Medea Benjamin, who has been a peace activist for decades, walks the halls of Congress nearly every day. She’s small in stature, 72 years old, calm, and pragmatic. She asks members of Congress basic questions: “Don’t you think children should stop being killed?”; “Don’t you support an end to the war?”; and “Do you support free speech?” Videos of these encounters routinely go viral. The lawmakers’ collective responses are telling of a larger, creepier reality in American politics. In the wake of Mahmoud Khalil’s illegal kidnapping by immigration enforcement, it’s increasingly important to recognize and reckon with how people in “the land of the free” are treated when they oppose Washington’s foreign policy.
Khalil’s arrest didn’t come out of the blue. Republicans have been talking about deporting people who they claim “support Hamas” for months now. It’s important to first clarify what they mean by “supporting Hamas.” They mean anyone who dares oppose the violence inflicted on the Palestinian people in Gaza. They mean anyone who dares take issue with the fact that their taxes are used to drop bombs on women and children.
Unfortunately for the state that seeks to protect Israel and itself from the consequences of their own actions — they are now referring to a majority of the American population that abhors this barbarity. And while Republicans are clearly leading the charge when it comes to deportations, Democrats spew similar vitriol towards people who would rather their country not be complicit in genocide.
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Long before Khalil’s arrest, Democratic and Republican leaders alike were calling on police to repress and assault student protestors in their cities. Their counterparts in Congress met peace activists with an identical hatred. There is proof all over CODEPINK’s social media (and I only use Medea as an example that has extensive documentation) of the story they are trying to sew of anti-genocide activists.
Weeks ago, Medea ran into US Representative Nick Langworthy, a Republican from New York, and asked, “How are you doing today?” He replied by batting his hand at her and saying, “Uh, terrorist.” He went on to insist Medea was paid by Hezbollah and Hamas.
More recently, US Representative Burgess Owens, when asked about Mahmoud Khalil’s right to free speech, told Medea that Khalil was a terrorist and should “go home.” Medea asked him for an explanation about where he got his (incorrect) information. He just repeated his talking points like a broken record. It would turn into an entire dissertation to recount all the times members of Congress have called Medea a terrorist.
The political elite learned well from their history. The accusation of terrorism serves as a way to shut the conversation down — and there are multiple, escalated stages of that repression.
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During the second Red Scare, when the political elite and media created a hysteria about communist loyalties in the US, the House Committee on Unamerican Activities (HUAC) was formed. Members of Congress, along with government agencies, manufactured the hysteria from the ground up. They stoked Cold War anxieties, creating an enemy out of the Soviet people for the average American to hate. They planted in people’s heads that their friends, neighbors, or community members could be communists — or in other words: disloyal to the United States and loyal to “the enemy.”
Communists were portrayed as a dire threat to national security, which they then translated to mean the individual safety of Americans. The word “communist” became toxic. It was used to target people who supported things like public housing, labor unions, or any social apparatus that might benefit working people. The hysteria spread from coast to coast, creating a paranoid and repressive political environment for people who may have been communists (but some weren’t).
People who stand up for the economic rights of the working class surely are a threat, but only to the political elite who benefit from having their boot on our necks. In the midst of the Red Scare, after the establishment of HUAC, organizer and activist Claudia Jones was deported from the United States. The Red Scare began with a discursive silencing, then escalated to firing, jailing, and deportations.
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Throwing around the “terrorist” label is a tell-tale sign that we are living in a new Red Scare era. Maybe trying to outlaw a political ideology like communism would be too obvious. The “terrorist” label packs a timelier punch. The American memory is short, but not short enough to forget about the Sept. 11 attacks and the subsequent War on Terror.
The label implies someone is violent and ready to kill for their beliefs, and members of Congress are throwing it around at people like it’s nothing. They’ve been doing this to peace activists increasingly since October 2023, when it became clear to the ruling class that large swaths of the population opposed the collective punishment of Palestinians.
The end result of this cornering is a complete dissolution of democracy and free speech, because while Medea asking if a member of Congress supports peace isn’t a crime that can be punished — “terrorism” or “support for terrorism,” with its shaky definitions, is. In the current political climate that has little regard for rule of law, the accusation being leveled at peace activists by our most powerful leaders has a chilling effect. We moved past the stage of discursive repression long ago. The tilt towards all-out silencing happened when Columbia had the New York Police Department brutalize and arrest students. Now, our academic institutions effectively help till the soil for the state deport people on these false charges of “supporting terrorism.”
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While it was no crime for Claudia Jones to be a communist, she was one — in a political environment where it wasn’t very popular. Most people in the US at her time weren’t communists. Mahmoud Khalil and the movement for Palestine in the US have different conditions. Political leaders are calling Khalil a terrorist, but they are not charging him for being one. In fact, he hasn’t been charged with any crime. Over half of all Americans don’t support the ongoing genocide in Gaza like the country’s leaders do. Unlike the time of the Red Scare, the state aims to repress a very popular movement.
Medea rides her bike to and from her home every day in Washington DC to walk around in Congress and ask questions. Then she goes home and eats dinner with her friends and partner. She reads a lot and watches a lot of news. She visits family and spends a lot of time with her community. The repressive forces despise that most of us are just regular people, trying to keep our head above water.
Some of us, like activists in DC and Mahmoud Khalil in New York, take the time to express the opinions of the masses. As the legal lines blur, the right-wing raises the threshold of hysteria, and the center makes room for them to do it through capitulation and political ease, Americans must stand firm in our beliefs. Demanding dignity is not terrorism, and the elite ringing the alarm bell about anti-war activists proves that the only threat we pose is to their ever-hungry war machine.
