In a recent report at The New Republic, Greg Sargent asked Steve Bannon if he thought Trump would use the Dallas shooting at an ICE facility as a pretext to target people speaking out against the federal agency. Bannon responded with, “Absolutely.” Minutes after reading Sargent’s report, Bannon would be proven right as the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued a press release titled, “DHS is Fighting Back Against Antifa Violence.”
The press release starts not just targeting the mythical group, but “Antifa-aligned left-wing violent extremists,” broadening the scope of their targeting to anyone who isn’t silent about the atrocities being livestreamed online. The language is so broad that everyone, including conservatives who speak out against the genocide in Gaza, can be labeled as “Antifa-aligned” in the future. Even speaking up against anything white nationalist Republican leaders say or do can be labeled as such at any given time.
“Antifa-aligned domestic terrorists have nowhere to hide: DHS is upholding the rule of law,” reads the first sentence in the press release. “The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has arrested dozens of Antifa-aligned left-wing violent extremists who have attacked law enforcement, murdered innocent civilians, and launched a wave of violent riots throughout the United States.”
It took little time for the administration to label the mass shooting at the Dallas ICE facility as an “Antifa-aligned” attack, as noted by various statements from the White House and echoed by DHS Spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin in the latest press release. Despite all evidence pointing to the shooter being a misanthropic nihilist, the White House is moving quickly before the truth becomes more well-known in the news media and online. McLaughlin took it a step further in her statement by attempting to associate migrants with Antifa.
“Antifa and other left-wing extremists have shot, attacked, issued death threats against, and incited riots against law enforcement,” said McLaughlin. “Enough is enough: if you lay a hand on our federal law enforcement officers, you will be arrested and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. But Antifa and their friends haven’t stopped us,” McLaughlin continued. “They’re not even slowing us down. Despite the 1,000% increase in assaults against them, our brave men and women in federal law enforcement are still on the ground, fighting every single day to uphold the rule of law and keep Americans safe from violent extremists and criminal illegal aliens alike,” concluded McLaughlin.
It should be noted that many of the cases of alleged assault proved to be incidental contact in crowded environments, leading to many of those charges being dropped.
The statement continued to try to associate the Dallas attack with “leftist” violence, continuing the propaganda from the White House equating benign language with violence and ignoring the violent language that has become so prominent in right-wing circles. What statements like this signify is how far the administration is willing to go to manipulate narratives and create culture wars to distract from its failures and its Christian white nationalist takeover of the government.
“Wednesday’s horrific targeted attack, where three people were shot at a Dallas, Texas, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility, was carried out by an extremist who engraved ‘Anti-ICE’ on bullet casings,” reads the press release. “This is only the latest attack in a wave of Antifa-aligned political violence: it comes just months after a bomb threat at the same facility. Sanctuary politicians’ demonizing rhetoric and legacy media’s lies about the fathers, mothers, sons, and daughters working in ICE, Customs and Border Protection (CBP), and other federal law enforcement have directly led to these attacks,” the press release continued. “They are why ICE agents are facing a 1,000% increase in assaults.”
The press release highlights a handful of previous arrests related to attacks on ICE facilities this year and equates them with Antifa. However, at the time of their arrests, none were labeled as such and were instead equated with MS-13 and Tren de Aragua gang members. The people who opened fire on an ICE facility were not labeled as Antifa at the time, and neither was the man who claimed to have a bomb while trying to enter an ICE facility, nor was the man who allegedly tried to run over an agent with his car.
DHS even went so far as to list lawmakers exercising their oversight authority at Delaney Hall in New Jersey as “Antifa-aligned domestic extremism.” Despite not being labeled as such at the time, the White House is claiming their arrests were a part of Trump’s fight against Antifa. The press release continues to claim ICE agents were “assaulted” by the lawmakers, a claim not corroborated by video evidence seen across social media.
The press release then goes on to label arrests during the isolated protests in Los Angeles as riots, and the alleged assaults on federal agents, most of which didn’t hold up in court, as “Antifa-related.” They’re taking every minor thing that’s happened since Trump’s Gestapo-like tactics have been implemented and labeling them just as they did to justify disappearing migrants in the early days of their implementation: equating them with gangs and cartels. In doing so, they’re shifting the conversation away from targeting Latinos with violent actions.
“Throughout the summer of 2025, riots broke out in Los Angeles as DHS law enforcement officers conducted operations to find and arrest criminal illegal aliens,” reads the press release. “Multiple rioters have been arrested and prosecuted for attacking law enforcement and destroying property.”
None of the cases cited by DHS has previously been linked to any gang activity or has been shown to have links to any groups. Now, since Trump signed the executive order targeting Antifa, we have watched the White House switch up the false accusations. From labeling protesters as “protecting gang members” to making their dissent appear as an “Antifa-related” strawman, this targeting is no different than labeling people who speak up against the genocide of Palestinians as “Hamas supporters” to drown out concerns about the slaughter of innocents.
Trump’s Executive Order is also quite broad and employs the decades-old strategy of accusing protesters and so-called “leftist” groups of doing precisely what hate groups do. The difference here is that we have more than a century of evidence showing far-right neo-Nazi groups and the Ku Klux Klan employing this strategy, and no evidence of the mythical Antifa doing so.
“Antifa recruits, trains, and radicalizes young Americans to engage in this violence and suppression of political activity, then employs elaborate means and mechanisms to shield the identities of its operatives, conceal its funding sources and operations in an effort to frustrate law enforcement, and recruit additional members,” reads the executive order. “Individuals associated with and acting on behalf of Antifa further coordinate with other organizations and entities for the purpose of spreading, fomenting, and advancing political violence and suppressing lawful political speech. This organized effort, designed to achieve policy objectives by coercion and intimidation, is domestic terrorism.”
While conservatives and the far-right celebrate this likely illegal order (no legal mechanism for Trump to designate any domestic group as a terrorist organization), its broad wording can and likely will be weaponized against them. Any questions about how it will inevitably impact the political right should be directed at the presidential memo issued on Thursday, which highlights the extent of Trump’s attack on free speech and the right to protest, equating them with terrorism.
“This political violence is not a series of isolated incidents and does not emerge organically. Instead, it is a culmination of sophisticated, organized campaigns of targeted intimidation, radicalization, threats, and violence designed to silence opposing speech, limit political activity, change or direct policy outcomes, and prevent the functioning of a democratic society,” reads the presidential memo. “A new law enforcement strategy that investigates all participants in these criminal and terroristic conspiracies – including the organized structures, networks, entities, organizations, funding sources, and predicate actions behind them – is required.”
The White House’s justification unsurprisingly only highlights attacks on Trump, Charlie Kirk, Brett Kavanaugh, and the Dallas ICE facility, as noted in the memo. It does not mention any of the attacks on others who don’t fit the narrative. It also glosses over the attackers’ motivations and portrays each one as a “leftist” attack, while ignoring the prevalence of far-right attackers and the school shooting that occurred the same day as Kirk’s murder by an avowed neo-Nazi.
“Even in the aftermath of the horrifying assassination of Charlie Kirk, some individuals who adhered to the alleged shooter’s ideology embraced and cheered this evil murder while actively encouraging more political violence,” reads the memo. “This was preceded by the 2024 assassination of a senior healthcare executive and the 2022 assassination attempt against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Two separate assassination attempts against my own life in less than 3 months took place during the 2024 Presidential election cycle,” the memo continues. “Riots in Los Angeles and Portland reflect a more than 1,000 percent increase in attacks on U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers since January 21, 2025, compared to the same period last year. Just yesterday, a shooting targeting an ICE facility in Dallas resulted in multiple casualties. Separate anti-police and “criminal justice” riots have left many people dead and injured and inflicted over $2 billion in property damage nationwide.”
In addition to broad categorizations and highlighting things that never happened, such as “riots that left many people dead,” the White House is authorizing federal agents to investigate individuals engaged in “political violence.” If you’ve been paying attention, the administration has been labeling benign speech that challenges its actions as hateful rhetoric. According to DHS, anything criticizing federal agents, the Trump administration, or his supporters is “hateful rhetoric.” DHS highlighted no hate speech in its press release last week.
“All Federal law enforcement agencies with investigative authority shall question and interrogate, within all lawful authorities, individuals engaged in political violence or lawlessness regarding the entity or individual organizing such actions and any related financial sponsorship of those actions prior to adjudication or initiation of a plea agreement,” reads the memo.
The targeting of speech, whether you agree with that person’s views or not, should concern everyone in the United States. What the Trump administration is attempting to do is an escalation in the attack on freedom of expression, not seen in decades, if not longer. While both political sides can be blamed for these attacks, this is the slippery slope we were warned about, and it behooves everyone to speak up and fight back.
They can’t silence us all.
Discover more from The Antagonist Magazine
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.