Anarchist conviction offers grim harbinger of Trump’s war on the ‘left’
by Standards From the hard left of the San Francisco Bay Area, Casey Goonan’s crimes were ordinary. A police SUV was partially burned by an incendiary device on the UC Berkeley campus. A bush farm caught fire after Goonan tried unsuccessfully to smash a glass office window and firebomb the federal building in downtown Oakland.
But thanks to a series of statements in which Gonan claimed he carried out the summer 2024 attacks in solidarity with Hamas and the East Bay native’s anarchist beliefs, federal prosecutors claimed Gonan “intended to promote” terrorism in addition to a felony charge for using an incendiary device. Goonan’s original charges did not specifically include terrorism-related charges. In late September, U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White sentenced Goonan, whom they described as a “domestic terrorist” during the hearing, to 19 1/2 years in prison plus 15 years of probation. Prosecutors also asked that he be sent to a Bureau of Prisons facility that houses a Communications management units, It is a highly restricted assignment reserved for what the government claims are “extremist” prisoners involved in crimes or terrorism-related affiliations.
Although the Gonan case began under the Biden administration, it offers a glimpse into the approach the Justice Department may take in President Donald Trump’s upcoming attack against the “left,” which was formalized in late September in National Security Presidential Memorandum No. 7 (NSPM-7)an executive order targeting anti-fascist beliefs, opposition to Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids, and criticizing capitalism and Christianity as “potential indicators of terrorism.”
In addition to Goonan’s alleged admiration for Hamas – a designated terrorist organization since 1997 – and his involvement in founding True Leap, Small anarchist publisherthe 35-year-old Ph.D. in African American Studies’ resume includes another trait targeted by the Trump administration and its allies: Goonan identifies as a transgender person. While NPSM-7 cites “the migration of extremism, race, and gender” as indicative of “this pattern of violent and terrorist tendencies,” the Heritage Foundation has attempted to link fluid gender identity to mass shootings, and is urging the FBI to create a deceptive new domestic terrorism designation for “transgender ideology-inspired violent extremism,” or TIVE.
At the same time, the executive order directs the sprawling counterterrorism apparatus of the post-9/11 US security state to redirect it away from neo-Nazis, Proud Boys, white nationalists, Christian nationalists, and other far-right actors that have been repressed. Very responsible For the majority of political violence of the past few decades, toward opponents of ICE, anti-fascists, and the administration in general. Along with violent actors, NSPM-7 directs federal law enforcement to scrutinize nonprofit groups and charities involved in funding organizations that espouse amorphous ideologies, ranging from “supporting the overthrow of the United States government” to expressing “hostility toward those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.”
“NSPM-7 is the natural peak of”Radicalization theory“Basically the American approach to counterterrorism,” says Mike German, a retired FBI agent who spent years infiltrating violent white supremacist groups and resigned from the bureau in response to the shift in terrorism strategy after 9/11. Germain explored the path of extremism theory in his 2019 book, Disruption, discredit, and division: How the new FBI is destroying democracy.