In my book The Triumph of Fear, one of the Cold War-era political repression programs I spend some time discussing is the Attorney General’s List of Subversive Organizations (AGLOSO). The operative language that gave life to AGLOSO was contained in President Truman’s Executive Order 9835, which launched the so-called federal employee loyalty program—an executive action that led to a decades-long government witch hunt for Soviet sympathizers in the federal workforce. People could be denied federal jobs, or existing federal employees could be fired if an unelected and unaccountable “loyalty” board determined that the applicant or worker had simply associated with the wrong people.
Part V, Section 2(f) of EO 9835 outlined the key criteria:
Membership in, affiliation with or sympathetic association with any foreign or domestic organization, association, movement, group or combination of persons, designated by the Attorney General as totalitarian, fascist, communist, or subversive, or as having adopted a policy of advocating or approving the commission of acts of force or violence to deny persons their rights under the Constitution of the United States, or as seeking to alter the form of government of the United States by unconstitutional means.
Simply hanging out with the “wrong” people or engaging in speech in support of unpopular political concepts was enough to get you investigated by the FBI and subsequently blacklisted for federal employment.
I raise this historical example because last night, President Donald Trump issued a Presidential National Security Memorandum that makes Truman’s look tame by comparison.
Titled “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence,” the document cynically uses recent and incredibly tragic acts of violence by armed lone actors against political figures such as Melissa Hortman and Charlie Kirk to justify the use of Joint Terrorism Task Forces to target groups and ideologies highly disfavored by the regime. From the memorandum:
Common threads animating this violent conduct include anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity; support for the overthrow of the United States Government; extremism on migration, race, and gender; and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.
“Americanism” is most definitely in the eye of the beholder. Lots of people are opposed to capitalism (wrongly, in my view), but that is most definitely not a federal crime. Neither is being “anti-Christianity” for that matter. And it’s primarily fans of The Turner Diaries and sovereign citizen types that want to violently overthrow the federal government. I could go on, but you probably get the point.
Here’s another fact: there is no “domestic terrorism” charge or statute, as I noted earlier this week in a piece discussing Trump’s “Antifa”-related executive order. But if you think that a direct legal basis for filing a charge against someone for being a member of a disfavored group or political belief is an actual obstacle to a prosecution, you would be gravely mistaken.
As I noted previously, what matters is that the administration asserts the authority to do this, and it has thousands of armed and armored federal law enforcement agents ready and able to carry out Trump’s orders. As law firms, universities, legal permanent resident holders, former government officials, two Members of Congress (one in the House, the other in the Senate), media organizations, and entertainers have all learned, you can be guilty of no federal crime and still be targeted for prosecution, expulsion from the country, job loss, or institutional destruction by this regime. Week by week and step by step, Mr. Trump is creating his own list of “subversive” organizations and persons.
Today, a reporter asked me whether we’d know when the country had reached a state of authoritarianism. My reply: “We’re already there.”
This commentary was originally posted on Patrick Eddington’s newsletter, The Republic Sentinel.