Trump's war on dissent uses powers tested on Muslims

Trump's war on dissent uses powers tested on Muslims Submitted by Sanaa Ansari Khan on Fri, 09/18/2026 - 10:45 Twenty-five years after 9/11, expanding terrorism labels against protesters show how repression normalised against one community endangers broader political opposition Activists demonstrate in New York City against Cop City, a police training facility near Atlanta, Georgia, that opened in 2025 despite years of protests, on 9 March 2023 (Spencer Platt/Getty Images via AFP) Off The US invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, and military campaigns in Pakistan, Syria and Yemen, left almost a million people dead - and were followed at home by two decades of surveillance, entrapment and discriminatory immigration policies.

After such a devastating toll, we would expect the United States-led "war on terror" to be banished to history as one of its most shameful chapters.

Instead, 25 years after then-US President George W Bush declared a "war on terror" on 20 September 2001, we find ourselves in a reboot, a new phase of a chapter that was, and still is, ultimately a war on dissent.

Since 9/11, every US president has reaffirmed the "war on terror" to rationalise US military campaigns abroad.

Over the last two decades, its logics and justifications have expanded at home, coming to define not just how we view and tolerate dissent, but what we understand as the limits of state power.

The US government is in the midst of applying terrorist labels to targets as varied as civilians in fishing boats in international waters, domestic demonstrators against the US healthcare system, protesters against a police training centre in Atlanta and those opposing the cruel and inhumane treatment of migrants.

The staggering breadth of international and domestic targets now eligible for terrorism designations shows just how entrenched this frame has become in US political discourse, and how the state can selectively weaponise the label against anyone it identifies as opposed to its hegemony.

An old playbook Those who defend the "war on terror" because they believe Muslims pose an exceptional threat ignore the fact that as far back as the 1970s, the CIA had already made the decision to adopt terrorism labels to defend its domestic surveillance of political dissidents in the face of increased objection.

The use of terrorism labels for the agency's domestic spying programme was thus a public relations move to rebrand operations aimed at pre-empting dissent as protecting citizens from terror, in order to quell criticism and generate support.

As far back as the 1970s, the CIA adopted terrorism labels to defend its surveillance of political dissidents Political dissent and objection to state injustice have repeatedly triggered a state surveillance apparatus that has consistently relied on labels like "terrorist", "subversive", "radical" or "extremist".

Historical records show the subversive label was originally applied to political dissidents and meant the government considered the individual, their political beliefs and their activities a threat to the established social or political order.

In other words, the government believed subversives sought to "change the status quo" or "our current way of life" - both phrases that have been used more recently by the US government to describe what it believes are the motivations of "antifa" and "Muslim radical extremists", respectively.

The Trump administration's National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7), released in September 2025, identified specific political expressions as potential new forms of domestic terrorism, including "anti-Christianity" and "anti-Americanism".

It describes "American principles" as including support for law enforcement and border control.

Someone who objects to those agencies' policies or practices, including their records of violence and discrimination, thus risks being labelled "anti-American" - and becoming eligible for investigation over domestic terrorism or political violence.

The administration's 2026 counterterrorism strategy pushes further, and NSPM-7's own list of indicators includes "anti-capitalism" - expanding potential targets to those who express grievances over economic disparities.

As food, housing and healthcare costs continue to rise, the state threatens to leave citizens with few means of civic engagement to achieve redress.

Selective by design The vagueness of US terrorism laws - and of terms like "radicalisation" and "extremism" during the "war on terror", and now "anti-Americanism" under NSPM-7 - has allowed a counterterrorism apparatus built around and tested on Muslim communities to be applied to the general population, as President Donald Trump's administration seeks to target leftist protest movements and organising.

The government's ability to selectively apply "war on terror" labels and laws to its chosen targets was established with the normalisation of the selective and racialised application of these frameworks upon mostly Muslim communities over the last two decades.

9/11 at 25: Trump finds new targets for America's endless war on terror Read More » NSPM-7 continues that legacy and tradition, mobilising counterterrorism resources against political targets the administration identifies unilaterally.

Just as the "war on terror" failed to adequately define its ideological enemy - relying instead on an awkward, clunky concoction of labels it associated with Muslims ("Salafist-Jihadist-Islamist-Radical-Muslim-Extremist") - this administration has created a similarly vague ideological enemy in an undefined " Antifa ", invoked to justify expanding counterterrorism frameworks against a broader domestic population daring to engage in dissent and protest.

One of the most powerful tools built during the "war on terror" was the material support for terrorism paradigm.

For a chilling example of the expansion of material support prosecutions, look no further than the Prairieland case.

Defendants who protested against Trump's expansion of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention centres were indicted not for shooting and injuring a local police officer, but for "providing material support to terrorists" and for "aid[ing] and abett[ing]" the alleged attempted murder of government officers.

They were convicted in March, and in June, eight of them were sentenced to between 30 and 100 years in prison.

Under US federal law, including the Patriot Act, terrorism is defined as violent acts intended to influence government policy or intimidate a civilian population.

Nevertheless, Tarek Mehanna was convicted in 2011 for activities that should be protected under the First Amendment, such as translating documents, and served more than a decade of a 17-and-a-half-year sentence before his release.

His case set a dangerous precedent for prosecuting speech as material support for terrorism, the foundation on which cases like Prairieland are now built.

8 anti-ICE protesters received sentences from 30 to 100 years, with several receiving 50 years or more. The harsh sentencing is meant to be a warning that intimidates activists around the country. pic.

Their protest began as a noise demonstration outside the Prairieland ICE facility… twitter.

com/L7OQcBvyqC — Fifty Shades of Whey (@davenewworld_2) June 27, 2026 This past summer, one of the Prairieland defendants was sentenced to 30 years after moving a box of zines that prosecutors claimed had the power to recruit sympathisers to their cause.

A way forward With the rise in domestic political violence by white Christian nationalists, it can be tempting to expand terrorism labels to include those who have been historically exempt from the structures that have antagonised our communities for decades.

Expanding terrorism labels to capture white nationalist violent actors who have thus far evaded state scrutiny, however, does not guarantee terrorism frameworks will be applied to future incidents of that particular strain of political violence.

The Trump administration's decision to pardon those who stormed the Capitol on 6 January 2021 is a chilling recent example of how an entity or an act of violence might meet a statutory definition of terrorism, while the decision to prosecute it still relies on the discretion of those in power.

We assume terrorism frameworks were designed to protect us and keep us safe from irrationally violent, non-state actors.

Their selective deployment against the state's chosen targets, however, makes it increasingly clear that they were designed as a tool to be wielded against the state's opponents - especially in the area of narrative dominance, answering the question of who gets to tell the story about state violence.

Because objective discourse within terrorism frames has become impossible due to their selective and racialised applications, we should abandon the term in favour of language that defines violent acts clearly and with specificity.

Without this specificity, we collapse radically different actors and their motives into a single category, allowing the state to prosecute whom it chooses without the public's understanding.

Dismantling the discriminatory application of terrorism frameworks will require sustained collective action across multiple fronts, including media, community education, policy advocacy and impact litigation.

This demands exposing the function terrorism frames serve for the state, developing precise alternative language and advocating for responses to political violence that are rooted in community power and dignity.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.

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