{"id":318678,"date":"2026-07-27T12:00:41","date_gmt":"2026-07-27T11:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=318678"},"modified":"2026-07-22T18:29:32","modified_gmt":"2026-07-22T17:29:32","slug":"trumps-phantom-enemies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2026\/07\/trumps-phantom-enemies\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump\u2019s Phantom Enemies"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Your Death Is My Command – by Mr. Fish<\/p><\/div>\n

The Trump administration is laying the groundwork for blacklisting and criminalizing all left-wing, progressive, anti-war and anti-imperialist dissent.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

22 Jul 2026\u00a0<\/em>–\u00a0The State Department\u2019s 100-page report<\/a> on Cuba\u2019s \u201ccampaign of subversion against the United States,\u201d along with Donald Trump\u2019s assertion<\/a> that \u201cAmericans were blatantly lied to about the security of our election infrastructure,\u201d lays the groundwork for dictatorship.<\/p>\n

Elections will be sabotaged in the name of \u201cnational security.\u201d Left-wing dissent will be criminalized in the name of \u201ccombating terrorism.\u201d Democracy will be snuffed out in the name of protecting \u201cfreedom.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump, who has lately taken to issuing warnings about a communist plot<\/a> to take over America, posits that an island of 9.6 million people \u2014 nearly 90 percent of whom live in extreme poverty amid extended blackouts due to decades of U.S. economic warfare \u2014 is an existential threat.<\/p>\n

These accusations are not meant to be rational. They, like the charge that our elections are manipulated, are transparent excuses to go after institutions and individuals that are seen as threatening Trump and the Republican Party\u2019s absolute grip on power. While Cuba has supposedly \u201ccarried out one of the most durable and damaging foreign intelligence penetrations in American history\u201d Russia, China, Iran and North Korea, as well as non-state groups, \u201chave the capability to compromise U.S. election infrastructure.\u201d<\/p>\n

Under the heading \u201cFront Groups and Fellow Travelers,\u201d the report assembles a disparate collection of organizations belonging to Cuba\u2019s\u201cideological network.\u201d<\/p>\n

For example, the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization (IFCO)<\/a>, founded as an ecumenical social justice organization by the Presbyterian Church, is described as part of a Cuba \u201csolidarity network\u201d which \u201cfacilitates radical agitation within the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n

I am an ordained Presbyterian minister. I can assure you the Presbyterian Church is not facilitating \u201cradical agitation.\u201d<\/p>\n

The report lists a wide variety of organizations on whose behalf IFCO has acted as an intermediary \u2014 perfectly legally \u2014 facilitating tax-exempt donations and handling grant management, compliance and reporting. These include The Jericho Movement<\/a>, Equality for Flatbush<\/a>, Claudia Jones School<\/a>, Haitian Women for Haitian Refugees<\/a>, changingFrequencies<\/a>, Viva Palestina US<\/a>, and The People\u2019s Forum<\/a>, which the report describes as \u201ca major activist group in Cuba\u2019s U.S. ideological network.\u201d<\/p>\n

The National Lawyers Guild<\/a> (NLG) and Democratic Socialists of America<\/a> (DSA) are castigated in the same chapter. The NLG \u201cis one of the most persistently relevant \u2014 and insidious \u2014 organizations in Cuba\u2019s U.S. network.\u201d<\/p>\n

The report continues:<\/p>\n

The association of extreme-left lawyers and radical street activists has played a key role in a disproportionate share of the far-left terror and violence that has plagued the United States from the 1960s up to today. Throughout its history, it has maintained intimate ties to Cuba and other communist regimes and has explicitly sought to advance the causes of the international far left, including by working to defend and facilitate terrorism and extremist violence \u2014 from the Weather Underground of the 1970s to the violent BLM militants and Antifa terror cells of today.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The NLG is labeled a foreign influence operation because it provides assistance to activists, whose right to legal representation is constitutionally enshrined.<\/p>\n

In 2025, the Trump administration conditioned federal funding to Harvard University on defunding and dissolving the law school\u2019s chapter of the National Lawyers Guild (HLS NLG<\/a>), which provided legal assistance to individuals and student groups that opposed the genocide.<\/p>\n

A subsection in the report is dedicated to the anti-war activists at CODEPINK and their co-founders Medea Benjamin<\/a> and Jodie Evans<\/a>. It notes Evans\u2019 marriage to the wealthy software entrepreneur Neville Roy Singham was attended by a \u201cWho\u2019s Who\u2019 of progressivism\u201d including co-host of Democracy Now! Amy Goodman; Ben & Jerry\u2019s co-founder Ben Cohen and the playwright V (formerly known as Eve Ensler) who wrote \u201cThe Vagina Monologues.\u201d<\/p>\n

Naming guests at a wedding is one of the more bizarre passages.<\/p>\n

The report grossly exaggerates the influence of Singham\u2019s support for left-wing organizations \u2014 described as \u201cfar-left\u201d \u2014 while ignoring the massive sums supplied by U.S. corporations, millionaires and billionaires, as well as the Israel lobby, to both major political parties, super PACs, think tanks and advocacy networks.<\/p>\n

Israel has a far more insidious influence on U.S. politics and foreign policy than Cuba, Russia and China combined<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The State Department attacks the co-founders of The People\u2019s Forum, Manolo De Los Santos<\/a> and Claudia De la Cruz.<\/p>\n

It draws on documents that are often decades old and infused with Cold War paranoia. These include a 1966 Senate report claiming there is \u201coverwhelming evidence that the machinery of the Cuban Government has been progressively organized over the years, to carry out its number one task \u2014 the export of Communist subversion.\u201d<\/p>\n

It ignores more thoughtful assessments, including a 1981 CIA estimate that acknowledged<\/a> \u201c[m]uch of the turmoil around the world is rooted in regional and local disputes of a political, social, or religious nature and has nothing to do with Communism.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a chapter titled \u201cRevolutionary Tourism,\u201d the Venceremos (\u201cWe Shall Overcome\u201d) Brigade is characterized as one of the most \u201cextensive and dangerous infiltration operations ever undertaken by a foreign power against the United States.\u201d This assertion libels thousands of individuals and organizations as Cuban assets, offering nothing more than innuendo.<\/p>\n

It lists \u201cthe founder of Mother Jones,\u201d \u2014 although there were four founders \u2014\u2013 along with \u201cseveral other [unnamed] notable magazine editors, leaders of powerful labor unions and advocacy groups, think tank executives, and a suite of professors at top U.S. universities\u201d as Brigade \u201calumni.\u201d<\/p>\n

Transporting humanitarian goods to Cuba is not a crime. Although the Justice Department\u2019s extradition request from Spain of philanthropist Fergie Chambers<\/a>, who provided funds to humanitarian organizations in Gaza, may see the criminalization of any person or any group that assists those suffering under sanctions and a blockade.<\/p>\n

The report attacks members of the March 2026 \u201cNuestra Am\u00e9rica Convoy\u201d which transported goods to Cuba \u201cin defiance of U.S. sanctions.\u201d It notes that 120 organizations \u201cfrom across 33 countries joined the caravan\u201d with \u201ca suite of influential progressives,\u201d including Isra Hirsi \u2014 daughter of U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, video game live streamer and commentator Hasan Piker \u2014 with whom I discussed my book<\/a> \u201cA Genocide Foretold\u201d last year \u2014 former U.K. Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn and \u201cseveral other current and former members of European Parliament.\u201d Even the Gaza flotilla activist Thiago Avila \u2014 who I interviewed<\/a> last month after he was tortured by Israeli soldiers \u2014 gets a mention.<\/p>\n

Those listed in the report did not become \u201cradicals\u201d because of Cuban indoctrination. Their politics are homegrown, formed in opposition to racism, genocide, police violence, the terrorizing and killing of immigrants and U.S. citizens by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) thugs and neoliberalism, along with the crimes of U.S. imperialism and militarism.<\/p>\n

The report makes passing reference to a wide range of people on grounds so tenuous that it has to be read to be believed.<\/p>\n

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is mentioned for refusing \u201cto denounce\u201d a \u201ctribute to [Assata] Shakur,\u201d who was almost certainly framed<\/a> for murder and who fled to Cuba after escaping from a U.S. prison in 1979.<\/p>\n

It dedicates two paragraphs to Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass for her \u201cfriendliness towards the communist regime.\u201d The evidence provided is her participation in a congressional delegation that joined then President Barack Obama on a visit to the island.<\/p>\n

Cuban agents, it charges, \u201cmaintain a foothold in hundreds of front groups, activist organizations, solidarity centers, and ideological NGO and nonprofit networks. These groups collectively represent one of the single largest, most sophisticated and dangerous vectors for hostile foreign influence in modern American history.\u201d Cuba has allegedly \u201cinfiltrated the highest reaches of the U.S. government, recruited and cultivated generations of American activists [and] backed an unprecedented wave of leftwing terrorism<\/em> [my emphasis] on American soil.\u201d<\/p>\n

Note the word terrorism<\/em>. Note that it makes these individuals and organizations terrorists<\/em>. Note that it makes them subject to draconian terrorism<\/em> laws. And note that the Trump administration has committed itself to hunting down and rooting out the \u201cradical left.\u201d<\/p>\n

The report charges that Cuba and its allies are mounting \u201ca revolution against western civilization itself \u2014 waged, in part, via the novel and insidious method of persuading the children of the West to turn against their own inheritance.\u201d It accuses Havana of \u201cgleeful support of the George Floyd uprisings.\u201d It asserts that \u201cthe rise of antifa\u201d and \u201cthe explosion of pro-terrorist activism on American college campuses,\u201d can be \u201clinked, in some way, shape, or form, to Cuban influence.\u201d<\/p>\n

It characterizes the DSA as serving \u201cas a particularly potent illustration of the ideological victory of Cuba\u2019s effort to position itself as the spiritual capital of Third Worldist radicalism.\u201d It claims the organization maintains a \u201cfierce, almost religious commitment to the cause of the Cuban regime.\u201d It alleges Cuba has built a \u201csprawling revolutionary network\u201d that has \u201cshaped America\u2019s most famous and influential extremist movements\u201d including the Black Panthers, the Weather Underground and antifa. These networks include \u201cpowerful leftist nonprofits, anti-ICE collectives, socialist groups, and Marxist militant organizations\u201d in the U.S.<\/p>\n

Cuba, the report concludes, \u201chas sought to undermine, degrade and destabilize America with spies and soldiers, but also with students and intellectuals; with terrorist cells, but also with solidarity committees and nonprofit networks with intelligence officers operating under diplomatic cover.\u201d<\/p>\n

The broadside is chilling. It is worse<\/em> than McCarthyism. It presages a savage purging of American society.<\/p>\n

Those named in the report are condemned without evidence. They are denied due process. That the assertions in the report are distorted at best, and often fictitious, is irrelevant. Fascist propaganda is not rooted in truth. It is rooted in a hatred for liberal values, democracy and the left. It is rooted in the belief that once those condemned as human contaminants are removed, there will be a moral, spiritual and economic renaissance.<\/p>\n

We have seen this fascist dance before. We know what comes next. It is not good.<\/p>\n

______________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize\u2013winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for fifteen years for\u00a0<\/em>The New York Times,\u00a0where he served as the Middle East Bureau Chief and Balkan Bureau Chief. He previously worked overseas for\u00a0<\/em>The Dallas Morning News,\u00a0The Christian Science Monitor, and<\/em> NPR. He used to be the host of the Emmy Award-nominated <\/em>RT America show\u00a0<\/em>On Contact.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original – chrishedges.substack.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

22 Jul 2026\u00a0–\u00a0The Trump administration is laying the groundwork for blacklisting and criminalizing all left-wing, progressive, anti-war and anti-imperialist dissent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":235173,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[867,1924,3281,542,249,70],"class_list":["post-318678","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-anglo-america","tag-anglo-america","tag-authoritarianism","tag-evil-empire","tag-fascism","tag-trump","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318678","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=318678"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318678\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":318681,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318678\/revisions\/318681"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/235173"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=318678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=318678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=318678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}