Tal Fortgang The Rise of Civil Terrorism Radicals seek the demise of the West through organized criminal mayhem—here’s how to stop them.
Masked criminals attacked several Citibank locations in New York City one night last September. They brandished no guns and demanded no cash. Instead, they squeezed epoxy and cemented stickers on debit-card readers, damaged door locks, and vandalized windows with profanities and threats of future violence. Rather than keep their identities hidden, the marauders filmed their work and posted it to their enterprise’s Instagram page. “Unity of Fields,” the recently rebranded group formerly known as Palestine Action US—the new name comes from a Palestinian Islamic Jihad call for violence across the world—included a lengthy caption in the post, exhorting followers: “These actions are not hard to do. Please escalate for Palestine and humanity. We will not rest until Palestine is liberated from the river to the sea.”
Over the last few years, but especially since Hamas massacred Israeli civilians on October 7, 2023, this type of organized criminal mayhem has increasingly become part of American life. The criminal bands that have arisen act for ideological reasons. They operate where they believe that they have the most latitude: on college campuses and in Democratic-controlled jurisdictions. And their beliefs are overwhelmingly left-wing: radically environmentalist (“Just Stop Oil”), anarcho-socialist (Antifa), and, most often, anti-Israel.
A framework beyond protest politics and civil disobedience is needed to understand this phenomenon. Today’s left-wing agitators deploy random acts of lawlessness designed to inconvenience and disrupt as many civilians as possible, hoping to pressure them to get the government to change course. This tactic is reasonably described as a form of terrorism, though the activists aren’t murderous like al-Qaida or Hamas—they don’t use guns, bombs, or threats of unpredictable bloodshed. Instead, they engage in civil terrorism.
Though some of these groups, like Antifa, are loosely connected networks of the like-minded, the ascendant anti-Israel, and more broadly anti-Western, outfits come with brand names. Within Our Lifetime, Jewish Voice for Peace, Palestine Action, Samidoun, Students for Justice in Palestine, Party for Socialism and Liberation, Palestinian Youth Movement, IfNotNow, and more—the names signal that the chaos they sow is intentional. Like Unity of Fields, they take credit for their actions and try to stoke more unrest through social media. They put their names on the banners, signs, and other paraphernalia that their members and sympathizers display at “direct actions.”
That’s a euphemism for the sudden, disruptive, and sometimes dangerous maneuvers that are these groups’ specialty. Over the last year, they have organized and carried out hundreds of such actions, routinely violating state and federal law. Anti-Israel demonstrators, for example, have blocked several of the busiest highways in Illinois, California, Washington, D.C., and other states, and have shut down the Brooklyn Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge. All those “actions” are crimes.
The anti-Israel action network has expanded its criminal efforts to include mass vandalism, trespasses, and occasional assaults. Occupying quad space and setting up “Zionist-free zones” violate campus rules and American civil rights law. The groups regularly flout other federal laws, too. Within a mile of the White House, anti-Israel activists graffitied multiple federal-government-maintained statues with such poetry as “Death to Israel” and “Hamas is coming,” assaulted a federal park ranger with bottles and other debris, and stole an American flag from Union Station and burned it—often proclaiming their allegiance to overseas terror groups. Videos showed the few protesters arrested emerging from their short-lived detention to crowds of cheering supporters.
Officials seem mostly to have tolerated it. Vice President Kamala Harris did issue a statement condemning “Pro-Hamas graffiti and rhetoric” as “abhorrent . . . we must not tolerate it in our nation.” She also had strong words for the flag burners. But as of this writing, the Biden administration’s Department of Justice had announced just one prosecution—for destruction of federal property—stemming from the incident.
In the highest-profile case of demonstrators facing prosecution, after dozens of anti-Israel activists blocked the Golden Gate Bridge in November 2023, the San Francisco district attorney settled for a “diversionary” resolution, with protesters required simply not to break the law for the following two months, in order to avoid further legal consequences. “We claim this as a collective victory, and an opportunity to renew our solidarity with Palestine,” the group wrote in a triumphant letter marking the occasion. “Our commitment to Palestine is greater than our fear of the state.”
Progressives appear uneasy about cracking down on such behavior. In September 2024, Michigan attorney general Dana Nessel, a Democrat, charged several anti-Israel demonstrators at the University of Michigan for, among other crimes, the felony offense of assaulting police. Representative Rashida Tlaib decried Nessel’s crackdown on “the right to dissent, the right to protest.” Tlaib added that “it seems that the attorney general,” who is Jewish, “decided if the issue was Palestine, she was going to treat it differently, and that alone speaks volumes about possible biases within the agency she runs.” Democratic governor Gretchen Whitmer issued a mealymouthed statement that effectively declined to take a side.
Though the direct actions can seem like organic protests led by disparate radical organizations, they are best understood as part of a single movement, dedicated to the intentional deployment of mass criminality to achieve ideological goals. Relying on decent Americans’ aversion to escalation, the proliferation of progressive prosecutors, and activists’ strength in numbers, the civil terrorists hope to impose their will on society.
Allowing them to act with such impunity comes with clear risks. Road closures and similar disruptions can inflict real economic damage, from logistical breakdowns to personnel unable to get to work. They can impede key services, like ambulances. And they have the potential to beget more serious violence.
Yet there seems to be little appetite for throwing the book at the activists, their organizers, or their funders. This might reflect the belief that the activists’ tactics are counterproductive to their own ends, leading Americans to associate the anti-Israel movement with aggravating—even enraging—inconvenience. The movement would be self-defeating, on this view.
This assumes, however, that anti-Israel activists want to “persuade.” In a democracy, after all, political movements aim to win support through argument, not by disrupting fellow citizens’ lives or burning American flags. And one could consider the protesters’ actions through the lens of civil disobedience, recalling the 1960s civil rights movement, which also involved minor lawbreaking and was organized by nonprofits, religious groups, and other NGOs. But the similarity stops there. Civil disobedience aimed to spotlight unjust laws through their nonviolent violation. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee led sit-ins and other acts designed to provoke arrest, making the injustice of those laws visible to the public. The civil rights movement remained within democratic norms, in other words, persuading officials to amend laws by winning citizens to the side of reform. What today’s organizations do is not civil disobedience. They seek to bring attention not to the injustice of the laws they violate but to a set of unrelated policies—above all, U.S. foreign policy. The goal is not to gain sympathy while detained but to return to lawlessness, over and over again.
The term “civil terrorism” is therefore apt. It should be no surprise that a movement that valorizes Frantz Fanon would embrace terrorist tactics against two nations—the United States and Israel—that it considers illegitimate occupying powers. Drawing inspiration from the Algerian resistance that drove the French out of that country in the mid-twentieth century (a struggle that continues to inspire Arab terror campaigns against Israel), leftists believe that “occupiers” have an inherent weakness: they are not legitimately connected to the land.
This also explains why these groups are undeterred by public anger; their aim is to make life intolerable for Americans who support Israel, or the U.S. in its current form. Appeasement only emboldens them: if we refrain from arresting or prosecuting them, they believe, we might give in through political concessions. Their approach leverages our law-abiding nature against us.
The civil terrorists echo the revolutionary vehemence of the 1970s Weather Underground, a leading American leftist domestic terror group that also viewed chaos as a key tactic. Splintering from Students for a Democratic Society, the Weather Underground launched a guerrilla campaign against the U.S. with methods similar to today’s civil-terror networks, including window-smashing, trespassing, and assaults on law enforcement. As with today’s civil terrorists, too, their rage was fueled by opposition to what they saw as an unjust war—in their case, Vietnam. The group soon escalated to bombing government buildings and planning mass police killings. Instead of imposing harsher penalties for initial disruptive acts, which might have contained the group, federal law enforcement relied on surveillance, ultimately overstepping constitutional bounds and missing the chance to stop them.
Avoiding the mistakes that let domestic terrorists go unpunished—and later become progressive celebrities or professors at elite law schools—should be reason enough to take the current wave of revolutionary fervor seriously. But pursuing an anti-civil-terror policy is even more urgent now. Today’s threat surpasses that of the Weathermen: the current civil-terror movement is much larger and includes groups that openly support, and likely coordinate with, foreign terror organizations (FTOs) and hostile regimes. While the Weathermen aligned themselves with Communist regimes and aimed for a Marxist revolution in the U.S., their ability to coordinate with or receive resources from these regimes was limited, compared with the support that today’s groups may receive through the dark web, with cryptocurrency, and with the help of savvy, mission-aligned attorneys.
Still, the Weathermen comparison helps put the broadest aims of today’s civil-terror organizations in perspective. They are not just trying to reorient American foreign policy; rather, as one of the main Columbia University anti-Israel groups declared in August, “We are Westerners fighting for the total eradication of Western civilization.” Around the same time, Unity of Fields announced its rebranding as “a militant front against the US-NATO-zionist axis of imperialism.” Its explanation indicates that it is acting to advance the interests of Israel’s and America’s enemies: “The Palestinian insurgency launched on Oct 7 put the question of revolutionary anti-imperialist struggle back on the table, and the way forward is clear: It is our duty as people in the imperial core to open a new front against the US Empire.”
National Students for Justice in Palestine promoted a similar message, celebrating its “actionists” who vandalized Columbia’s campus and obstructed students trying to attend the first day of classes. Calling on Columbia to “divest” from Israel, they added a helpful clarification: “Divestment is not an incrementalist goal. True divestment necessitates nothing short of the total collapse of the university structure and American empire itself. . . . [T]o divest from this is to undermine and eradicate America as we know it.” The group, aligned with Unity of Fields, added that “this action is first and foremost an effort to extend the successes of the Palestinian resistance to the heart of empire itself, to translate their resilience in Gaza to unrest and violence in America.” A pamphlet circulated by anti-Israel encampment students at the University of Michigan declared: “Freedom for Palestine means Death to America.”
What, precisely, do these people have in mind? How directly, and to what extent, are their leaders coordinating with overseas terrorist groups? In July 2024, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines confirmed that Iran is encouraging and funding some of these demonstrations, but the issue seemed to fall off the Biden administration’s radar. For now, we have reason to suspect, based on their words and the trajectory of their actions, that Western sympathizers of hostile enemy regimes won’t remain civil for long.
Because civil terrorism utilizes illegal activity, the beginning of a policy agenda to fight it must start with enforcing existing laws—and investigating reasonable suspicions of wrongdoing.
As the San Francisco “diversionary justice” debacle illustrates, state and local laws provide authorities more than enough legal might to take care of street crime when it crops up—if prosecutors have the will to see it through. As the Nessel-versus-Tlaib kerfuffle (and Governor Whitmer’s neutrality) reflects, though, Democratic city and state leaders usually lack that will. There may be some self-correction forthcoming, with voters replacing (or recalling) progressive prosecutors and other soft-on-street-crime officials in the recent elections. It is hard to disambiguate frustration over civil terrorism from anger over rising public disorder more generally, but the lesson for citizens is nonetheless to maintain the pressure on officials who refuse to keep streets clear and to arrest criminals in accordance with existing laws.
If officials do not arrest the criminals, the federal government should be ready to step in. The Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation possess broad investigative powers. The FBI can launch investigations of organizations that it suspects of presenting national-security risks. Its Joint Terrorism Task Forces are designed to procure and develop evidence that can be used against extremist groups. The FBI pays specific attention to “international terrorism,” which it defines as “violent, criminal acts committed by individuals and/or groups who are inspired by, or associated with, designated foreign terrorist organizations or nations (state-sponsored).” (State attorneys general often maintain similar powers.)
That the civil-terrorism network is “inspired by” designated foreign terrorist organizations is indisputable—they regularly say so, often verbatim. The refrain “we draw inspiration from the Palestinian resistance” is a staple of their propaganda. National Students for Justice in Palestine explicitly associates itself with the “movement” led by FTOs bent on destroying Israel: “We must act as part of this movement. All of our efforts continue the work and resistance of the Palestinians on the ground.” Within Our Lifetime called for an October 7, 2024, “Flood” in New York City, an unmistakable nod to Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, the name Hamas used for its massacre a year prior. Numerous civil-terror groups, including chapters of Jewish Voice for Peace, issued statements lamenting the death of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah after Israel killed him in September. Hamas, Hezbollah, and Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) flags, headbands, symbols like red triangles, and keffiyehs bearing particular colors linked with the groups feature prominently in actions meant to intimidate Americans—especially Jews—from defending Israel publicly.
Past litigation and recent Treasury Department action have revealed that many ostensible pro-Palestinian or anti-Israel organizations operating in America have historically been fronts for groups like Hamas and PFLP, acting as fund-raising or PR arms. The front groups exposed in those cases often had to close up shop to avoid paying huge judgments to victims of the terror they support—and because their leadership faced prison time. As the personnel, stated goals, and tactics of active groups attest, they appear to have reconstituted themselves under new banners.
The potential payout of such investigations, in compensation for victims of ongoing civil terror and in the arrests of those conspiring to organize it, is considerable. If it understood the nature and extent of the civil-terrorism threat, the FBI would launch an official, widespread, and severely demanding investigation forcing these organizations to open their books and explain the sources of their money and strategy.
Getting civil terrorists off our streets will be the first step to reclaiming public spaces for the law-abiding. If it turns out that noncitizens—or naturalized citizens who lied about their terrorist affiliations—are implicated in organizing these actions, they should be prosecuted and deported. And if the groups are continuing the work of disbanded terror fronts, they should face crippling penalties, including prison time, for perpetrating tax and other forms of fraud.
Even before a single criminal or civil complaint gets filed, the FBI can force investigated criminal outfits to cough up their assets. This is a controversial practice, but it remains legal—and a measure suited to the particular problem of well-moneyed organizations using secret assets to fund criminal activities. In response to concerns about the FBI misusing this power, the president could issue an executive order directing a circumscribed deployment of asset forfeiture, which would be limited to organizations for which there is probable cause for the Department of Justice to believe that they are receiving money from hostile foreign regimes or FTOs to commit crimes and destabilize the United States. Another option would be to limit forfeiture to cases where there is reason to believe that the seized money is owed to victims of terror by organizations that claimed bankruptcy but that reconstituted under new nonprofit banners. These measures would limit the precedential effect of the law-enforcement campaign to apply only to organized criminal enterprises that run on dirty money and that have a history of hiding and laundering it to evade legal consequences.
If investigations reveal links between civil-terror organizations, their crimes, and foreign terrorist groups, the Department of Justice should charge organizers and as many participants as possible. This would incapacitate the leadership of the movement, cutting off the flow of money and communications from malign actors to their Western supporters. The threat of severe consequences would also deter mass participation, making it harder to block traffic or commit propagandistic vandalism.
Prosecutions would have ample statutory authority. RICO, which imposes criminal and civil penalties for organized crime, includes anti-conspiracy provisions applicable to civil-terror leadership. The Antiterrorism Act (ATA) also provides a strong basis for punishing those who support U.S. enemies. The ATA bans providing “material support” to organizations designated as FTOs by the State Department, including Hamas, PFLP, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
The question is whether civil terrorism advancing these groups’ goals—often explicitly in their names—qualifies as material support. It might, and the model of civil terrorism helps make sense of just how. Anti-American radicals seek to terrorize the American people into doing what foreign terror groups want, starting with reversing our long-standing support for Israel. It is part of a broad strategy encouraged by groups like Hamas. “We in the Hamas movement believe that any popular movement demanding an end to the aggression and genocide against our people are useful and supportive activities for our cause,” a Hamas spokesperson said last spring, specifically lauding campus demonstrations. “The importance of this increases if these activities involve young people and university students, given that this reflects the vision of future generations.”
Precedent exists for such a prosecutorial approach. In a 2010 case, Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, the Supreme Court held that providing material support, resources, or services can include an array of activities—even some speech that is usually protected—if conducted “under the direction of, or in coordination with foreign groups that the speaker knows to be terrorist organizations.” Investigations can determine whether direct coordination has happened.
Even that may not be necessary to prosecute attempted material support for terror, after a federal appellate court extended Holder in early 2024. In United States v. Osadzinski, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals held that “activity . . . coordinated with or directed by” a foreign terrorist organization—in that case, a college student translating ISIS propaganda with intent to share it more widely—could constitute attempted material support for terror, even if the defendant had no interaction with an actual member of the terrorist group. While political speech—even abhorrent expressions like praise for Hamas—remains protected by the First Amendment, activities undertaken with the intent to provide succor to terrorist groups and some specific theory of how the activity will advance the groups’ agendas do not receive protection merely because they are expressive in nature.
If prosecutors are hesitant to bring charges due to a perceived lack of statutory authority, a legislative solution exists. Congress can amend the ATA (and state legislatures can update their analogue statutes) to cover the commission of crimes with the intent to advance the cause of FTOs. This captures the ways in which civil terrorism is a strategic component of an anti-Western agenda; committing these crimes is a PR effort to coerce U.S. policy to be more favorable to hostile actors. This amendment would upgrade misdemeanors like trespassing into serious felonies befitting support for terror, without raising any First Amendment concerns.
Of course, the principle of prosecutorial discretion means that no effort to crack down on a particular kind of crime is assured without widespread buy-in from prosecutors. When former U.S. attorney general Bill Barr tried to use RICO to prosecute Antifa, the civil-servant lawyers beneath him did not just subvert his effort; they also leaked it to the press to make it seem ridiculous. To that end, prosecuting civil terrorism must involve a broader effort to get reluctant investigators and lawyers on board. Leaders in federal and state prosecution must be clear that this is not partisan but an effort to preserve the rule of law.
Any recalcitrance will be a result not of ideologically opposed prosecutors but of systemic de-prioritization of these prosecutions. Even in jurisdictions that have not embraced progressive de-prosecution, the crimes that constitute civil terrorists’ playbook are overlooked, simply because most misdemeanors are not worth prosecuting to the fullest extent. Lawmakers can raise the transaction costs of participating in road shutdowns and organized vandalism by reclassifying them as felonies and raising mandatory minimum punishments, and even more so when they are done to advance FTO interests. Better yet, lawmakers can target the most nefarious actors within their jurisdiction—namely, the organizers and funders—by raising the penalties for criminal conspiracy. None of this curtails speech or risks entrapping law-abiding citizens. It targets those who organize and commit crimes.
Private civil litigation is making headway. Class-action attorney Ted Frank has sued several civil-terror organizations on behalf of drivers blocked by demonstrators for the tort of false imprisonment. Discovery will likely be fruitful, if slow. If Frank is successful, he may make a dent in the defendants’ resources. But public policy is still necessary. The long reach of the government’s investigative powers can uproot civil-terror networks. And to put an end to the ongoing campaign to undermine American interests through lawbreaking, movement leaders should face prison time.
This may seem draconian. But it is intolerable to subject law-abiding Americans to an unending stream of needless danger and economic loss, all in order to avoid cracking down on criminals who subvert democratic processes to defend hostile foreign regimes.
Civil terrorism is a dangerous manifestation of a simmering battle for the West. Its practitioners hate the West. They are trying to destroy it, not fix it. There is no known cure for anti-Westernism. In a free country of hundreds of millions of people, bad and destructive ideas are bound to catch on among a few thousand lunatics. But we have a cure for anti-American and anti-Semitic criminal behavior: put the criminals who act unlawfully upon those ideas in prison, confiscate their funds, uproot their criminal networks, deter their would-be imitators, and give public spaces back to the decent Americans who deserve them.
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