Because a significant portion of the regime's fascist efforts to crush dissent revolves around their fact-free declaration that opposing a US-backed genocide in Gaza, being conducted by Israel, is actually antisemitism (and also a foreign policy matter that is beyond regulation due to presidential powers over foreign affairs), the ruling class establishment that supported that genocide even when it belonged to Biden, has a vested interest in presenting Jewish Americans as a unified bloc standing in opposition to anti-genocide protestors in support of Israel and the Zionist agenda. After all, the narrative that all of this monstrous bullshit is being done to protect Jewish people falls apart very quickly once you realize that vast numbers of American Jews are actively against all this fascist, genocidal bullshit; so that latter fact has to be kept from the American public, lest they become wise to the reality that this is all just a propaganda op to justify arms sales, genocide, and fascist repression of folks ideological opposed to the regime.

The reality however, is quite different from the picture you're allowed to see on television; Jewish Americans are actually massively overrepresented in the anti-genocide protest movement, and a vibrant, growing collage of Jewish left organizations are risking the personal safety of their members to vigorously oppose a fascist regime and say, quite directly, that not only are the regime's actions putting Jewish people in danger, they will not allow genocide, deportations, and fascist repression to be conducted "in their name."

For more about this hidden, but not secret story, let's turn to this deep dive by Shane Burley into the rise of Jewish left resistance in America to settler colonial occupation, genocide, and the fascist Trump regime's attempts to deport student protestors under the guise of combatting antisemitism:

https://truthout.org/articles/jewish-organizations-are-fighting-back-against-khalil-deportation/

Jewish Organizations Are Fighting Back Against Khalil Deportation

“This year, all over the U.S., Jews are holding emergency Passover Seders calling for the release of Mahmoud Khalil and an end to the criminalization of all those calling for an end to the Israeli government’s genocide of the Palestinian people,” JVP said as it announced the action. This seder is part of a long tradition of using Jewish rituals as a protest tactic, uniting the prophetic spiritual tradition of Judaism with the practical strategies of physical resistance and blockade. This action, offered with relatively short notice and promising to mobilize huge numbers of Jews and allies, is the result of the relationships that have been built across Jewish organizations as they try to confront the repression coming in Trump’s second term.

“We’re building a new coalition right now. Because not all of us have been in the same space together,” Lily Greenberg Call, a member of the New York City chapter of the Jewish anti-Occupation group IfNotNow, called into a megaphone on March 20. “But it is more important than ever now to reach for each other and unite for our communities and our neighbors who are under attack,” she told the thousand people who had flooded the streets of lower Manhattan, the historic home of the U.S. Jewish left. “People in this city have been abducted, separated from their families, thrown in detention camps, and threatened with deportation.”

Frankly, I don't really have a lot to add here because speaking for Jewish Americans who oppose fascism being conducted in their name really isn't my lane. Burley's extensive documentation of how Jewish resistance groups are banding together all across the country is however informative, and enlightening given a media environment where even critics of the Trump regime who still support genocidal Zionist objectives in Gaza are unprepared to report on that resistance. The obvious reality here is that no matter what the ADL says, a fascist regime stacked to the brim with antisemite nazis, doesn't give a flying fuck about combatting antisemitism, and fully intends to use the mere existence of Jewish people and antisemitism in our society, as the spear point for their transformation of America into an over fascist dictatorship - and that's a story, you just won't hear on the Six O'clock News.

#Fascism #Trump #Antisemitism #JewishLeft #MahmoudKhalil #ICE #Deportations #StudentProtests #Genocide #Gaza #Palestine #JVP #IfNotNow #Antifascism #ADL #Zionism

In a sign that the Trump regime plans to continue its fascist repression of student protestors legally in the US and dissent in general, even as its authority to do so is being challenged in court, ICE has kidnapped another Columbia University anti-genocide protest leader. Mohsen Mahdawi, a Palestinian who has legally been studying in the United States for the past 10 years, was arrested by ICE as he arrived for a citizenship test; now the regime seems intent on deporting him under the familiar Calvinball argument that Marco Rubio can deport anyone he deems "detrimental to U.S. foreign policy interests" on a whim; a tactic the administration has used to justify prior attempts to deport political prisoners Mahmoud Khalil and Rumeysa Ozturk, among others:

https://theintercept.com/2025/04/14/ice-columbia-student-mohsen-mahdawi-citizenship-interview/

Palestinian Student Leader Was Called In for Citizenship Interview — Then Arrested by ICE

"Even before his friend and fellow Columbia activist Mahmoud Khalil was arrested by immigration authorities, Mahdawi asked university administrators to help him find a safe place to live so he would not be taken by ICE agents, according to emails reviewed by The Intercept. The school did nothing in response, Mahdawi said.

After ICE abducted Khalil last month, Mahdawi sheltered in place for more than three weeks for fear of being picked up himself.

Instead of taking him off the street, however, immigration authorities scheduled the citizenship test at the Colchester USCIS office and took Mahdawi into custody when he arrived.

Now, Mahdawi is facing an order to deport him to the occupied West Bank, where escalating attacks from both the Israeli military and Jewish settlers have led to increased casualties among Palestinians.

“It’s kind of a death sentence,” Mahdawi said. “Because my people are being killed unjustly in an indiscriminate way.”

Please also note that a number of other kidnapping targets taken by ICE, Mahdawi was previously marked out for reprisal by pro-Zionist smear group Canary Mission, and Betar, a far right hate group that's widely considered a fascist organization even in Israel; because apparently US Secretary of State Marco Rubio is now taking foreign policy and national security advice from ultra-Zionist extremist hate groups that openly advocate for violence against Palestinians and protestors. Like all of the other anti-genocide protestors the regime has kidnapped, there is no evidence that Mahdawi is a "terrorist" or committed any serious crimes, except of course the Trump administration's argument that protesting a genocide is in and of itself, domestic terrorism.

#Trump #Fascism #Columbia #ICE #MohsenMahdawi #MarcoRubio #Betar #CanaryMission #Kidnapping #PoliceState #StudentProtests #Gaza #Genocide #Israel

Emboldened no doubt by the fascist repression and rhetoric deployed by the Trump regime, and a large number of right wing extremists in the US judiciary, state governments all over America are proposing or passing laws that criminalize even peaceful protest - with multi-decade prison terms laid out for dissidents and resisters:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/09/anti-protest-bills-trump

US intensifies crackdown on peaceful protest under Trump

"Anti-protest bills that seek to expand criminal punishments for constitutionally protected peaceful protests – especially targeting those speaking out on the US-backed war in Gaza and the climate crisis – have spiked since Trump’s inauguration.

Forty-one new anti-protest bills across 22 states have been introduced since the start of the year – compared with a full-year total of 52 in 2024 and 26 in 2023, according to the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law (ICNL) tracker.

This year’s tally includes 32 bills across 16 states since Trump returned to the White House, with five federal bills targeting college students, anti-war protesters and climate activists with harsh prison sentences and hefty fines – a crackdown that experts warn threaten to erode first amendment rights to freedom of speech, assembly and petition."

I don't know about you, but I've been having arguments with liberals about what constitutes an effective protest since at least the Occupy Wall Street movement, and invariably their excuse for not actually disrupting anything or shutting shit down, is that effective resistance will give the authorities an excuse to crack down on otherwise peaceful protests. So what now folks? If you're gonna be called a domestic terrorist and do twenty years in prison for peacefully disrupting the oil and gas industry or opposing a US-backed genocide conducted by its client state Israel regardless, why remain peaceful? Given that Trump's Attorney General, Pam Bondi, is openly talking about twenty year prison terms for vandalizing a Tesla dealership, it seems pretty clear that the penalties are the same whether you march peacefully waving your little signs, or actually shut the fuck barrel down and hurt these folks where it counts - their wallets.

Furthermore, while it's obvious these anti-protest bills are designed to target anti-genocide protestors as part of the Trump regime's crackdown on anyone who doesn't support settler colonialist massacres by Israel in Gaza, don't sleep on the fact that these guys are also targeting climate crisis protestors who disrupt the fossil fuel and energy industries. As I've been telling you for years now, understanding climate crisis and what our leaders already know about it, is crucial to understanding the rise of fascism because these folks absolutely intend to lead us all off the ecological cliff and they know, sooner or later, the public at large isn't going to accept "we think you should all die so a handful of nazi billionaires can keep stacking filthy lucre." All over the Pig Empire, whether your government is overtly fascist, or covertly fascist under the guise of neoliberalism, our states are preparing to meet everyday people rising up against the capitalism that's killing us, with fascist repression - and we've already caught the companies that know they've got bodies on their hands, actively funding the lobbies behind these anti-democratic suppression laws, to protect their business interests.

As I've told you a number of times already, it only takes one side to declare war, and the rise of fascism in the so-called West must be understood as part of a much larger class war; a war nazi billionaire cultists and corporate power intend to win, once and for all. It doesn't matter how peaceful you are, the fact that you know the machine is killing your kids for five pennies a share and don't like it, is enough to make you the enemy of a capitalist order increasingly turning to overt fascism to lock in their way of life and future profits, no matter how many of their victims (all of us) don't like it. Whether you fight back, or not, the boot is coming.

#Fascism #Trump #Democracy #Protest #Crackdown #Genocide #HumanRights #FirstAmendment #CivilRights #Gaza #ClimateCrisis #Israel #StudentProtests #ClassWar #Capitalism #UnitedStates #FossilFuels #SettlerColonialism

So, if you were wondering whether there's anything hypothetical about the "chilling effect" all this fascist repression is designed to produce in folks who oppose the Trump regime, a recent Guardian article demonstrates that it's real and ongoing - not just for anti-genocide protestors and foreign students, but for US-born critics of the regime writing in college papers too:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/07/student-journalists-remove-stories-trump

US student journalists go dark fearing Trump crusade against pro-Palestinian speech

"Fearing legal repercussions, online harassment and professional consequences, student journalists are retracting their names from published articles amid intensifying repression by the Trump administration targeting students perceived to be associated with the pro-Palestinian movement.

Editors at university newspapers say that anxiety among writers has risen since the arrest of the Tufts University graduate student Rumeysa Ozturk, who is currently in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) detention fighting efforts to deport her. While the government has not pointed to evidence supporting its decision to revoke her visa, she wrote an op-ed last year in a student newspaper critical of Israel, spurring fears that simply expressing views in writing is now viewed as sufficient grounds for deportation.

Ozturk is one of nearly a dozen students or scholars who have been seized by immigration officials since 8 March, when Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia graduate student and green card holder, was arrested and placed in deportation proceedings over his role in pro-Palestinian protests. Student editors report particularly acute anxieties among international students who have contributed to their newspapers, but say that requests to take down stories over fears of retaliation are coming from US citizens, too."

The reality that no authoritarian regime wants dissidents to realize, is that they literally do not have the resources to police and punish *everyone* who opposes the state. What they rely on is cracking down on high profile targets that generate a lot of publicity, folks like Mahmoud Khalil, and Rumeysa Ozturk, to force everyone else to self censor, lest they be next. I'm not going to criticize the student writers for asking college newspapers at institutions that have shown no ability or willingness to protect them, to erase their critiques of the regime to protect their personal safety; very few people in our society are actually prepared to suffer the horrible consequences of a fascist police state targeting them personally, and a lot of people reading this would make the same decision in their shoes.

What I will say however is that this response is exactly what the fascist Trump regime wants, and that's why it behooves the rest of society to give a fuck about the free speech rights of student protestors and journalists; and act in numbers large enough to protect us all while working to stop this fascist repression by any means necessary.

#Fascism #Trump #StudentProtests #FreeSpeech #Journalism #IdeologicalPolicing #PoliceState #CivilRights #Gaza #Genocide #Palestine #Israel #MahmoudKhalil #HigherEd #RumeysaOzturk