The US President turns the “Global War on Terror” against US citizens

Around mid-May (2026), shortly after I had written my article questioning whether Trump might conduct a counterterrorism campaign in the Sahel and West Africa,(1) two significant events occurred which give clues to what Trump might have in mind on that question. The first was the publication of the White House’s Counterterrorism Strategy memorandum for 2026,(2) The second, which occurred a day or two later, was the US military’s participation in a counterterrorist strike in Nigeria.

Trump’s memorandum was released on or around 10 May, meaning that the White House was obviously cognisant of the attacks by Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) on the Mali junta on 25 April.(3) Indeed, the document refers specifically to a resurgent terror threat by Al Qaeda and IS in West Africa and the Sahel region.

The memorandum is disconcerting, almost certainly being the most exaggerated and misleading directive ever issued by an American President. Drafted by Sebastian Gorka, Trump’s senior director for counterterrorism – a position which does not require Congressional approval or confirmation – the 16-page document was described by The Intercept as “a collection of threats, grievances, hyperbole and lies, … a distillation of Trumpism as an ideology, movement, and system of governance,” which “serves as a new declaration of war on the Trump administration’s enemies – foreign and domestic, real and imagined.”(4)

A glance at Gorka’s résumé would suggest that he is wholly unqualified for the position of ‘counterterrorism czar’, as it is known.(5) Stephen Walt, a professor of international affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, voiced his reservations about Gorka influencing policy in the White House, saying: “Gorka does not have much of a reputation in serious academic or policymaking circles. He has never published any scholarship of significance, and his views on Islam and U.S. national security are extreme even by Washington standards. His only real ‘qualification’ was his prior association with Breitbart News, which would be a demerit in any other administration.”(6)

Despite these shortcomings, Trump’s 2026 Counterterrorism Strategy is a “foundational document.” (7) It shifts national security priorities away from the traditional post-9/11 focus on global jihadist networks and instead redefines the primary threats around:

• Narcoterrorists and Transnational Gangs.
• Violent Left-Wing Domestic Extremists, specifically anarchists and ‘Antifa’.
• Legacy Islamist Terrorists and Global Jihadists.

Trump’s ‘Counterterrorism Strategy’ would suggest that his primary concerns are with so-called ‘narco-terrorism’ and ‘Antifa’, both of which present him with serious legal difficulties, rather than ‘Legacy Terrorists’, such as Al Qaeda and IS groups.

As the first three chapters of my forthcoming book – War in the Sahel (8) – reveal in detail, the US Department of Justice (DoJ) and its Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) failed, despite going to extreme and often ‘illegal’ lengths, to prove their assertion that drug traffickers, notably the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC), and terrorist groups, such as Al Qaeda, were linked and effectively one and the same thing. Nevertheless, despite Ginger Thompson’s (9) demonstration of the lack of evidence of a link between narcoterrorism and terrorist groups like Al Qaeda, the concept of ‘narcoterrorism’ has persisted. Indeed, in the case of West Africa and the Sahel, where the Trump administration is re-engaging, neither JNIM nor L’État islamique dans le Grand Sahara (EIGS), now calling itself Islamic State – Sahel Province (ISSP), receive any money from drug trafficking, despite drug trafficking having a long history in the region. In his attempt to get around this problematic, Trump has defined drug traffickers, or ‘narcoterrorists’ as he calls them, as Foreign Terrorist Organisations (FTOs). Whether this will give him some degree of legal cover for killing close to 200 civilians in attacks on alleged drug boats traversing Caribbean and eastern Pacific waters, despite failing to produce any evidence, is debatable.

Since returning to the White House, Trump has used his position, seemingly unconstitutionally on many occasions, to seek revenge on his enemies, real or imagined. This includes those who are opposed to or disagree with his views and polices and who are being accused of belonging to his ever-widening, ‘catch-all’ usage of the term ‘Antifa’, an abbreviation of ‘antifascist’. (9)

However, as with the concept of ‘narco-terrorism’, Trump also has a legal problem in designating ‘Antifa’ as a terrorist organisation. In 2020, during protests after the police killing of George Floyd, Trump tweeted: “The United States of America will be designating ANTIFA as a Terrorist Organization.” Trump did not follow through on this at the time, possibly because the then FBI Director Christopher Wray said that Antifa was “not a group or an organisation”, but a “movement or an ideology”. (11)(12)

On his return to the White House, Trump set about designating Antifa as a “domestic terrorist organisation” by issuing a presidential memorandum entitled “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence” (NSPM-7) on 25 September 2025. (13) Following the memorandum’s issuance and Trump’s designation of Antifa as a domestic terrorist organization, (14) Federal prosecutors set about securing terrorism convictions against protesters allegedly linked to Antifa. While the US government can designate a group as a Foreign Terror Organization (FTO), the legal criteria state that the targeted group “must be a foreign organization”. Congress has not passed any law relating to domestic terrorism designation, nor is there a standalone crime of ‘domestic terrorism’. American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights Watch condemned the directive, arguing it could be used to target political opponents and suppress dissent, as has been the case. The Brennen Center for Justice concluded that both the memorandum and the related antifa designation were “ungrounded in fact and law”. (16)

In preparing the ground for his May 2026 attack on Antifa, Trump published another Presidential Memorandum in January 2026 announcing the US’ withdrawal from 66 international organisations and entities, many of which were central to the multilateral security landscape the US had helped construct. The new – May 2026 – counter-terrorism strategy logically continues this approach: not just in withdrawing from institutions but in repudiating the very ideas that informed their creation. (17)

Trump’s May 2026 memorandum says: “Our counterterrorism operations will be executed apolitically and founded upon reality-based threat assessments. Our counterterrorism powers will not be used to target our fellow Americans who simply disagree with us. We will not permit the weaponization of America’s unparalleled CT capabilities for partisan purposes and in contravention of every American’s God-given rights.”

This statement is not only a falsity in that his new memorandum is already being used ‘politically’ to target those who ‘disagree with him’, but contains a perverse irony in that the Trump administration is following the road taken by many of the world’s authoritarian regimes since President George W. Bush launched America’s Global War on Terror (GWOT) in the wake of 9/11. Since then, authoritarian regimes the world over have used the pretext of the GWOT to designate their domestic enemies and opponents as ‘terrorists’. Trump, by following in the footsteps of Algeria, Russia, Turkey, Mali and other authoritarian regimes, is now bringing the war on terror home by using it, albeit without legal foundation, to target Americans themselves. The May 2026 presidential memorandum, described by The Hague-based International Centre for Counter-Terrorism (ICCT) as “selective amnesia”, (17) attempts to put antifa, which is a collection of ideas and not an organisation, on a par with actual terrorist groups like Al Qaeda and the Islamic State groups.

Not only have Americans already been successfully prosecuted under Trump’s executive order designating antifa as a domestic terrorist organisation, with the Justice Department insisting there will be more,(18) but the partisan intentions of the May 2026 directive are blatantly obvious in that the directive makes no reference to right-wing violence. Rep. Bennie G. Thompson, D-Miss., ranking member of the House Committee on Homeland Security, said: “Absurdly, the document incorrectly labels drug cartels, ‘legacy Islamist terrorists,’ and violent left-wing extremists as the top counterterrorism threats – despite years of data proving that right-wing extremism has presented the most persistent and deadly threats to Americans for decades.(19) A 2025 analysis conducted by the nonpartisan Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) found that, over the past decade, right-wing extremists carried out 152 attacks in the United States and killed 112 people, compared with 35 attacks and 13 deaths attributed to left-wing militants. Islamist jihadist-inspired attacks resulted in 82 deaths over the same span.”(20) Moreover, The US Department of Justice (DoJ) removed a study into political violence in America which concluded that far-right extremism outpaced “all other types of violent extremism”.(21) BBC Verify has reviewed five independent studies that have looked into politically motivated attacks in the US going back decades, all of which suggest there have been more cases of political violence in the US committed by people assigned a right-wing ideology by researchers than a left-wing one. (22) Brian Finucane, a senior advisor for the US Program at the International Crisis Group said the Trump administration had “repurposed ‘terrorism’ framing and applied it to new boogeymen, like alleged narcos as well as a caricature of their domestic political opposition.”(23)

On his press tour touting the new strategy, Gorka said: “left-wing violent radicals like Antifa and the anarchists” were the “most ascendant” terror group and – without evidence – claimed they were “the people who killed our friend Charlie Kirk.” He said these leftists are “People who think that if you don’t agree with them politically, they get to kill you.”(24)

It might well be asked what Trump’s obsession with Antifa has to do with Mali and the Sahel. In the ‘real’ world, the answer is: not much. However, in the world of fabricated lies, hyperbole and propaganda, in which Gorka, like his boss, is a consummate professional, there are avenues that offer scope for fabricating links between antifa and the ‘legacy terrorists’: Al Qaeda and ISIS. The key link in Trump’s cognitively dissonant worldview is ‘Christianity’.

Trump’s May 2026 directive said: “Americans have witnessed the politically motivated killings of Christians and conservatives committed by violent left-wing extremists, including the assassination of Charlie Kirk by a radical who espoused extreme transgender ideologies.” (25) The idea that Christians, who make up two-thirds of the US population, are under siege is belied by the data. As The Intercept pointed out, “Hate crimes motivated by anti-Christian bias are far rarer than attacks motivated by racism or xenophobia in the United States, and other religious groups are far more likely to report being the victim of a religiously motivated hate crime than Christians.”(26) Indeed, an analysis of the FBI’s hate crime data for 2023 found that less than 10 percent of religiously motivated hate crimes were believed to be motivated by anti-Christian bias. (27)(28)

There are two possible arguments relating to Christianity that Trump might try to use to link Antifa with Al Qaeda and the Islamic State in the Sahel and thereby legitimise his attacks on Antifa by smearing it with the jihadist label. The first involves the alleged attacks on Christians in Nigeria by jihadist groups. The second involves the capture of an American missionary by jihadists and the belief that he is being held hostage in the Malian sector of the Sahel’s Three Borders region.

With Christian symbolism in mind, Trump, authorised ‘Christmas Day airstrikes’ in Nigeria on 25 December 2025 to stop what he misleadingly described as a “genocide” of Christians. The destroyer USS Paul Ignatius launched Tomahawk missiles at ISIS-linked camps and the Lakurawa militant group in Sokoto State. Although the strike involved no US ‘boots on the ground’, Nigerian officials strongly rebuked Trump’s claim that there was a “Christian genocide” underway in Nigeria. They explained that the terrorists were threatening all citizens: Muslims, Christians and people of no faith. Despite the rebuke, Trump persisted with his claims. Then, on 16 February (2026), eleven days before authorising his assault on Iran, in a major policy shift, Trump began deploying 200 troops to Nigeria to train and advise local forces in their battle against militant Islamists. The first 100 soldiers arrived in Bauchi State on 16 February, albeit in a non-combat capacity, with their task being to provide technical guidance and intelligence to help the Nigerian military coordinate air and infantry operations.

At that time, with Trump’s war on Iran about to take over the headlines, it was a matter of conjecture whether this deployment was a further step towards Trump’s ‘big picture’ strategy for North and West Africa,(29) possibly on Massad Boulos’ advice to strengthen US ties with the Nigerian government,(30) or part of his perverse plans to link Islamic State killings of Christians in Nigeria with his allegation antifa activists had killed Christians in the US.

The second way in which Trump might possibly try and further smear antifa activists is by linking their alleged anti-Christian activism to the jihadists’ kidnapping of an American missionary pilot, 48-year-old Kevin Rideout, who worked for the US-based Serving in Mission organisation. Rideout was kidnapped by three gunmen from his home in a secure neighbourhood of Niamey on the night of 21 October 2025. His phone was last tracked to 56 miles north of Niamey in the western Tillabéri region where the EIGS/ISSP is active. It is suspected that Rideout was taken across the border into Mali and is being held somewhere in the Ménaka region. A possible US military intervention in Mali to help Assimi Goïta’s military regime rid the country of the jihadists, possibly through US drone operations and other aerial surveillance and intelligence, as was being planned before 27 February,31 could be undertaken on the pretext of searching for and possibly rescuing Rideout.

A further indication of how Trump might intervene militarily in the Sahel emerged on 18 May, a few days after the publication of his ‘Counterterrorism Strategy 2026’. On 18 May, the US and Nigeria announced that a joint operation had killed Abu-Bilal al-Minuki (also known as Abubakr Mainok or Abu Bakr al-Mainuki), a senior Islamic State commander in Nigeria, on 15 May in a targeted strike on a fortified compound in Metele in the extreme north of Borno State in northeastern Nigeria. Although few details of the operation have been released, it appears that US ground forces were involved and that US and Nigerian forces conducted a follow up operation on 18 May which killed 20 Islamic State members. (32)

The subsequent media commentary on the attack focussed mostly on al-Minuki’s position in Islamic State–West Africa Province (ISWAP), rather than the military details of the operation, which have been kept secret. Trump, never lost for words in boasting about his own achievements, described al-Minuki as “second in command of ISIS globally” and “the most active terrorist in the world”. The first claim is possible in that al-Minuki was certainly a significant figure in the Islamic State. However, JNIM’s leader, Iyad ag Ghali, might take exception to the second part of Trump’s claim in the light of JNIM’s actions in Mali on 25 April. (33) Either way, there is no denying that al-Minuki’s death was not only a significant strike against ISWAP, but it strongly suggests that Trump, notwithstanding the distraction of Iran, is still focussed on the Sahel and West Africa.

The success of the strike on al-Minuki will boost Trump’s ego and, with encouragement from AFRICOM, which always fears being wound up, may well encourage him to conduct more actions in Nigeria. However, as Trump will have learnt from his war on Iran, there is no aerial substitute for boots on the ground. Destroying ISWAP in Nigeria will only be achieved by a prolonged counterterrorist offensive, which will require boots on the ground, rather than relying solely on the high-intensity but short campaign envisaged in the White House’s May ‘Counterterrorism Strategy’. However, such a campaign would have the downside of incentivising ISWAP and other IS groups such as Al Shabaab, ISSP and the several other ISIS groups around the world to increasingly target US interests.

If Trump is planning to embark on such a campaign while adhering to his policy of no US boots on the ground, he will have few other options than trying to pressurise EU and NATO countries to join some sort of coalition, as he tried but failed to do in Iran. Given his alienation of so many European and NATO allies, such overtures are unlikely to meet with a positive response, although France might be tempted briefly at the possibility of regaining some of its lost influence in the region. However, as the CSIS has pointed out, (34) given the uncertainty associated with counterinsurgency and targeted killings as well as ISWAP’s current strength, Trump, contrary to his own instincts, might find himself being drawn into another ‘never-ending war’ to which the American public is strongly averse.

Trump might also be tempted into such a campaign against the ‘legacy terrorists’ (Al Qaeda and the Islamic State), as explained in his May ‘Counterterrorism Strategy’, by the geographical contiguity of the regions in which these ‘terrorist’ groups are operating. Although ISWAP’s main strength is in northeastern Nigeria, it has links to the Lakurawa jihadist group in Sokoto State of northwestern Nigeria, against whom Trump ordered his infamous ‘Christmas Day’ (2025) attack. The Lakurawa group originated as a defence group amongst pastoralists from Niger and Mali, but has turned into a hard-line Islamist terrorist group with links to both ISWAP to its east and the ISSP (EIGS) to its west (in Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso). A glance at the map indicates that Sokoto State borders Niger’s Dosso region and that the Dosso-Tillabéri corridor, in which the ISSP is active, extends for only a little over 500 kilometres from its southern border with Nigeria’s Sokoto State to its northern border with Mali, with both the Niamey air base and the Ouallam military base, where US troops were previously based, located conveniently in between. From a military perspective, this contiguity might attract Trump’s military advisers to attack the proverbial four birds with one stone. The four ‘birds’ are: ingratiating the US with the Nigerian government and thereby enhancing the Trump-Massad Boulos big picture strategy for North and West Africa; destroy the Islamic State groups of ISWAP and ISSP; locate and rescue Kevin Rideout, and provide military assistance to Assimi Goïta’s military rule in Mali by providing it with the military and intelligence means to defeat JNIM.

If Trump is tempted to embark on such an operation, the US might find itself bogged down in a ‘never-ending’ campaign as flawed and unwinnable as that in Afghanistan or, going back further, even Viet Nam.

• Jeremy Keenan is an anthropologist and visiting professor in the Law School, Queen Mary University London.

1. Keenan, J. “Will Trump take on the Sahel’s jihadists?” Propaganda in Focus, 10.05.2026. Access at: https://propagandainfocus.com/will-trump-take-on-the-sahels-jihadists/
2. “United States Counterterrorism Strategy 2026.” The White House, May 2026. Access at: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/28097860-2026-usct-strategy-1/
3. See note 1.
4. “Trump’s Counterterrorism strategy – issued May 2026.” The Intercept, 18.05.2026. Access at: https://theintercept.com/2026/05/15/trump-terrorism-left-groups-antifa-christian-gorka/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=The Intercept Newsletter
5. Gorka’s ‘merits’ and ‘demerits’ can be evaluated from his Wikipedia entry. Access at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sebastian_Gorka
6. Engel, Pamela (2017). “Sebastian Gorka, Trump’s combative new national security aide, is widely disdained within his own field.” Business Insider, 22.02.2017. Access at: https://www.businessinsider.com/sebastian-gorka-trump-bio-profile-2017-2
7. The Intercept, op. cit.
8. For details of War in the Sahel, see: jeremykeenan.co.uk
9. Thompson, Ginger (2015). “Trafficking in Terror. How closely entwined are the drug trade and global terrorism?” The New Yorker, 14 December 2015. Access at: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/12/14/trafficking-in-terror
10. Antifa is a loanword word stemming from the abbreviation of antifaschistisch (“anti-fascist”), which was coined in 1930s Germany to designate those opposed to the rise of Nazism.
11. Trump lashed out, calling antifa “well-funded ANARCHISTS & THUGS who are protected because the … FBI is simply unable, or unwilling, to find their funding source.
12. “Antifa is a decentralized, leftist ideology, a collection of related ideas and political concepts much like feminism or environmentalism. Over the last decade, Republicans have used it as an omnibus term for left-wing activists – as if it were an organisation with members and a command structure. They have increasingly blamed antifa for terrorist violence.” The Intercept, op. cit.
13. “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence” (NSPM-7), The White House, 25.09.2025. Access at: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/countering-domestic-terrorism-and-organized-political-violence/
14. “Designating Antifa as a Domestic Terrorist Organization.” The White House, 25.09.2025. Access at: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/designating-antifa-as-a-domestic-terrorist-organization/
15. Patel, Faiza (2025). “Trump’s Orders Targeting Anti-Fascism Aim to Criminalize Opposition.” Brennan Center for Justice, 25.09.2025. Access at: https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/trumps-orders-targeting-antifascism-aim-criminalize-opposition
16. “Withdrawing the United States from International Organizations, Conventions, and Treaties that Are Contrary to the interests of the United States.” The White House, 7 January 2026. Access at: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2026/01/withdrawing-the-united-states-from-international-organizations-conventions-and-treaties-that-are-contrary-to-the-interests-of-the-united-states/
17. Georgia Holmer (2026), “The New US Counter-Terrorism Strategy: Selective Amnesia”, International Centre for Counter-Terrorism (ICCT), 28.05.2026. The Hague. Access at: https://icct.nl/publication/new-us-counter-terrorism-strategy-selective-amnesia
18. Summers, Sean (2026). “Nine Prairieland Defendants Found Guilty in First ‘Antifa’ Test Case.” Unicorn Riot, 14.03.2026. Access at: https://unicornriot.ninja/2026/nine-prairieland-defendants-found-guilty-in-first-antifa-test-case/
19. The Intercept, op. cit.
20. Byman, Daniel & McCabe, Riley (2025). “Left-Wing Terrorism and Political Violence in the United States: What the Data Tells Us.” CSIS, 25.09.2025. Access at: https://www.csis.org/analysis/left-wing-terrorism-and-political-violence-united-states-what-data-tells-us
21. Sardarizadeh, Shayan & Devlin, Kayleen (2025). “What is Antifa and why is President Trump targeting it?’ BBC Verify, 18.09.2025. Access at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ced5gqn0p6jo
22. Ibid.
23. The Intercept, op. cit.
24. Ibid.
25. “United States Counterterrorism Strategy 2026.” op. cit.
26. The Intercept, op. cit.
27. Ibid.
28. For further attempts by Trump to weaponise his fabricated claims of “anti-Christian” bias, see: Jones, Rober P. (2026). “Theatre of the Absurd: The Trump Administration’s ‘Anti-Cristain Bias’, Report.” Redeeming Democracy, 05.05.2026. Access at: https://www.redeemingdemocracy.net/p/theatre-of-the-absurd-the-trump-administrations?r=m09x3&fbclid=IwY2xjawRxay1leHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETFMR1htaklWUGk5N0RPQlZRc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQQMjIyMDM5MTc4ODIwMDg5MgABHvLjG70Niuj2QWjHIOIGJXhp9gtD_SAnp3VStck10mkVKZ3c8OcY6gKuyhk7_aem_2-C7V7tWMfCmqT43f0Lq7w
29. See note 1.
30. See note 1.
31. See note 1.
32. “The Killing of Abu-Bilal al-Minuki and the U.S. Military’s Deepening Involvement in Nigeria.” Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), 18.05.2026. Access at: https://www.csis.org/analysis/killing-abu-bilal-al-minuki-and-us-militarys-deepening-involvement-nigeria
33. See note 1.
34. See note 32.
    
    (Featured Image: “President Trump Signs an Executive Order” by The White House is marked with Public Domain Mark 1.0.)