A-Infos (en) Italy, FAI, Umanita Nova #19-26 - Security Obsessions and Repression. The White House's New Counterterrorism Document (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

At the end of May, the White House released the new United States 
Counterterrorism Strategy 2026, the document in which the US 
administration defines the priorities, objectives, and tools of its 
counterterrorism policy. This isn't a technical memo for insiders. It's 
the document in which Washington declares which threats it considers 
priority and what concept of security it intends to assert within and 
beyond its borders.
It's sixteen pages packed with operational guidelines and political 
vision. It discusses drug cartels, international jihadism, border 
control, cyber operations, the Middle East, and Latin America. But this 
document also contains something that deserves special attention, as it 
directly concerns the field of political and social conflict.

"Violent Left-Wing Extremists, including Anarchists and Anti-Fascists," 
are also listed among the main terrorist threats against the United 
States. The document explicitly addresses the issue, indicating, among 
its strategic priorities, the identification and neutralization of 
political groups defined as anti-American, radically pro-transgender, 
and anarchist.

It's worth reflecting on these lines. This isn't an off-the-cuff 
statement or a rally slogan. It's an official national security 
document. And that's precisely what makes it politically relevant.

Because when a power like the United States explicitly includes 
anarchists and anti-fascists within the scope of the fight against 
terrorism, we're not just dealing with a lexical choice. We're dealing 
with a precise political signal, one that speaks to intelligence 
agencies, police forces, international allies, and Western governments. 
It's a signal that fits within a broader climate, in which social and 
political dissent is increasingly treated as a matter of public order 
and security.

When the political enemy becomes a matter of security

The history of the modern state is also the history of the construction 
of the "enemy within." Times, governments, and names change. But the 
mechanism returns. At times it has been the subversive, the Bolshevik, 
the undesirable foreigner, the anarchist, the terrorist. Different 
figures, but brought together by the same political function: to 
identify those perceived as outsiders and present them as a collective 
threat.

Over the past twenty-five years, this process has focused primarily on 
the word "terrorism." After September 11th, that category assumed 
enormous weight in Western political and legal lexicon. In its name, 
special laws were passed, surveillance powers were expanded, 
intelligence apparatuses were strengthened. Measures that began as 
exceptional have become routine.

Today, that paradigm seems to be expanding even further.

The White House document doesn't just mention jihadist networks or 
transnational armed organizations. Something else emerges: social 
conflict explicitly enters the language of national security. Anarchism, 
militant anti-fascism, and political radicalism more generally are named 
as elements of a threat to be monitored and neutralized.

It's not just a lexical shift. It's a political shift.

When dissent is interpreted through the category of security, it ceases 
to be perceived as an expression of social conflict or political 
opposition and is relocated within the realm of emergency. No longer a 
political adversary, but a potential factor of destabilization.

And it is precisely here that the line becomes blurred. Where does the 
repression of violent behavior end and the security management of 
dissent begin? This is a question that concerns the United States, but 
it also speaks very closely to today's Europe.

From America to Europe: Different lexicons, same direction

It would be too simple to imagine a direct transition from the United 
States to Europe. The political contexts are different, as are the legal 
and institutional traditions. Yet, looking at the overall picture, a 
common trend clearly emerges.

In the United States, the language is that of counterterrorism strategy. 
In Europe, the vocabulary is changing: public safety, border control, 
urban order, countering extremism. The words are different, but the 
political direction often appears the same.

Social and political dissent is increasingly treated less as a natural 
part of democratic conflict and more as a security issue. Mobilizations, 
pickets, occupations, and protests are removed from the realm of 
political debate and relegated to the realm of public order or emergency.

Conflict thus ceases to be interpreted for what it expresses-a social 
fracture, a claim, a need-and is translated into the language of risk to 
be contained.

It is in this shift that conflict is progressively depoliticized. It is 
no longer addressed on social or political grounds, but through criminal 
law, police apparatuses, and preventive surveillance.

The result is that what should open a space for discussion is 
increasingly treated as a security issue. And dissent, from an 
expression of conflict, becomes a factor of disorder and an object of 
control.

The Italian Case

In Italy, this process is not a new one. It has deep roots, but in 
recent years it has gained new momentum and political legitimacy.

The lexicon of the so-called "security decrees" has progressively 
shifted the center of gravity of public discourse: what was once 
interpreted on social or political grounds is increasingly translated 
into terms of security, public order, and emergency. The conflict thus 
ends up being narrated not for what it expresses-demand, opposition, 
resistance-but for the disruption it causes to the existing order.

It doesn't concern a single movement. The phenomenon is broader and 
involves very diverse realities: migration, housing occupations, 
territorial conflicts, workers' pickets, environmental mobilizations, 
solidarity networks.

The point isn't just the tightening of sanctions or the repression of 
individual behaviors. There's something deeper: the construction of a 
political culture of order in which anyone who disrupts social normality 
is easily transformed into a security problem.

Thus, dissent ceases to appear as an expression of real conflict and is 
narrated as a collective threat. No longer an inconvenient voice in the 
public sphere, but an element to be contained, isolated, prevented. And 
it is in this shift-often gradual, almost imperceptible-that one of the 
most evident political changes of recent years can be measured.

A political convergence that comes from afar

It would be excessive to speak of a single director. But it's hard not 
to see an increasingly evident political and cultural convergence 
between the United States and Europe.

Governments, institutional systems, and vocabulary are changing. But the 
overall picture presents common features. Security becomes the 
privileged terrain for building consensus. Order is pitted against 
conflict, stability against dissent, control against freedom of movement 
and organization. Everything that exceeds the perimeter of governable 
normality tends to be reduced to the language of threat.

On this terrain, the contemporary right has built a significant part of 
its hegemony. It promises protection, but often produces control. It 
invokes security, but ends up narrowing the space for legitimate 
conflict and expanding that of surveillance. It doesn't just repress 
behavior: it redefines what can be perceived as dangerous.

For the anarchist movement, all of this has something profoundly familiar.

In the United States, the criminalization of anarchism is nothing new. 
American history has already experienced it: after Haymarket, during the 
Palmer Raids of 1919-1920, in the political and judicial climate 
surrounding the trial and execution of Sacco and Vanzetti. Each time, 
the mechanism recurs in different forms but according to a recognizable 
dynamic: an emergency is constructed, repressive measures are 
strengthened, the target perimeter is expanded.

And that perimeter rarely remains confined to those first struck.

This is the lesson that history continues to teach us. When dissent is 
transformed into a question of security, it's not just the fate of a 
political minority that's at stake. The space for freedom for all is 
gradually shrinking.

This is why carefully reading a document like the United States 
Counterterrorism Strategy 2026 today doesn't mean dwelling on a detail 
of American policy. It means observing a broader trend of our present. 
Because what is identified as a threat today can become the limit of 
everyone's freedom tomorrow.

Totò Caggese

https://umanitanova.org/ossessioni-securitarie-e-repressione-il-nuovo-documento-antiterrorismo-della-casa-bianca/
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