When Terrorism Charges “Reek of Political Theater”

Memphis-based Rachel Hurley has worked in the music industry for 30 years, most notably as a music publicist for folk, Americana, and country independent musicians. She’s also worked extensively in film and television, and is the creator of the Make Memphis! website, which invites community and city leaders to “share ideas for making the city a better place to live for everyone.”

On her website, Rachel and the City, Rachel notes that “this is not my first rodeo when it comes to fighting the power. I’ve built a lot of social capital, and I’ve chosen to spend it on speaking out about the fall of our government. And I’m about to go even harder.”

Case in point: the following piece by Rachel which she posted earlier today on social media.

____________________

Welp. They did it.

Trump’s Justice Department just filed its first terrorism charges against alleged “Antifa” members after a July 4th attack on an ICE detention center in Texas. Attorney General Pam Bondi is already tweeting about prosecuting the “left-wing terrorist organization” known as Antifa. Which is a problem, because as you know, Antifa isn’t an organization.

The attack itself happened and it was violent. A group in black tactical gear hit the Prairieland Detention Center near Alvarado late that night - graffiti, fireworks, a setup that lured guards outside. When police arrived, someone opened fire from the woods, hitting an officer in the neck. Another sprayed 20 or 30 rounds before their rifle jammed. The cop lived. Ten people were arrested. Two - Cameron Arnold and Zachary Evetts - are now charged with terrorism.

Here’s where things start to reek of political theater. In September, Trump signed an executive order labeling Antifa a domestic terrorist organization. Except that doesn’t exist under U.S. law. “Domestic terrorist organization” is not a legal category. You can only designate foreign groups – think ISIS or Al-Qaeda. Even Trump’s own FBI director once said Antifa is “a movement or an ideology.” Which means there’s no Antifa HQ, no bank accounts, no membership list, no CEO of anti-fascism.

So when the Department of Justice charges people with terrorism for being “Antifa,” what they’re really doing is stretching that label to criminalize ideology. You can’t provide “material support” to an idea, no matter how extreme.

And the timing isn’t random. Trump signed that executive order days after conservative activist Charlie Kirk was assassinated – despite no evidence connecting his shooter to Antifa. But the narrative stuck, and here we are, with the DOJ turning that fiction into precedent.

The irony? Far-right extremists remain the country’s biggest domestic terrorism threat. Every federal report for the last decade has said the same thing. The Center for Strategic and International Studies found that 57% of domestic terror attacks since 1994 came from the right - mostly white supremacists and anti-government extremists. Left-wing extremists (ideologically “left”) account for about 25% of attacks and plots, while religious / jihadist (international Islamist) motives make up roughly 15%, and ethnonationalist motives (separatist, race/ethnic ideologies) is about 3%.

Yet Bondi and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton are talking about “infiltrating leftist terror cells.”

No one’s defending what happened in Alvarado. Shooting at cops is not protest – it’s attempted murder. Charge them for that. But terrorism? That’s a label reserved for coordinated acts meant to intimidate a population or coerce government policy – and you can’t pin that on an ideology with no structure.

This is less about safety and more about setting precedent. Once you normalize treating ideas as terrorism, it’s open season on dissent. Today it’s “Antifa.” Tomorrow it’s environmentalists. Or labor organizers. Or journalists.

The attack in Texas was real. The terrorism charges are performative. The administration isn’t fighting extremism – it’s just padding its authoritarian playbook.

– Rachel Hurley
via social media
October 16, 2025

Related Off-site Links:
U.S. Prosecutors Bring First Antifa Terrorism Charges in Texas Police Shooting Case – Jack Queen (Reuters, October 16, 2025).
House Democrats Blast Trump’s Antifa Designation and Terrorism Memo Targeting Critics – Jessica Corbett (Common Dreams, October 16, 2025).


See also the following chronologically-ordered Wild Reed posts:
• Marisa Kabas: “We’re Witnessing a Coup By an Unelected Billionaire Propped Up By a Felonious President”
• Timothy Snyder on Resisting the Oligarchs’ “Logic of Destruction”
• “This Is Essentially Viktor Orbán’s Playbook”
• “An Extremely Clever Ruse” by and for the Rich: Owen Jones on Elon Musk’s Coup
• “To Be a Rib in This Body of Our Country”
• Quote of the Day – February 21, 2025
• Ralph Nader: “We’re Heading Into the Most Serious Crisis in American History. There’s No Comparison”
• Why the Democratic Party Is Not Going to Save Us From Fascism
• “This Is How Democracy Unravels”
• Jason Stanley on How Fascism Works
• James Greenberg on Trumpism: “The Tactics Are Unmistakable”
• Tony Pentimalli on Trump’s “Death Warrant for Democracy”
• “This Is What Fascism Looks Like”
• Peter Bloom: Quote of the Day – June 10, 2025
• “Protesting Is What Patriotism Looks Like in Public”: The “No Kings” Protests of June 14, 2025
• “No Kings”? Absolutely. But Also “No Oligarchy”
• Marianne Williamson: Quote of the Day – June 20, 2025
• Rep. Ro Khanna: Quote of the Day – June 24, 2025
• “This Is Fascism”
• The Declaration of Resistance
• The Choice Before Us
• Marianne Williamson: Quote of the Day – July 26, 2025
• How Democrats Can Start Winning Again
• Brent Molnar on the MAGA Cult and Its Intentions
• James Greenberg: “The Choices We Make Matter”
• Brent Molnar on the “Cold War in Our Own House”
• Khalil Gibran Muhammad on Donald Trump’s Militarization of Law Enforcement
• Jason Duchin: “It’s Here, and We Are Sleepwalking Through It”
• Marianne Williamson: “We’re Moving Into Totalitarianism”
• Garrett Graff: “America Tips Into Fascism”
• Bowing to an Idol
• Marianne Williamson on the Need for “Radical Love” in Responding to Trump’s Dismantling of Democracy
• Brent Molnar on the the Silencing of Jimmy Kimmel: “This Is What Fascism Looks Like in Practice”
• James Greenberg on the Identity Politics of MAGA
• Staying Strong in Trump’s Fascist America
• Memes of the Times – September 2025
• Jason Duchin: Quote of the Day – September 24, 2025
• Derek Johnson on the “Courage to Call Fascism by Its Name”
• Will Potter on Trump’s War on Dissent: “This Is What Fascists Do”
• Marianne Williamson: We Need an “Expanded Version of What it Means to Be Political”
• An Incident That Feels “Ripped from a Dystopian Novel”
• James Greenberg: “I Am in Mourning for America”
• Butch Ware: Quote of the Day – October 6, 2025
• “If a Praying Minister Isn’t Safe, None of Us Are”
• James Greenberg on Trump’s “Larger Design” – the Construction of a Military Dictatorship
• Historian John Lestrange on the Meaning and Manifestations of Fascism, Past and Present

See also:
• Phil Wilson Remembers “American Fascism’s First Casualty” and Warns That Donald Trump’s “MAGA Death Cult Is Coming for Us All”
• Marianne Williamson on America’s “Cults of Madness”
• “The Republican Party Has Now Made It Official: They Are a Cult”
• Chauncey Devega on the Ongoing Danger of the Trump Cult
• Jeff Sharlet on the Fascist Ideology of Donald Trump and Marjorie Taylor Greene
• The Republican Party in a Nutshell
• Robert Reich: Quote of the Day – April 11, 2023
• Republicans Don’t Care About American Democracy