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terrorism
DHS Official Explicitly Equates Protest to Terrorism in 'Stunning' Interview
"This is one of the most chilling things I've heard a senior U.S. official say."
Mar 13, 2025
In an interview with one of the top officials at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security on Thursday, NPR's Michel Martin sought to gain clarity about the agency's reasoning for arresting former Columbia University student organizer Mahmoud Khalil last week—but Troy Edgar provided no supporting evidence of specific offenses committed by Khalil, who has not been charged with a crime, and suggested his mere participation in "pro-Palestinian activity" was sufficient to order his deportation.
Edgar, the deputy homeland security secretary, repeatedly alleged that Khalil was in the U.S. on a visa, despite Martin correcting him and clarifying that the Algerian citizen is a legal permanent resident of the country with a green card—until it was reportedly revoked under the Trump administration's "catch and revoke" program targeting international students who protest the government's pro-Israel policy.
The Trump administration has accused Khalil, who is of Palestinian descent, of leading "activities aligned to Hamas" and protests where pro-Hamas propaganda was distributed, but officials have provided no evidence that he's provided support to Hamas or other groups designated as terrorist organizations by the U.S. government.
A White House official this week toldThe Free Press that Khalil is not being accused of breaking any laws, but is rather "a threat to the foreign policy and national security interests of the United States," and Edgar's comments to Martin offered further evidence evidence that DHS is working to deport Khalil without accusing him of a crime.
"He is coming in to basically be a student that is not going to be supporting terrorism," said Edgar. "So, the issue is he was let into the country on this visa. He has been promoting this antisemitism activity at the university. And at this point, the State Department has revoked his visa for supporting a terrorist type organization."
But Edgar was unable to point to specific "terrorist activity" that Khalil was supporting when he helped lead Palestinian solidarity protests at Columbia, where students occupied a building and displayed a banner labeling it Hind's Hall in honor of a six-year-old girl who was killed by Israeli forces in Gaza and negotiated with administrators to end the school's investment in companies that benefit from Israel's policies in Palestine.
"How did he support Hamas? Exactly what did he do?" Martin pressed.
"Well, I think you can see it on TV, right?" Edgar replied. "This is somebody that we've invited and allowed the student to come into the country, and he's put himself in the middle of the process of basically pro-Palestinian activity."
Martin then repeatedly asked whether criticism of the U.S. government, which is the largest international funder of the Israeli military and has backed its assault on Gaza, and protesting are deportable offenses.
"Let me put it this way, Michel, imagine if he came in and filled out the form and said, 'I want a student visa.' They asked him, 'What are you going to do here?' And he says, 'I'm going to go and protest.' We would have never let him into the country," said Edgar. "I think if he would have declared he's a terrorist, we would have never let him in."
Will Creeley, legal director at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), called the interview "stunning" and said Edgar's "conflation of protest and terrorism stopped me cold."
The interview, said Washington Post columnist Shadi Hamid, serves as the latest confirmation from the Trump administration that "Mahmoud Khalil's arrest has no basis."
The interview was released the same day that more than 100 people were arrested at a sit-in led by Jewish Voice of Peace at Trump Tower in New York City, demanding Khalil's release. His arrest has sparked outcry from progressives in Congress, local lawmakers including New York mayoral candidate and state lawmaker Zohran Mamdani, legal experts, and the human rights group Amnesty International.
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It’s Time to Transcend War, the Meteor of Our Own Making
The need for enemies—the worse the better—may well be humanity’s most profound existential threat.
Mar 02, 2025
“The enemy of the moment always represented absolute evil, and it followed that any past or future agreement with him was impossible.”
The words are from George Orwell’s 1984 (where else?), explaining the root causes of a dystopian world. The book may be a work of fiction, but his words are deeply embedded in reality—we need enemies, the worse the better! This certainty may well be humanity’s most profound existential threat. I fear it could be “the meteor” that hits Planet Earth, ultimately spelling extinction for the dominant species.
Mostly what we do is prepare for—and wage—war. We always wage it in self-defense, even when in retrospect its motivating factor is colonial conquest. When it comes to the manifestation of power, at its core are the words “us vs. them.” That captures the public spirit so much more fully than cooperation, connection, understanding... or, groan, love.
Waging war poisons the world; it perpetuates and intensifies the problems it purports to be eliminating.
As far as I’m concerned, this is humanity’s primary challenge of the moment. It’s time to transcend war, the meteor of our own making.
As we all know, wars are waging across the planet right this moment. Unless we’re directly affected by the violence, we can easily reduce it to an abstraction, usually with the help of the words “self-defense”—a particularly egregious term when used by the one inflicting the most harm. And for some reason, the name George W. Bush comes to mind—the guy who bequeathed us the “Axis of Evil” as our current reason to be afraid.
But an inescapable fact of American history is the long trail of evil enemies who have helped define us over the centuries. As Jérôme Viala-Gaudefroy writes:
...the American identity is probably the best example of a “self” understood through “otherness.” Research in various disciplines has shown that Americans have long defined themselves through a binary narrative of “us” versus “them.“ Whether it takes the form of the American Indians of the Frontier, the British during the American Revolution, the immigrants in the early 20th century, the Nazis, the communists, and more recently the terrorists...
He also notes, a la Orwell, that our enemy of the moment “has three constant characteristics: It is always deemed a threat, somewhat uncivilized and evil, and serves to define national identity by demarcating... ’ a self’ from an ‘other’... “
Nations are essentially random creations. In order to unify socially into actual entities, their populations have to have a clear sense of who they aren’t. I would add to the above list of “others,” the country’s long history of racial exclusion, which of course begins with the importation of slaves, who were property, not actual human beings. “White” was a word bequeathed to us by God, apparently, and even though moral sanity has been slowly seeping into our national identity, whiteness still plays a significant role in the national task of othering. Think about the “invasion” going on at our southern border, for instance.
And, oh yeah, there’s also that war on Gaza—by which I mean genocide—that we’re playing a key role in sustaining, But as President Trump 2.0 keeps telling us in various ways, we also have a lot of work to do “Americanizing” the Western Hemisphere, from reclaiming the Panama Canal to... uh, seizing Greenland? And then there’s the recent decision by the State Department to officially designate some major Mexican drug cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs). Yikes, that means they’re really, really evil.
As Jon Rainwater writes, this isn’t just a symbolic gesture. Doing so “opens the door for military intervention under the guise of counterterrorism. The U.S. could justify drone strikes or cross-border raids without Mexico’s consent—a blatant affront to its sovereignty.”
What could be wrong with that? Come on, we have the most powerful military in the world; it’s up to us to decide how and when to use it, right? No matter, as Rainwater points out: “Combining the failed strategies of the war on terror and the war on drugs is not just misguided—it’s doubling down on failure.”
And not only that. “Designating cartels as FTOs,” he goes on, “feels like another chapter in this playbook: framing another country’s problems as existential threats to justify American imperialism. So long liberal internationalism, hello Make the Monroe Doctrine Great Again.”
No matter that war is hell. No matter that the problems humanity faces are basically the problems it created—and they’re serious. Waging war poisons the world; it perpetuates and intensifies the problems it purports to be eliminating. I open my soul with a shout into the darkness. We live, as Rainwater notes, in an interconnected world—a world of complex wholeness. Creating borders can be a reasonable way to get a handle on that complexity, but only—only—if we can also see beyond the borders we’ve created and embrace the wholeness we’re still trying to understand.
What does this mean? As much as I want it to mean. oh, let us say a high-five with God, it often means—as we struggle to transcend our impulsive violence—far quieter, almost unrecognizable change, if any change at all. Consider, for instance, Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-Vt.) recent opposition to the latest U.S. sale of weapons to Israel to keep its evisceration of Gaza going. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee now has to consider the merit of his Joint Resolutions of Disapproval, or JRDs. Last November, Sanders also filed JRDs regarding the latest Biden administration’s weapons sale to Israel. When the Senate voted on them, the resolutions lost; only 19 senators voted in support, which can easily feel like nothing more than a pathetic loss.
But maybe it was more than that. “...never before have so many senators voted to restrict arms transfers to Israel,” noted the senior policy adviser for the organization Demand Progress. He called the vote “a sea change” among congressional Democrats—an awakening, an infusion of... do I dare say: moral sanity?
This doesn’t stop the slaughter. This doesn’t stop the hell. But let it give us the will to keep trying.
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The Third Manifesto: A Tale of Two Terrorists
The FBI now apparently decides, not only what is or isn’t “terrorism,” but what is or isn’t evil. Why? Because its power and autonomy grow when the public is fearful of “the Other.”
Jan 21, 2025
On New Years’ Eve, two men reportedly committed public acts of violence: a mass murder in New Orleans and an explosion in Las Vegas. Both alleged perpetrators served in the military. Both had troubled personal lives. Both issued makeshift “manifestos”; one through video recordings, the other through emails and social media. And both fit the federal government’s definition of a “terrorist.” But one was white and seemingly Christian by background; the other was Black and Muslim. Therein hangs a tale.
The discourse regarding these two men can be read as a “third manifesto”—a subtle but fiercely ideological statement from a cabal of overlapping interests seeking to manipulate public opinion.
The Acts
Shamsud-Din Jabbar reportedly stated that the Bourbon Street attack, which left a horrifying toll of dead and injured, was motivated by extremism. “I joined ISIS,” Jabbar reportedly said. For that reason, Jabbar’s alleged crimes match the FBI’s definition of “international terrorism”:
Violent, criminal acts committed by individuals and/or groups who are inspired by, or associated with, designated foreign terrorist organizations or nations...
Matthew Livelsberger allegedly exploded a Tesla truck outside a Trump hotel in Las Vegas, injuring seven people. His weapon was a “moving vehicle improvised explosive device” (MVIED). Thankfully, no one was killed, but they certainly could have been.
Since Livelsberger provided a political motive for his action, it matches the FBI’s definition of what it calls “domestic terrorism”:
Violent, criminal acts… to further ideological goals stemming from domestic influences, such as those of a political, religious, social, racial, or environmental nature.
And yet, only one of these two men was called a terrorist in the media.
Two Terrorists
Here are two New York Times “human interest” headlines about Jabbar:
- ‘I Joined ISIS’: The New Orleans Attacker’s Secret Radicalization
- ‘No Terrorist to Me’: Relatives and Friends Saw Few Signs Before Attack
Both articles take it as a given that Jabbar is a terrorist.
Here are two Times headlines about Livelsberger:
- Soldier in Tesla Blast Had PTSD and Feared U.S. ‘Collapse,’ Officials Say
- Soldier’s Struggles Began Long Before Las Vegas Blast, Nurse Says
The contrast couldn’t be plainer. The human-interest angle on Jabbar is, “What made him a terrorist?” For Livelsberger it’s, “What suffering caused him to do such a thing?”
“Secret Radicalization”
The subheader for the Times’ “secret radicalization” article cites “Jabbar’s growing discontent with American society and increasing isolation even within his local Muslim community.” (Italics mine.) One relative told the Times that Jabbar and his brothers lived largely secular lives. “I don’t think I ever heard the word Allah said,” the relative said.
The word “even” is doing a lot of work here, suggesting that Jabbar’s pathology is linked to his Muslim-ness. But the article describes Jabbar as an “outcast” among “fellow believers.”
Nobody the Times interviewed had ever seen him praying in congregation, even after he reportedly became radical. That raises a question: How Muslim was Jabbar, exactly? Congregational prayer is obligatory for practicing Muslims. Its absence should have raised a question: Was he really motived by his religious beliefs, as they suggest? Or, was he driven by something else, like stress, mental illness, or other factors—the forces that the media used to explain Livelsberger’s actions?
Financial crimes kill. But that kind of terror doesn’t get much headline coverage,
“Increasing isolation, even in the Muslim community,” they wrote. It’s not clear, however, how much he even belonged to that community.
Coverage of Jabbar hints at other motives, if you look hard enough. CNN reports that Jabbar’s videos expressed rage over his recent divorce. He had financial woes, declaring in court that he couldn’t keep up his mortgage payments. He reportedly said he’d planned to kill his family before deciding to stage an attack in ISIS’ name instead. That sounds less like ideology and more like pathology.
It also seems like a relatively recent development. A friend of Jabbar’s told The Associated Press:
I did anti-terrorism in the military. And if any red flags would have popped off, I would have caught them and I would have contacted the proper authorities.
It is confirmed that Jabbar belonged to at least one criminal organization. He was a former employee of Deloitte, the international finance and consulting conglomerate. Deloitte has paid more than a quarter-billion dollars ($283,797,673) for government-contracting, financial fraud, and employment-related offenses since the year 2000.
Financial stress causes physical harm to millions of Americans every year. People with money problems are up to 20 times likelier to attempt suicide.
Financial crimes kill. But that kind of terror doesn’t get much headline coverage.
The Hero
Livelsberger got the benefit of doubt that was denied to Jabbar. Law enforcement set the tone, as when the local sheriff told reporters:
Am I comfortable calling it a suicide mission? I’m comfortable calling it a suicide, with a bombing that occurred immediately thereafter.
The next day, FBI Special Agent In Charge Spencer Evans explicitly denied that Livelsberger’s act was political. Rather, Evans said, the explosion “ultimately appears to be a tragic case of suicide involving a heavily decorated combat veteran who was struggling with PTSD and other issues.”
That’s nothing short of bizarre. The FBI already had communications from Livelsberger calling for an armed uprising against the United States government. They included explicit instructions for a violent right-wing revolt:
- “Military and vets move on D.C. starting now. Militias facilitate and augment this activity.”
- “Occupy every major road along fed buildings and the campus of fed buildings by the hundreds of thousands.”
- “Lock the highways around down with semis right after everybody gets in. Hold until the purge is complete.”
- “Try peaceful means first, but be prepared to fight to get the Dems out of the fed government and military by any means necessary. They all must go and a hard reset must occur for our country to avoid collapse.”
But law enforcement chose the message: Livelsberger was a suffering hero, not a terrorist. Contrast that with its treatment of Jabbar, who a senior FBI official said was “100% inspired” by ISIS. “This was an act of terrorism,” he said. “It was premeditated and an evil act.”
The FBI now apparently decides, not only what is or isn’t “terrorism,” but what is or isn’t evil. Why? Because its power and autonomy grow when the public is fearful of “the Other”—a definition that, in today’s society, matches Jabbar’s profile but not Livelsberger’s.
The media follow its lead, but why? To appease government sources, especially under a new administration? Because they don’t dare describe right-wing violence as “terrorism”? Because the “hero” angle makes better copy? Because America idolizes its highly-trained killers? Because Livelsberger was white and not Muslim?
Perhaps it was all of the above.
The Third Manifesto
“I have joined ISIS,” Jabbar reportedly said. “Purge,” ”fight,” “ “by any means necessary,” Livelsberger reportedly said. If Jabbar was “secretly radicalized,” so was Livelsberger.
Matthew Livelsberger served in Afghanistan under traumatizing circumstances. He deserved the best care his nation could provide. Know who else served in Afghanistan? Shamsud-Din Jabbar. Don’t feel badly if you didn’t know; it hasn’t gotten much coverage.
Were these men terrorists, damaged souls, or both?
The fact that both alleged perpetrators were ex-military is important. Service in the United States military is the single greatest predictor of extremist, mass-casualty violence.
Not mental illness. Not “Islamism.” Not previous criminal history. U.S. military service is the greatest predictor—and it’s getting worse.
That’s something we’re really not supposed to think about. But we should—not to judge or condemn those who serve, but to understand them, to provide better care, and to minimize the chance of more violence in the future.
“Terrorism” is an ideologically freighted word. If we must use it, we must be consistent. Its selective application here serves as an invisible “manifesto,” one that’s scrawled across our public discourse in invisible ink. It declares that Muslims are the enemy while White right-wing extremists are safe, comfortable, “us.”
Were these men terrorists, damaged souls, or both? I’m not wise enough to judge. But I do know that a just society would judge them fairly, and that a free society needs an honest media—one that provides its citizens with more information and less manipulation.
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