ([link removed]) , the counterintelligence program. And that's absolutely correct.

But the FBI has repeatedly used that framing well after the counterintelligence program was officially disbanded. Ashcroft and Mueller, after 9/11, talked about ([link removed]) preventing and disrupting terrorism. In 2009, the FBI released their terrorism strategy ([link removed] the Threat,radicalization in the United States.) ; it was a disruption strategy.

And since the "war on terror," the FBI has adopted ([link removed] Objective 1.1 PREVENTION %2D %2D Prevent,and prosecution of those involved.) something called a “preventative approach to terrorism.” And they said, you know, we're no longer going to be a law enforcement agency that prosecutes people for terrorism after the fact. We're a national security agency. We use intelligence to prevent and disrupt terrorism before it happens.

And in order to achieve this transformation, they repeatedly lessened the rules ([link removed]) on the FBI, to now the FBI can open a type of investigation called an “assessment” on someone who it has no evidence to believe threatens national security—which is a very broad term, but they don't even need evidence of that—or will [commit] a federal crime.

So you have a model that says, “We're going to prevent terrorism before it happens.” The FBI has to go out and find the terrorist. They don't need evidence of wrongdoing of the person they're going to investigate. We're going to define terrorism by political ideology, and the threat today is anarchists, which are people who are anti-capitalist, anti-globes..

JJ: [laughs]

CG: …Anti-American, extremists on gender. What is the FBI agent reading these orders going to do? They're going to go out and look for everyone in their area of responsibility that they think has anti-capitalist, “extremist on gender” views…I have no idea how the FBI…

And these are Joint Terrorism Task Force, too. These are the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force. So a lot of them are staffed by local police, operating as FBI terrorism officers under FBI guidelines. So now you have someone who's like the Boise police officer, he's been deputized by the FBI to run the terrorism task force, and now he's told he has to find all the terrorists in Boise who have extreme views on gender. It's a nightmare situation.
Chip Gibbons

Chip Gibbons on NSPM-7: "It's not just that it's written in such a way that it opens the door to political policing. That was the original intent."

JJ: It sounds a lot like thought crime ([link removed]) .

CG: It is thought crime. It is. So the logic of a lot of the preventative approach was this claim from groups like the Heritage Foundation and these right-wing congressional committees that political movements produced terrorism, so of course you had to preemptively surveil the political movements, even if you didn't have specific threats of crimes, or people being agents of a foreign power, or anything like that.

Obviously, that was not applied equally. They want to go after particular left-wing movements they didn't like. And so when we talk about the preventative approach being adopted after 9/11, and the preventative approach being the driving force of Trump's National Security Presidential Memo Number Seven, it's not just that it's written in such a way that it opens the door to political policing. That was the original intent.

And Ken Klippenstein ([link removed]) , the independent reporter, has been monitoring which mainstream outlets are commenting and which ones aren't, and very few are. It's very much an under-the-radar story.

Part of the reason was this memo came out, and then three hours later they indicted James Comey. So Comey was the story of the day.

But also, they don't like to cover the FBI as a political police force. I mean, part of the reason why J. Edgar Hoover was so successful was he had the media behind him.

And it's still the same way. When you see stories in the media about spying on protesters or left-wing groups, it's always like an isolated incident of, “Wow, can you believe this happened?” It's like, yes, I can believe this happened, because I've read all of the other stories in your paper about this happening, which you somehow never connect the dots between, and present as a coherent overall narrative.

JJ: We're going to put a pin in it just for today. We've been speaking with Chip Gibbons from Defending Rights and Dissent. They're online at RightsAndDissent.org ([link removed]) . The piece we were talking about is on DropsiteNews.com ([link removed]) . Both of those sites, not for nothing, could use your support right now. Thank you, Chip Gibbons, for joining us this week on CounterSpin.

CG: Thank you for having me back.


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