The word “terrorist” in American political discourse is under transformation from legal category to tribal marker. It now means “enemy” and nothing more.
This isn’t hyperbole. It’s the operational reality of how the designation framework functions under the current administration—and why it functions that way.
The Residue of a “Both Sides” Civil War
The United States has no domestic terrorism statute. No mechanism exists to formally designate purely American organizations as terrorist groups. This isn’t a gap waiting to be filled. It’s a firewall to protect losers of Civil War.
Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) designations unlock specific powers: material support prosecutions, financial sanctions, military authorities. The FTO list made headlines when Trump designated the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. His man-with-too-many-hats Rubio designated Mexican cartels and Tren de Aragua as Foreign Terrorist Organizations and Specially Designated Global Terrorists.
The stated purpose is banking access and law enforcement tools. It’s a lie. Those already existed through money laundering and RICO frameworks.
What FTO designation adds is military authorization language. It is for war. The Trump administration called its relentless bombing of Venezuelan day laborers, killing over 100 in small boats at sea, justified as “War Department” efforts to stop WMD (drugs) being dropped (sold in a market) by terrorists (fishermen).
John Walsh, director for drug policy and the Andes at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), said drug cartels lack the organisation, armaments and political motives to be considered “combatants”. […] “The WMD designation is meant to underscore the administration’s narrative that these are fearsome armies and invading forces that have weapons of mass destruction at their disposal. But again, I think that doesn’t have any basis,” Walsh said. He raised concerns that the designation could be used to “unlock authorities” for the administration to conduct strikes inside the US.
Rubio’s careful phrasing about “imminent threat” and crossing “into our borders” isn’t law enforcement vocabulary. It’s specific authorization-for-force vocabulary to wage wars foreign and domestic on non-combatants without declaring wars, to strategically avoid laws. The designation of TdA, attributed to Maduro’s Venezuela, built the legal fiction for the disproportionately massive military January 2026 invasion that captured one man. No police force in the world, not even America, flies hundreds of planes and strikes critical infrastructure to knock out power to 3 million people, just to serve an arrest warrant on one guy for drugs. “Counterterrorism” and a “war” was spread as propaganda, to upsell from drug enforcement or even regime change. And after kidnapping, the same propaganda machine rapidly deflated its own rhetoric by fraudulently retroactively claiming “police action”, trying to scrub all its pre-invasion war rhetoric.
Meanwhile, the domestic gap stands as a monument to white supremacists, especially those running drugs like the Sacramento cells. The KKK has never been designated. Atomwaffen Division, despite cells across multiple countries, wasn’t designated even when RIM was—because Atomwaffen is in the U.S.; domestic designation would shift statutory interpretations of “foreignness.” The administration designated a little-known Russian organization with no U.S. activity, declared victory against white supremacist terrorism, and left ALL the directly comparable American hate networks untouched.
White Privilege Protection
The KKK isn’t undesignated because of a legal gap. The legal gap exists because the KKK’s ideological descendants hold power.
As I’ve pointed out before, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions the Third was the third generation holding out for Confederate leaders of the Civil War who wanted to destroy the Constitution to preserve slavery.
And Jefferson Beauregard was appointed by Trump, with his overt KKK name and ties front and center to his appointment, as head of the DoJ; the precise institution created by President Grant to destroy the KKK. It would be like the Germans appointing a guy named Hitler Goebbels the Third to read their radio news today. America prevented that absurd turnabout from being possible in a foreign country, while making it the goal at home.
Pete Hegseth was flagged by the military as a threat to the country, so after leaving he covered himself with even more crusader iconography and pushed for war criminal pardons. Those were then deemed by Trump his qualifications to take over the military.
Trump in Charlottesville, “stand back and stand by,” dinner with Nick Fuentes. Stephen Miller. The Proud Boys—pardoned. The Oath Keepers—pardoned. Patriot Front marches openly. The through-line from Klan to current administration isn’t subtle.
It’s the explanation.
Fuentes recently boasted 40% of the White House already are Nazis.
If domestic designation existed, the machinery would eventually point at them. So they keep the domestic gap intact to protect the base, inflate foreign designations for cartels and gangs and whatever serves the news cycle, and ironically use “terrorist” rhetorically against their domestic opponents without legal mechanism.
It’s like how Ronald Reagan as governor of California called himself a gun rights advocate while demanding Blacks have their guns taken away. That man was not subtle about his racism, and he was elected President because of it.
The rhetoric does the work without the legal exposure. Throw chaotic shifting “terrorist” insults at protesters because they differ in political views, treat them as terrorists and murder them at shock troop checkpoints—but never formally designate, because formal designation establishes law and order through records, standards, potential judicial review.
Double Standard Visibility
| Iran Protesters | American Protesters | |
|---|---|---|
| Deaths | 100+ confirmed, 70 bodies to one hospital in single night | 30+ dead in custody (2025), citizens shot at checkpoints |
| Trump response | “If they start killing people”—after killing already documented | Protesters “brainwashed,” resistance to federal forces criminalized |
| Designation | Iran’s label: “enemy of God” | DHS label: enemy of State “terrorists” |
| Consequence | Justifies military intervention | Justifies blackout, no investigation |
Iranian deaths are being used to justify a military action long desired. American deaths are being ignored as inconvenient—information to suppress because acknowledging them would expose the administration puts over half of America Last based on race.
Trump’s “if they start killing people” rhetoric after Iran has been killing hundreds of people performs the same function as the loose FTO designations. It creates a false starting point from which all subsequent action appears reactive. Future military action is being staged now as a false “response” rather than aggression.
Historical Through-Line
Ruby Ridge (1992): Federal agents kill white separatist’s wife and son. Two deaths. Congressional hearings. Settlements. Cited for three decades as proof of federal tyranny. The militia movement builds its entire persecution narrative around it. It’s been the canonical NRA story for why everyone needs to open-carry assault rifles with banana clips and prepare weekly for violent response to federal agents.
January 6 (2021): Coordinated political violence to overturn election. Cops beaten. Capitol breached. Textbook domestic terrorism by any behavioral definition. Pardoned. Families compensated. Participants in unprovoked violence against federal agents called “patriots” and “political prisoners.”
2025-26 Reversal: American civilians shot to death at checkpoints. Killed in custody. One ICE agent texted after shooting a Chicago woman: “I fired 5 shots and she had 7 holes. Put that in your book boys.” No hearings. No settlements. No investigation. No Ruby Ridge invocations.
The math: 2 dead produced decades of outrage and congressional action, a template for resisting federal agents or worse. Now 30+ dead in Trump custody produces silence. 4+ shot by Trump’s agents produces “put that in your book.”
Ruby Ridge was held up to warn government will kill citizens. That was supposed to be the thing that justified decades of anti-federal organizing and militancy. Now the Ruby Ridge types are the federal government, and they are doing the killing, and the lesson… evaporates. The outrage was never about freedom for citizens. It was about government killing specific citizens.
Friend/Enemy
Carl Schmitt, the Nazi jurist, defined politics as the distinction between friend and enemy. The terrorist designation framework now operates on exactly this principle.
January 6 was terrorism defined: coordinated, politically motivated, violent, aimed at influencing government. But they’re being reclassified as our terrorists, so they’re treated as patriots.
Protesters opposing extrajudicial execution by federal shock troops are their people, so… they’re treated as terrorists without any designation—because that designation would mean a legal process, and legal process might produce accountability in a regime that operates instead like dictatorship.
Foreign protesters get “God-given rights to freedom.” Domestic protesters get shot by God-given bullets at random checkpoints.
Same acts. Opposite designations. Based entirely on tribal membership.
The American treatment of the word “terrorist” is now pure friend/enemy marker to curate white power. The legal architecture exists to formalize that marking against foreign targets, for purposes of asset seizure, while protecting domestic allies from ever facing the same machinery for asset capture and hoarding. The asymmetry is the design.