FBI coerces antiwar activist into leaving the internet for months, advancing liberal fascism’s crackdown

In a development that parallels the experience of Alexander Finnegan—the communist who became a target for the FBI’s “counter-terrorism” stalking efforts due to his countering the Ukraine narrative—another individual has been revealed as a victim of such unconstitutional state intimidation. The person behind a Twitter account called “Islam, America, Liberty” was recently asked about why they had vanished from the internet for almost half a year, and this was how the exchange went…

A: Weren’t you gone for a while?

B: Yeah

They came to my house and shut me down

But now I’m back

When someone else later asked what had led up to them getting visited by the feds, the individual explained: “I fought back against the narrative (specifically their narrative on the Taliban and Hamas, my support for those groups got me branded as a potential domestic terrorist).” This was just like the rationale that Finnegan has said the feds used to justify classifying him as a threat: “I was portrayed as being ‘genocidal’ and ‘wishing for the rape and murder of Ukrainian women and children.’ These lies were used to have me placed on the Domestic Terrorist Watch List on 7/22/22.” 

The pattern is apparent: when the feds seek to silence someone, they construct a narrative about that person being a terroristic agent of a U.S. adversary. It’s an escalation of what the indicted Uhuru members have been subjected to; whereas they’ve been accused of facilitating Russian election interference, Finnegan and this individual have been accused of a violent version of that.

In all of these cases, the vast majority of Americans would definitely not side with the feds if they were to learn about what the feds have done to the targets. Support for freedom of speech and assembly is an essentially universal value in this country, with the main source of opposition towards these liberties coming from those within the government. Because of this mismatch between the values of the people and the values of the state, the state has always needed to conceal the true extent of the activities which the three-letter agencies engage in; these agencies were in effect created as tools for our ruling class to get around the constraints of the constitution, allowing the state to wage war on dissent with impunity. 

What’s been changing lately is the extent to which this contradiction has the potential to produce class conflict; the tension between the government and the people, between the U.S. intelligence agencies and the U.S. constitution, is getting severe enough that it could soon destabilize our society. The state’s power depends on a social contract, and when the people find out that the state has broken this contract, the people could unite in revolt.

This is the opportunity that we can find for revolutionary politics amid the intensifying crackdown of our liberal fascist state. If the people find that the way our government is acting isn’t compatible with democracy; nor even with the concept of republicanism; then communists like Finnegan and myself can find a massive point of unity with the broader elements of Americans. We can build a movement against the security state—as well as against war and “degrowth” austerity by extension—that gains momentum throughout the other elements of our society which are compatible with such a coalition.

That strategy of bringing together all who have an interest in defeating this iteration of fascism is, from a practical perspective, our only true hope for keeping democratic forces alive throughout the rest of the crackdown. Each day, there’s more of an urgency for communists to stop contributing to the petty divisions of leftist spaces, and help build a network with the others who the state seeks to destroy. The sole types of self-described anti-imperialists who I’m not interested in uniting with are the ones who reject the majority of the anti-imperialist movement, and by extension the majority of the people, due to a lack of seriousness. The only way to get these types on one’s side is by forsaking alliances with countless other people, which shows that it’s best to alienate yourself from these gatekeepers if they continue to insist you should exclusively engage with them.

The way we can overcome the national security state is by gaining the means to continue with our mass mobilization efforts, even if the repression gets extreme enough that we need to go underground; and that’s only possible on the basis of a united front against our ruling institutions. There are growing sections of our society that have been coming to revolutionary ideas when it comes to many of the most visible parts of the conflict between the people, and the highest levels of capital. The persecution of Julian Assange; the confirmation by WikiLeaks that our government lied about Syria; the Russiagate hoax and the censorship it’s facilitated; the Covid vaccine malpractice by big pharma that even U.S. government officials have recognized; the NATO funding of Ukrainian Nazis; these evils have led to tens of millions of Americans gaining a greater revolutionary consciousness. 

Those among them who’ve come to Marxism can’t isolate ourselves from the others; if we do, the only “allies” we’ll be left with during the crackdown’s more intense next phases will be the left opportunists who want us to act as their lackeys. This is the vulnerable place the ruling elites hope for us to be in during the decisive moment of our class conflict. It’s why they’ve been cultivating a controlled opposition of left opportunism, letting leftist orgs like ANSWER remain safe from repression and thereby be comfortable with sabotaging Uhuru’s struggle. If we break from these elements of the left that want us to remain in the ditch when it comes to movement-building; and build a true coalition which extends beyond left-liberals; then we’ll gain a strategic advantage amid the state’s coming attempt to purge all illiberal forces.

The U.S. empire’s latest failing proxy war in Palestine has accelerated this process of escalating class conflict within the empire’s center. The state now has a greater incentive to do to all anti-imperialists what they did to Finnegan, and to the antiwar individual behind that account. Remember the basic protocols for avoiding federal sabotage: those being never say a word to the feds if they show up to your home without a warrant, and permanently delay talking to them by saying “I’d be glad to talk to you with my lawyer present” if they show up to your place of work. When the feds try to get around these obstacles, and fabricate more crimes supposedly committed by antiwar people, we’re going to need to already have the networks in place to continue our operations no matter what. We must make the preparations that will let us defeat the state, however much the state tries to suppress us.

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