We…reject every attempt to impose on us any moral dogma whatsoever as an eternal, ultimate and forever immutable ethical law on the pretext that the moral world, too, has its permanent principles which stand above history and the differences between nations. We maintain on the contrary that all moral theories have been hitherto the product, in the last analysis, of the economic conditions of society obtaining at the time. And as society has hitherto moved in class antagonisms, morality has always been class morality; it has either justified the domination and the interests of the ruling class, or ever since the oppressed class became powerful enough, it has represented its indignation against this domination and the future interests of the oppressed. That in this process there has on the whole been progress in morality, as in all other branches of human knowledge, no one will doubt. But we have not yet passed beyond class morality.
— Friedrich Engels, Anti-Duhring (1877)
I am a terrorist, and you are one too—according to the now international National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7), which, up to now, has resulted in the creation of the NSPM-7 Joint Mission Center (JMC), overseen by the FBI and tasked with “working to counter Domestic Terrorism and organized political violence by integrating intelligence, operational support, and financial analysis to proactively identify networks and prosecute domestic terrorist and related criminal actors.” Under the NSPM-7, however, “domestic terrorism” is explicitly defined as being associated with “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity; support for the overthrow of the U.S. Government; extremism on migration, race, and gender; and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.”1 In other words, the NSPM-7 explicitly distorts political violence—and non-violence (providing funding for groups)—as left-wing phenomena, but this is untrue.
In reality, people are compelled to violence in pursuit of a cause they think to be righteous, and when they feel that non-violent methods are either ineffective or not drastic enough. We are all under surveillance, we are all perceived as threats to the government, and, if we’re being honest, we all know that at any moment we could die. So why live a life afraid of death when it is much more rational to live a life afraid of being ineffectual? I don’t think most people want violence, but I know that humans will go to genocidal lengths of violence in pursuit of their desires, we’ve seen them go to this extreme in our lifetime.
To be a leftist is to live a life of struggle—you should be seeking confrontation with the establishment, the state, the reactionism that will bring out the worst in people, and every individual, institution, and enterprise that stands in the way of the change we all know we need. If history has taught us anything let it be that Socialism is a fire ready to consume capitalism, but the embers of this blaze must be stoked by a great mass of people; some will be burned while many will be left blistered, but all will rise in the ashes of the new world unbeholden to imperialism.
Are we to fault David for using Goliath’s own sword to behead him? I think not, for David’s action shattered the morale of the Philistines, causing them to retreat. The terror that devoured the army of the Philistines at seeing their great champion decapitated is a lesson to all those fighting a war against a superior force: breaking the enemy’s will to fight is more effective than destroying their physical capacity. We see that same rule followed by many states today, in Minnesota, in Texas, in Maine, overseas in the United Kingdom, in the arrest and possible extradition of Fergie Chambers, in the torturing of Marwan Barghouti and Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya and all the Palestinians held in detention by the murderous state of Israel.
Indeed, no one and no thing is incapable of being a terrorist. We are terrorists not because we use violence if we have to, but because we do not have the legal authority to use said violence. In plain words, we are only terrorists because the state does not authorize, and therefore legitimize, our violence precisely because our actions are directed at the state. But now we are terrorists for expressing free speech, which, at least in the United States, also refers to the way we choose to spend our own money (funding political campaigns domestically and internationally). At some point, the question asks itself: Are we actually free? To an extent, but we are now liable to be killed during protests, imprisoned for speaking out against the government, and under constant surveillance and spying, completely sanctioned by the state that is supposed to defend to the death the very right we are invoking.
My point is that we are being forced into violence, but that does not make us criminal or wrong or terroristic. If you want peace you have to be prepared to face violence and cut the head off Goliath if it means to spare more lives and shed less blood in the long run.
What’s particularly interesting is not simply that the state has expanded the category of “extremism,” but why it feels compelled to do so. Every government, every political order, draws a line between legitimate dissent and illegitimate resistance, but this line is rarely fixed. It expands and contracts according to the confidence, or insecurity, of those in power. Institutions that feel secure in their legitimacy tolerate criticism, some will even welcome it. But when the state begins to perceive threats to their legitimacy, criticism is increasingly distorted as a matter of security rather than speech.
Why is this so? States have long recognized that ideas can be more destabilizing than isolated acts of violence. A bomb can cause terrible destruction, but ideas can delegitimize an entire class. It is, therefore, unsurprising that intelligence agencies devote enormous resources to monitoring movements, organizations, publications, and networks capable of transforming discontent into collective action. Their objective is to understand, and, where possible, prevent movements from developing into enduring challenges to existing institutions.
Political dissent, as a result, increasingly finds itself viewed through the language of risk management. Regular people: organizers, community leaders, mutual aiders, financial contributors, radical criticizers, etc., are vulgarized into potential security concerns to be mapped, scrutinized, and answered with overwhelming force.
There is an irony here. Governments often justify expanding their own surveillance and investigative powers as “necessary to preserve public order,” yet history suggests that societies become less stable—not more—when large segments of the population conclude that ordinary political participation is ineffective or treated with suspicion. Repression may silence dissent for a time, but silence should never be mistaken for consent. Beneath the charade of stability, grievances become more aggravated, often becoming more deeply rooted precisely because they have no meaningful political outlet.
Do governments fear political violence? Of course they do, every government does. I think the better and more revealing question to ask is what they fear will give rise to it. Is it simply the existence of dangerous individuals, or is it the possibility that growing numbers of ordinary people may come to reject the legitimacy of the institutions demeaning their lives? If the answer is the latter, then documents such as NSPM-7 reveal something larger than a security strategy: they reveal a deeply-embedded anxiety about what it means to hold “legitimacy” in itself. Indeed, I think it tells us that we are fighting a righteous cause. We will not start the violence, but neither will we turn the other cheek, for Jesus did so and he was crucified, but David beheaded Goliath with his own sword, and, in doing so, saved more lives by snuffing out that Leviathan.
Notes:
1. “FY 2027 FBI Budget Request to Congress,” U.S. Department of Justice, accessed July 18, 2026, https://www.justice.gov/jmd/media/1434246/dl?inline.