We Were Warned: Empire Has Come Home
The cycle is complete. The empire has come home. The methods of control and repression perfected abroad are now being deployed domestically.
The masked men emerged from unmarked vehicles. They surrounded her on a quiet street in Massachusetts as she walked alone. No identification. No explanation. Just the swift, mechanical execution of state power as they handcuffed Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish doctoral student researching child development, and led her away. Her crime? Co-authoring an article calling for her university to divest from businesses with ties to Israel.
This scene from Somerville, Massachusetts in 2025 is not an anomaly. It is the latest manifestation of a system of repression perfected abroad and now deployed with increasing frequency at home. The tactics that were once reserved for those with brown skin and Muslim-sounding names in distant lands are now being unleashed against students, academics, and activists on American soil.
"Every time I find one of these lunatics, I take away their visa," boasted Secretary of State Marco Rubio, confirming reports that hundreds of student visas have been revoked. "It could be more than 300. I hope we run out because we've gotten rid of all of them."
What we are witnessing is the culmination of a process that began decades ago. The suspension of civil liberties, the creation of legal black holes, the criminalization of dissent—all justified in the name of fighting terrorism—have come full circle. The surveillance state that was built ostensibly to “protect” us from external threats has been turned inward with brutal efficiency.
Empire Comes Home
The victims are no longer “just” some random nameless Muslims kidnapped to distant detention centers. They are graduate students like Mahmud Khalil, arrested at Columbia University for his leadership in campus activism against Israel's actions in Gaza. They are scholars like Badar Khan Suri, a post-doctoral fellow at Georgetown studying conflict resolution, seized outside his home by masked ICE agents.
When the Department of Homeland Security's Tricia McLaughlin’s claims that Suri was actively promoting terrorist ‘propaganda’ and ‘anti-semitism,’ we must understand the Orwellian nature of this accusation. The “terrorism” and “anti-semitism" she references can also be seen as critical analysis of Israel's military operations. In other words, an opposition to a genocidal campaign that has claimed hundreds of thousands of Palestinian lives.
This is the same linguistic sleight of hand that was used to justify the indefinite detention of Muslims after 9/11. The same distortion of language and law that placed hundreds in Guantanamo without charge or trial. The same perversion of justice that normalized extraordinary rendition and torture. But now it is coming home, coming closer to us all—though perhaps still not close enough for the average white American to recognize the danger, as the targeting remains racialized.
Make no mistake, this represents the next step up the pyramid of repression: Western-based students and academics, but still primarily those with brown skin or Muslim backgrounds. The state can use these cases as warnings while avoiding widespread public outcry. The culturally conditioned racism that has allowed a genocide to unfold for 17 months in Gaza is the same force that permits the state to mistreat its citizens of color with impunity. The warning could not be clearer: Empire is contracting inward, creeping closer to the mainstream—first your brown classmates and colleagues, soon you as well.
As David Miller, an academic who was himself detained at Heathrow Airport under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act, observed: "The whole question of support for terrorism in the legislation is written in a wooly fashion." The authorities are not even asking if someone has committed or instigated an act of terror. They're asking if someone has expressed opinions that might be construed as encouraging support for a prescribed organization.
The bitter irony is that while students are arrested for peaceful advocacy, a U.S. hostage envoy can say of the Palestinian resistance, "They don't have horns growing out of their head. They're actually guys like us. They're pretty nice guys." Yet if a student were to utter these exact words in Europe or increasingly in America, they could find themselves detained under terrorism laws.
The Playbook of Repression
What we are witnessing is not merely the extension of state power but the completion of a cycle predicted by anti-war activists and civil liberties defenders for decades. When the Bush administration established military tribunals and classified detainees as "enemy combatants" to circumvent Geneva Conventions, we were warned. When Obama expanded the surveillance state and normalized drone assassinations, including of American citizens, we were warned. When Trump instituted the Muslim ban, we were warned.
Each step was justified as an exceptional measure for exceptional times. Each erosion of civil liberties was framed as necessary for security. Each abrogation of international law was presented as regrettable but essential.
Now the machinery of repression, fine-tuned in the battlefields and black sites of the “War on Terror”, has been retooled for domestic application. The enemy is no longer Al-Qaeda or ISIS. It is the student activist, the academic dissident, the journalist who questions foreign policy.
The same government that once argued it needed special powers to combat foreign terrorists now uses those powers against its own citizens and residents for the crime of political expression. The same media organizations that once uncritically repeated government claims about the terrorist threat now uncritically repeat claims about "anti-semitism" and "support for terrorism" on college campuses.
The Criminalization of Dissent
In Britain, the process is even further advanced. The British government has ignored a strongly worded letter from UN rapporteurs expressing "grave concern about the misapplication of counterterrorism laws against dissent, activists, and journalists." Instead, they've intensified their crackdown.
David Miller, who was unfairly dismissed from his position at Bristol University for his anti-Zionist views, describes being detained at Heathrow Airport by eight police officers after covering the funeral of Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut. He was questioned for three and a half hours under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act.
"They're badging it as being there to find out if you're a terrorist, if you're involved in a specific act or the instigation or commission of such an act," Miller explains, "but then when they actually go on to ask you about stuff, they're not asking you about that at all. They're asking you about whether you support an organization, whether you said this or that."
When state power is directed against Muslims, civil liberties concerns are dismissed as naïve or dangerous. When it is directed against critics of Israel, it is justified as necessary to combat antisemitism. The playbook remains the same; only the targets change.
The Corruption of Language
The most insidious aspect of this repression is the corruption of language itself. Words like "terrorism," "extremism," and "antisemitism" have been stretched beyond recognition. They no longer describe specific acts or beliefs but serve as cudgels to silence dissent.
A student who criticizes Israel's military campaigns is not engaged in terrorism. An academic who questions Zionism is not promoting hatred of Jews. A protester who demands Palestinian rights is not threatening national security.
Yet in the distorted logic of the security state, these distinctions collapse. The mere expression of solidarity with Palestinians becomes evidence of terrorist sympathies. The academic analysis of Israel's political influence becomes proof of antisemitism. The call for adherence to international law becomes a threat to the "Western way of life."
This corruption of language has real consequences. It allows the state to criminalize thought itself. It transforms political opinion into potential evidence of criminal intent. It makes possible the arrest of students not for what they have done but for what they believe.
The False Promise of Security
The ultimate tragedy is that none of this makes us safer. Just as the War on Terror failed to eliminate terrorism—and in many ways exacerbated it—the war on dissent will not eliminate political opposition. It will merely drive it underground and radicalize those who might otherwise engage in peaceful advocacy.
The surveillance state, with its vast apparatus of monitoring and control, cannot distinguish between genuine threats and political dissent because it was never designed to do so. It was designed to preserve power, not to protect people.
When ICE agents in plain clothes grab a doctoral student off the street, they are not preventing terrorism. When British counterterrorism police detain an academic for covering a funeral, they are not safeguarding national security. When hundreds of student visas are revoked for political activism, no one is made safer.
What is being protected is not the public but a political orthodoxy that cannot withstand scrutiny or challenge. What is being secured is not the nation but the right of states to act with impunity, whether in Gaza or in Somerville.
The Complicity of Institutions
The machinery of repression does not operate in isolation. It requires the complicity of institutions—universities, media organizations, professional associations—that should serve as bulwarks against state overreach.
Universities that once championed academic freedom now cooperate with government efforts to silence dissent. Media organizations that should question power now amplify its justifications. Professional bodies that should defend their members now stand silent as they are targeted.
This complicity is not new. It was present when Muslim professors were denied tenure, when Arab students were placed under surveillance, when Islamic charities were shut down. It was present when the academic study of the Middle East was distorted by political pressure, when journalists who questioned the War on Terror were marginalized, when Muslim civil society was treated as inherently suspect.
Now that the targets have expanded, the pattern of complicity remains. Universities do not rally to defend their students from state persecution. Media organizations do not investigate the abuses of power. Professional bodies do not speak out against the criminalization of political expression.
The Road to Authoritarianism
What we are witnessing is not just the targeting of specific individuals or groups. It is the normalization of an authoritarian approach to dissent that threatens the very concept of democracy itself.
When peaceful political advocacy can be criminalized, when academic freedom can be subordinated to political orthodoxy, when state power can be deployed against individuals for their opinions, we have crossed a threshold. We have entered a space where power operates without constraint, where rights exist only at the sufferance of authority, where citizenship itself becomes conditional.
The danger is not just to those directly targeted. It is to the very possibility of democratic debate and decision-making. It is to the idea that power should be accountable to the people. It is to the notion that a society can engage in honest self-examination and critique.
As David Miller observed, "We are heading towards the introduction of conscription. They're talking about it now... We are, I think, on the precipice of a kind of very dark transition in Western Europe, in Western European democracies."
This is the logical endpoint of the process that began with the War on Terror. Once the state arrogates to itself the power to define enemies, to suspend rights, to operate outside the constraints of law, it does not relinquish that power. It merely finds new enemies, new justifications, new targets.
The Resistance We Need
In the face of this rising authoritarianism, resistance must take multiple forms. It must include legal challenges to abuses of power, political mobilization against repressive legislation, and community solidarity with those targeted.
But perhaps most fundamentally, it must include a reclaiming of language and narrative. We must insist on the true meaning of words like "terrorism," "extremism," and "antisemitism." We must reject the distortion of these terms to criminalize dissent. We must tell the stories of those targeted not as isolated incidents but as part of a systemic assault on democratic values.
We must also build connections between communities. The Muslim American who was surveilled after 9/11, the Palestinian American who is harassed for their advocacy, the student activist who is arrested for their protests—these are not separate struggles. They are manifestations of the same logic of repression.
The defense of free speech and civil liberties is not a distraction from economic and social justice. It is a prerequisite for achieving it. Without the ability to critique power, to organize collectively, to advocate for alternatives, no meaningful change is possible.
We Were Warned, and Warned, and Warned
We were warned that the infrastructure of surveillance and control built for the “War on Terror” would eventually be turned against domestic dissent. We were warned that the suspension of civil liberties for some would eventually threaten the rights of all. We were warned that the militarization of police, the expansion of executive power, the creation of legal black holes would not remain confined to foreign battlefields and detention centers.
We were warned, and we failed to heed those warnings. We accepted the suspension of rights for Muslims because we were told it would make us safer. We accepted the criminalization of solidarity with Palestinians because we were told it was necessary to combat antisemitism. We accepted the expansion of state power because we were told it would only target the guilty.
Now that same machinery of repression is being deployed against students, academics, journalists, and activists. Now the tactics refined in the War on Terror are being used to silence criticism of Israel's actions in Gaza. Now the corruption of language that made possible the detention of "enemy combatants" is being used to criminalize solidarity with the oppressed.
The cycle is complete. The empire has come home. The methods of control and repression perfected abroad are now being deployed domestically with increasing boldness and frequency.
The question is whether we will finally recognize the pattern and resist it collectively, or whether we will continue to accept the erosion of rights and the criminalization of dissent until there is no space left for democratic debate and decision-making.
The masked men who took Rumeysa Ozturk from a street in Massachusetts, who detained Richard Medhurst and David Miller at Heathrow Airport, who arrested Mahmud Khalil at Columbia University—they are the visible face of a system that operates largely in the shadows. That system will not dismantle itself. It will only be constrained by a popular movement that insists on the primacy of democratic values over security theater, of human rights over political orthodoxy, of justice over power.
We were warned.
- Karim
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Within a year of the 9-11 terrorist attack in NYC, the unanswered questions about that event had been successfully scrubbed from the public consciousness. What became of the Israeli media crew that was set up in an ideal perch to capture the dramatic pictures of a heavy airliner flying into a symbol of imperial might? How were they able to be there before the event?
This and other questions disappeared from being media inquiries. The story of firefighters on the 78th floor of the WTC, communicating with their colleagues on the ground, stating that there were two active fires that were being quashed. That’s been documented. And four minutes later the tower began dropping to the ground. Building 7, an adjacent building, a small office building that was incinerated. The quick answer was delivered frequently that it wasn’t evidence of a conspiracy, but the evidence didn’t corroborate the certainty of third-hand messengers.
Just like the American government had information about a Japanese attack on Hawaii before it happened, but wanted a pretext to preempt public opposition to America’s involvement in WWII, the 9-11 terrorist attack looks to have been an inside job, and for what?
Short answer: The Patriot Act. A British filmmaker had produced a documentary that postulated that the 9-11 attack was conducted to fan the flames of fear and Islamophobia, and I don’t think that film was ever permitted to air on American television. It may have aired in England, but it was quickly erased from media scrutiny and the public consciousness.
And now, the Patriot Act is as bi-partisan a tool for legalizing unconstitutional law enforcement, as lowering taxes is for maintaining the economic status quo.
The name of the game is public control. Since the end of WWII, American propaganda was sophisticated enough to paint a war ravaged Soviet Union as an imminent threat that hated Americans, but that lie is reaching its expiration date, and decades of imposed economic austerity have gotten under the skin of a wide swath of the American population. So overt suspicion and discontent are growing, as the legacy media dutifully ignore, and now the chickens are coming home to roost.
When soft methods of control give way to overtly fascist methods, the empire is in its final phase. Bloodshed at home will run in puddles and pools. Americans will learn exactly what their apolitical flag waving has yielded.
Another excellent article, thank you Karim.
It is perplexing that people, especially in the so-called first world countries, cannot visualise the end of democracy by simply applying historical introspection. You only have to look back as far as the “War on Terror” to realise that something truly diabolical had been released that it is virtually impossible to stop. The march towards authoritarianism is a runaway train and I am certain that its architects, instigators and zealots are incapable of restraining it. The clamping down on free speech, capricious invasion of privacy, disregard for bodily integrity and freedom from arbitrary arrest inclusive of the disregard for due process, are all signs of this dying system. When the state machinery has devoured all the “undesirables”, it will turn on its own people to keep it nourished.