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Homeland Security expert details step-by-step plan to label Antifa a terrorist group
On September 15, Vice President JD Vance guest-hosted a special memorial episode of “The Charlie Kirk Show” from the White House following the assassination of the Turning Point USA founder last week.Among other officials, Vance interviewed White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, who had some powerful remarks about the Trump administration’s plans to target and dismantle what he described as the "vast domestic terror movement" of left-wing networks that led to Charlie Kirk’s targeted murder.“We are going to channel all of the anger that we have over the organized campaign that led to this assassination to uproot and dismantle these terrorist networks,” he said.He then specified that the administration would go after “the organized doxxing campaigns, the organized riots, the organized street violence, the organized campaigns of dehumanization, vilification, posting people's addresses,” as well as the leftist “messaging that's designed to trigger [and] incite violence and the actual organized cells that carry out and facilitate the violence.”“It is a vast domestic terror movement, and with God as my witness, we are going to use every resource we have ... to identify, disrupt, dismantle, and destroy these networks and make America safe again for the American people. It will happen, and we will do it in Charlie's name,” Miller vowed.To discuss the importance of dismantling the domestic terror groups fomenting violence, especially Antifa, Blaze Media editor in chief Matthew Peterson invited Kyle Shideler, director and senior analyst at the Center for Security Policy, to “Blaze News: The Mandate.” Shideler, who warned about increasing political violence back when BLM was in its prime, says Miller’s comments indicate the administration is “on the right track.”“The challenge, I think, that they're going to have is getting the federal bureaucracy in alignment with what needs to be done. And first and foremost, they're going to need to get the federal bureaucracy to accept that there is such a thing as far-left extremism,” he tells Peterson.Currently, there’s just one catch-all category for “anti-government and anti-authority violent extremists,” Shideler explains. That single category encompasses everything from a far-right “lunatic survivalist somewhere in the woods who thinks the government is out to get him” to the people in “left-wing anarchist cells — your Antifa types.”The problem with this broad category of extremism is that it allows the bureaucracy significant discretion in deciding which threats to prioritize, leading to inconsistent and biased enforcement.The other issue is that left-wing extremism is often fragmented into silos, like pro-abortion extremism and environmental extremism, when in reality, these two groups are largely populated by the same people, says Shideler. He gives the example of left-wing activist Calla Walsh, who’s done everything from co-founding the sabotage group Palestine Action US and orchestrating direct-action protests targeting imperialism and capitalism to participating in BLM and environmental protests.The way the current system is set up has Calla “spread out under a variety of different categories,” even though all her activism points at one motive: revolution.“What we need to do is get the federal government to recognize a category of far-left violent extremism and put under that category all of your anarchists, autonomous Marxists, your Marxist Leninists, your Maoists, your violent socialists and the like and say, ‘These are all one thing; these are all a movement that is working towards revolution in the United States, that's working towards the overthrow of the United States government,”’ Shideler proposes.Dividing far-left activism into subgroups allows the government to ignore this grim reality, which almost certainly drove Tyler Robinson to target Charlie Kirk.If we successfully create an all-encompassing category for left-wing extremism, the next step, says Shideler, is to “conduct a number of designations against Antifa-linked groups primarily in Europe, but across the world.”While the most effective solution is likely to consolidate all Antifa-linked groups under a single Foreign Terrorist Organization, the government's long-held practice of targeting smaller, specific groups complicates this idea.“If you try to designate just Antifa as a single entity or movement, what I suspect you'll find is that the bureaucrats will say, ‘We don't know what that is; that's not a thing that exists,”’ explains Shideler.His recommendation is to designate foreign Antifa groups as terrorists first, then link them to international Antifa networks, before targeting U.S.-based groups connected to the network. “That will, in the long run, be faster and more effective,” he says.To hear more of the conversation, watch the episode above.Want more from 'Blaze News: The Mandate'?To enjoy more provocative opinions, expert analysis, and breaking stories you won’t see anywhere else, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.
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