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Sophie Lewis is an author and independent scholar based in Philadelphia.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
It was a<\/span> Saturday in February, and I was checking my email inbox on my phone for no particular reason, during a conference. A Mother Jones reporter had written a note, so I opened it.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not so unusual for me to receive press inquiries \u00ad\u2014 I am a feminist writer who touches on hot-button issues \u2014 but this particular email I never could have predicted. It was about an infamous federal case against people arrested in connection to a protest against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.<\/p>\n Last July 4, a group of people had gathered for a demonstration against ICE\u2019s\u00a0Prairieland<\/a> Detention Facility in Alvarado, Texas. It was a noise demo during which a police officer was shot<\/a>. Some 18 people were arrested and charged for the protest.<\/p>\n Prosecutors had introduced my analysis of feminism\u2019s relationship to horror cinema as \u201cevidence of ideologically driven intent.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n The government\u2019s indictment against the Prairieland protesters stood as a chilling development in President Donald Trump\u2019s war on dissent<\/a>: It was the first time that terrorism-related charges had been brought against people for allegedly being part of an \u201cantifa cell<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n Did I have any thoughts, the Mother Jones reporter wanted to know, on the prosecution using an essay by me in a terrorism trial?<\/p>\n Excuse me?<\/p>\n The essay in question: a film review<\/a> I wrote in 2019 about the horror movies \u201cHereditary\u201d and \u201cMidsommar.\u201d<\/p>\n I blinked twice, rubbed my eyes, and then began digging around on the internet to understand.<\/p>\n To my astonishment, prosecutors had introduced my seven-year-old analysis of feminism\u2019s relationship to horror cinema as \u201cevidence of ideologically driven intent\u201d the previous day. <\/p>\n Although I published the piece in \u201cCommune\u201d magazine, the review had been printed in zine format<\/a> \u2014 and that was what authorities seized from the Dallas home of one of the defendants, Daniel Sanchez Estrada<\/a>, last summer.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The appearance of my review in the trial is a brazen attempt at conjuring \u201cguilt by literature<\/a>\u201d \u2014 just one of the tactics prosecutors have used to criminalize speech and use First Amendment-protected speech as a legal weapon against the Trump administration\u2019s political enemies.<\/p>\n Nobody, by the way, is suggesting that Estrada shot or conspired to shoot the officer. He stands accused of two crimes: attempting to conceal documents \u201cby transporting a box containing numerous Antifa materials\u201d and conspiracy to conceal those zines. He faces up to 20 years in prison.<\/p>\n Estrada isn\u2019t himself facing terror charges, but he being tarred with the label by his association with this so-called \u201cantifa cell.\u201d What Estrada\u2019s case most acutely represents is the way the President Donald Trump conflates antifa and terrorism<\/a> to do things like criminalize the transportation of zines \u2014 in other words, simple First Amendment protected activity.<\/p>\n Trump pulled this off by deeming antifa a \u201cmajor terrorist organization\u201d \u2014 a legal designation that doesn\u2019t even exist for domestic groups<\/a> \u2014 ignoring the fact that antifa is an orientation, not a group.<\/p>\n The feds, as Natasha Lennard notes<\/a>, tend to try to evidence such charges by collecting circumstantial evidence of individual crimes alleged to have taken place \u201cin the context of\u201d legal protest activity \u2014 even when there is no direct link between those charged and the alleged crimes.<\/p>\n The charge may or may not stick \u2014 often they don\u2019t<\/a> \u2014 but the lawfare from above serves a terrorizing end in itself<\/a>, she explains, since \u201cthe lengthy prosecutions hamper protest movements and chill dissent.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n\n
\u201cGuilt by Literature\u201d<\/strong><\/h2>\n