{"id":12680,"date":"2026-05-09T13:12:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-09T13:12:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/2026\/05\/09\/largely-slop-trumps-new-counterterrorism-strategy-is-scant-on-substance-but-heavy-on-enemies-the-guardian\/"},"modified":"2026-05-09T13:12:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-09T13:12:09","slug":"largely-slop-trumps-new-counterterrorism-strategy-is-scant-on-substance-but-heavy-on-enemies-the-guardian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/2026\/05\/09\/largely-slop-trumps-new-counterterrorism-strategy-is-scant-on-substance-but-heavy-on-enemies-the-guardian\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Largely slop\u2019: Trump\u2019s new counterterrorism strategy is scant on substance but heavy on enemies – The Guardian"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

When Donald Trump<\/a>\u2019s counter-terrorism \u201cczar\u201d, Sebastian Gorka, introduced the Trump administration<\/a>\u2019s long-awaited counter-terrorism strategy on a call with journalists on Wednesday, he also reportedly described critics of the administration\u2019s war in Iran as \u201ctesticularly challenged<\/a>\u201d.<\/p>\n

The at-times bizarre 16-page memo<\/a> Gorka authored is only slightly more subtle \u2013 taking rhetorically charged swings at the president\u2019s enemies, the Biden administration, transgender people and some Islamist groups, while offering little clarity about the threat posed by political violence domestically or abroad or any specific plans to address it.<\/p>\n

\u201cPresident Trump has affected a complete revision of how we defeat threats to America predicated on national sovereignty and civilizational confidence and the objective of destroying the groups who would kill Americans or hurt our interests as a free nation,\u201d the document claims. \u201cThis applies to cartels, Jihadists, left-wing violent extremists, state actors and state sponsors, or any future terror threat.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Political and security analysts slammed the memo as \u201clargely slop<\/a>\u201d, \u201cutterly unhinged<\/a>\u201d and an \u201cexercise in gaslighting, partisanship and obsequiousness<\/a>\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the opposite of \u2018speak softly and carry a big stick\u2019. It\u2019s more like \u2018yell loudly to conceal your small stick\u2019,\u201d Colin Clarke, director of the Soufan Center, a security thinktank, wrote<\/a> in a series of blistering posts about the document. \u201cAnd it\u2019s transparent to our allies and adversaries.\u201d<\/p>\n

The memo is largely scant on substance and does not lay out a roadmap for carrying out its prescriptions. It identifies what it labels \u201cthree major types of terror groups\u201d as priorities: \u201cnarcoterrorists and transnational gangs\u201d, \u201clegacy Islamist terrorists\u201d, and \u201cviolent left-wing extremists, including anarchists and anti-fascists\u201d. It makes no mention of far-right or white supremacist ideology, which has consistently been behind incidents of domestic political violence, but singles out \u201cradically pro-transgender\u201d and \u201canti-American\u201d ideology for \u201cneutralization\u201d. It claims immigration has turned Europe<\/a> into an \u201cincubator of terror threats\u201d and called on European allies to \u201chalt its willful decline\u201d. And it accuses past administrations of having \u201cweaponized\u201d the intelligence community, pledging to keep the intelligence apparatus from being used as a political tool \u201cagainst innocent Americans\u201d even as it outlines a plan that appears to do exactly that.<\/p>\n

With regard to groups on the left it broadly dubs \u201cviolent secular political groups\u201d, the document vows: \u201cWe will use all the tools constitutionally available to us to map them at home, identify their membership, map their ties to international organizations like Antifa, and use law enforcement tools to cripple them operationally before they can maim or kill the innocent.\u201d<\/p>\n

Critics described the document, which makes half a dozen references to the Biden administration\u2019s supposed failures, as both \u201ccompletely Trumpian\u201d and an \u201calarming\u201d escalation in rhetoric. They particularly warned about the expanded use of a terrorism framework as pretext to deny the basic civil and political rights of targeted individuals.<\/p>\n

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Nadia Ben-Youssef, advocacy director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, noted that the strategy openly embraces state violence and political repression, and normalizes extraordinary measures like illegal military strikes, renditions, deployment of the military and immigration enforcement agents, and digital surveillance.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe document follows in the Trumpian tradition and that of the broader rightwing movement by explicitly articulating an extremist worldview, and openly promoting policy and a vengeful executive unbounded by law,\u201d she said. \u201cIt overtly dehumanizes communities, and lauds executive action that has violated the constitution and international law.\u201d<\/p>\n

The strategy collapses a swath of disfavored communities and the broader political left \u201cinto \u2018terrorists posing an existential threat to the US\u2019\u201d, Ben-Youssef added. \u201c[It] can only be understood as a political project to criminalize dissent, demonize migrants, target Muslim communities, and label transgender people and their allies as acceptable targets of marginalization, repression and violence.\u201d<\/p>\n

It should come as little surprise that such an extraordinary document should come from Gorka, a far-right commentator whose selection as senior director for counter-terrorism drew ridicule and consternation even from within the ranks<\/a> of the right.<\/p>\n

For all that is unprecedented about the administration, however, Ben-Youssef and others argued that Trump is only expanding upon a flawed and dangerous counter-terrorism apparatus the administration has inherited from previous ones.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe document unfortunately builds off of decades-long elements of US counter-terrorism policy,\u201d said Chip Gibbons, policy director at the civil liberties group Defending Rights & Dissent. \u201cA lot of people are very shocked by the language about leftwing extremists, anarchist extremists. And it is very shocking. But that language is not new.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump may be unique in his willingness to crush democracy and dissent, Gibbons added. \u201cBut he\u2019s doing so using tools that were handed to him and were created and sharpened over the last couple of decades.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Donald Trump\u2019s counter-terrorism \u201cczar\u201d, Sebastian Gorka, introduced the Trump administration\u2019s long-awaited counter-terrorism strategy on a call with journalists on Wednesday, he also reportedly described critics of the administration\u2019s war in Iran as \u201ctesticularly challenged\u201d. The at-times bizarre 16-page memo Gorka authored is only slightly more subtle \u2013 taking rhetorically charged swings at the president\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12681,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12680","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12680"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12680\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12681"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}