Would Orwell Be Branded a Terrorist? The Government’s War on Thought Crimes

“Those who created this country chose freedom. With all of its dangers. And do you know the riskiest part of that choice they made? They actually believed that we could be trusted to make up our own minds in the whirl of differing ideas. That we could be trusted to remain free, even when there were very, very seductive voices—taking advantage of our freedom of speech—who were trying to turn this country into the kind of place where the government could tell you what you can and cannot do.”
Nat Hentoff

The Trump administration is taking its war on free speech into the realm of thought crimes.

This is more than politics.

In declaring “Antifa”—a loose ideology based on opposition to fascism—as a domestic terrorist organization, the government has given itself a green light to treat speech, belief, and association as criminal acts. With this one executive order, political dissent has been rebranded as terrorism and free thought recast as a crime.

Critics will argue that “Antifa” means rioting and property destruction. But violent acts are already crimes, handled under ordinary law.

What’s new—and dangerous—is punishing people not for violence, but for what they believe, say, or with whom they associate. Peaceful protest, political speech, and nonviolent dissent are now being lumped together with terrorism.

Violence should be prosecuted. But when peaceful protest and dissent are treated as terrorism, the line between crime and thought crime disappears.

When the government polices political belief, we’re no longer talking about crime—we’re talking about thought control.

This opens the door to guilt by association, thought crimes, and McCarthy-style blacklists, making it possible for the government to treat peaceful protesters, critics, or even casual sympathizers as terrorists.

Protesters who identify with anti-fascist beliefs—or who, under this administration, simply challenge its power grabs and overreaches—can now be surveilled, prosecuted, and silenced, not for acts of violence but for what they think, say, or believe.

Under this executive order, George Orwell—the antifascist author of 1984—would become an enemy of the state.

This is how dissent becomes labeled as “terrorism” in a police state: by targeting political thought instead of criminal conduct.

Once you can be investigated and punished for your associations or sympathies, the First Amendment is reduced to empty words on paper.

Nor is this an isolated development. It is part of a larger pattern in which the right to think and speak freely without government interference or fear of retribution—long the bedrock of American liberty—is treated as a conditional privilege rather than an inalienable right, granted only to those who toe the official line and revoked from those who dare dissent.

The warning signs are everywhere.

The Pentagon now requires reporters to pledge not to publish “unauthorized” information. Broadcasters silence comedians after political outrage. Social media platforms delete or deplatform disfavored viewpoints.

The common thread running through these incidents is not their subject matter but their method.

Government officials don’t need to pass laws criminalizing dissent when they can simply ensure that dissent is punished and compliance rewarded.

The result is a culture of self-censorship.

The First Amendment was written precisely to prevent this kind of chilling effect.

The U.S. Supreme Court has long recognized that speech does not lose protection simply because it is offensive, controversial, or even hateful.

Yet today, by redefining unpopular expression as “dangerous” or “unauthorized,” government officials have come up with a far more insidious way of silencing their critics.

In fact, the Court has held that it is “a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment…that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea offensive or disagreeable.” It is not, for example, a question of whether the Confederate flag represents racism but whether banning it leads to even greater problems—namely, the loss of freedom in general.

Along with the constitutional right to peacefully (and that means non-violently) assemble, the right to free speech allows us to challenge the government through protests and demonstrations and to attempt to change the world around us—for the better or the worse—through protests and counterprotests.

If citizens cannot stand out in the open and voice their disapproval of their government, its representatives, and its policies without fearing prosecution, then the First Amendment—with all its robust protections for speech, assembly, and petition—is little more than window dressing: pretty to look at, but serving little real purpose.

Living in a representative republic means that each person has the right to take a stand for what they think is right—whether that means marching outside the halls of government, wearing clothing with provocative statements, or simply holding up a sign.

That is what the First Amendment is supposed to be about: assuring the citizenry of the right to express their concerns about their government, in the time, place, and manner best suited to ensuring those concerns are heard.

Unfortunately, through a series of carefully crafted legislative steps and politically expedient court rulings, government officials have managed to disembowel this fundamental freedom, rendering it little more than the right to file a lawsuit against those in power.

In more and more cases, the government is declaring war on what should be protected political speech whenever it challenges authority, exposes corruption, or encourages the citizenry to push back against injustice.

The machinery of censorship is more entrenched than ever.

With growing monopolies of the media, a handful of corporate gatekeepers dominate the digital public square. Government regulators hold powerful levers—licenses, contracts, antitrust threats—that can be used to manipulate content so that only what is approved is publicized. And a public increasingly conditioned to equate harm with offense becomes an unwitting accomplice to suppression, cheering the silencing of adversaries without realizing that the same tools will be used against them tomorrow.

This crackdown on expression is not limited to government action.

Corporate America has now taken the lead in policing speech online, with social media giants such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube using their dominance to censor, penalize, and regulate what users can say. Under the banner of “community standards” against obscenity, violence, hate speech, or intolerance, they suspend or ban users whose content strays from approved orthodoxy.

Make no mistake: this is fascism, American-style.

As presidential advisor Bertram Gross warned in Friendly Fascism: The New Face of Power in America, “Anyone looking for black shirts, mass parties, or men on horseback will miss the telltale clues of creeping fascism. . . . In America, it would be super modern and multi-ethnic—as American as Madison Avenue, executive luncheons, credit cards, and apple pie. It would be fascism with a smile. As a warning against its cosmetic façade, subtle manipulation, and velvet gloves, I call it friendly fascism. What scares me most is its subtle appeal.”

The appeal here is the self-righteous claim to be fighting evils—hatred, violence, intolerance—using the weapons of Corporate America. But those weapons are easily redirected. Today they are aimed at “hate.” Tomorrow they will be aimed at dissent.

The effect is the same: the range of permissible ideas shrinks until only government-approved truths remain.

Combine this with Trump’s Antifa executive order, and the danger becomes unmistakable.

By labeling a loose ideology as terrorism, the government opens the door to treat political opposition as criminal conspiracy. Combine that with corporate censorship, and the result is chilling.

Together, they create a chokehold on dissent.

The Constitution’s promise of free speech becomes little more than words on paper if every outlet for expression—public or private—is policed, monitored, or denied.

“Free speech for me but not for thee” is how my good friend and free speech purist Nat Hentoff used to sum up this double standard.

We have entered an era in which free speech has become regulated speech: celebrated when it reflects the values of the majority, tolerated when it doesn’t, and branded “dangerous” when it dares to challenge political, religious, or cultural comfort zones.

President Trump, who regularly mocks critics while trying to muzzle those who speak out against him, may be the perfect poster child for this age of intolerance. Protest laws, free speech zones, bubble zones, anti-bullying policies, hate-crime statutes, zero-tolerance rules—these legalistic tools, championed by politicians and prosecutors across the political spectrum, have steadily corroded the core freedom to speak one’s mind.

The U.S. government has become particularly intolerant of speech that challenges its power, reveals its corruption, exposes its lies, and encourages the citizenry to push back against its many injustices.

Indeed, there is a long and growing list of the kinds of speech that is being flagged, censored, surveilled, or investigated by the government: “hate speech,” “intolerant speech,” “conspiratorial speech,” “treasonous speech,” “incendiary speech,” “anti-government speech,” “extremist speech,” and more.

By rebranding dissent as dangerous speech, government officials have given themselves the power to police expression without judicial oversight.

This is not a partisan issue.

Under one administration, speech may be stifled in the name of fighting “misinformation.” Under another, it may be curbed in the name of rooting out “dangerous” or “hateful” speech.

The justifications change with the politics of the moment, but the outcome is the same: less speech, narrower debate, and more fear.

The stakes could not be higher.

If we no longer have the right to tell an ICE agent to get off our property, to tell a police officer to get a search warrant before entering our home, to stand outside the Supreme Court with a protest sign, to approach an elected representative to share our views, or  if we no longer have the right to voice our opinions in public—no matter how offensive, intolerant, or politically incorrect—then we do not have free speech.

Just as surveillance stifles dissent, government censorship gives rise to self-censorship, breeds compliance, smothers independent thought, and fuels the kind of frustration that can erupt in violence.

The First Amendment is meant to be a steam valve: allowing people to speak their minds, air grievances, and contribute to a dialogue that hopefully results in a more just world. When that valve is shut—when there is no one to hear what people have to say— frustration builds, anger grows, and society becomes more volatile.

Silencing unpopular viewpoints with which the majority might disagree—whether by shouting them down, censoring them, or criminalizing them—only empowers the Deep State. The motives—discouraging racism, condemning violence, promoting civility—may sound well-intentioned, but the result is always the same: intolerance, indoctrination, and infantilism.

The police state could not ask for better citizens than those who do its censoring for it.

This is how a nation of free people becomes an extension of the surveillance state, turning citizens against each other while the government grows stronger.

The path forward is clear.

As Justice William O. Douglas wrote in his dissent in Colten v. Kentucky, “we need not stay docile and quiet” in the face of authority.

The Constitution does not require Americans to be servile or even civil to government officials.

What is required is more speech not less—even when it offends.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, it’s time to make the government hear us—see us—and heed us.

This is the ultimate power of free speech.

Originally published via The Rutherford Institute

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His book Battlefield America: The War on the American People (SelectBooks, 2015) is available online at www.amazon.com. Whitehead can be contacted at [email protected]. Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.

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