Mahmoud Khalil Is The Free Speech Test Case America Might've Already Failed
Plant a demon seed. Raise a flower of fire.
Donald Trump was briefly reminded on Monday that the Constitution still exists when a federal judge blocked Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil’s removal from the United States. Last Saturday, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency bust into Khalil’s university-owned apartment and carted him off while his pregnant wife watched in horror. Trump quickly took credit for his arrest and declared it was the first of many. Unlike free IVF treatment, that’s a promise he’s likely to keep.
“We know there are more students at Columbia and other Universities across the Country who have engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity, and the Trump Administration will not tolerate it,” he ranted in English roughly translated from World War II documentaries. “Many are not students, they are paid agitators. We will find, apprehend, and deport these terrorist sympathizers from our country — never to return again.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced Sunday on social media that the Trump administration would revoke the visas and green cards “of Hamas supporters in America so they can be deported.”
Supporting Hamas, a terrorist group, is still legally protected speech, just as it is for the Americans who openly support the Nazi Party. Thoughts are not crimes in America — for now, at least.
Khalil graduated from Columbia last year, and he’s married to an American citizen. He’s a permanent resident with a green card, which the government is revoking because it doesn’t like his political views. As Bono would say, “Outside is America.”
More sophisticated fascist regimes might have gone through the motions of a show trial, but Khalil’s arrest was deliberately terrifying. He was taken from his home and transferred to an immigration detention facility in Louisiana.
We would expect Republicans to full support this latest horror, but as of Tuesday, only 14 congressional Democrats had signed a letter sent to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem demanding Khalil’s release. (They are Rashida Tlaib, Mark Pocan, Nydia Velázquez, Delia Ramirez, lhan Omar, Jasmine Crockett, Summer Lee, Ayanna Pressley, Lateefah Simon, Al Green, Gwen Moore, André Carson, Nikema Williams, and James McGovern.)
“Khalil has not been charged or convicted of any crime,” the letter states. “As the Trump administration proudly admits, he was targeted solely for his activism and organizing.... We must be extremely clear: this is an attempt to criminalize political protest and is a direct assault on the freedom of speech of everyone in this country.”
These aren’t controversial sentiments, but few “mainstream” Democrats could apparently support them. If a growing number of Democrats are cowardly enough to abandon vulnerable trans children, it’s not a surprise that they’d keep their distance from Khalil.
Democratic Rep. Jared Moskowitz predictably told CNN that he supports the Trump administration’s actions against Mahmoud Khalil.
“If you’re here on a tourist visa and you’re going to Hamas rally, then yeah, you probably shouldn’t be here anymore,” he said. “You should get due process in this country, but you probably shouldn’t be here anymore.”
Khalil wasn’t here on a tourist visa, but why should Moskowitz worry about facts when he’s ignoring the First Amendment.
Columbia professor Marianne Hirsch, who was raised by Holocaust survivors, pointed out that the protests Khalil organized were pro-Palestinian, not pro-Hamas, even if far too many people conflate the two.
“Criticism of Israel’s brutal war on Gaza can’t be equated with anti-Jewish sentiment,” Hirsch said. “Pro-Palestinian speech and activism does not mean a lack of safety for Jews anywhere.”
Even Fox News noted that while Khalil strongly advocated for Palestinian liberation, he publicly stated last year that “there is, of course, no place for antisemitism.”
However, the Anti-Defamation League, which has defended Elon Musk’s spontaneous Nazi salutes, personally thanked Trump for arresting and potentially deporting a U.S. resident for his political views.
We firmly believe there should be swift and severe consequences for those who provide material support to foreign terrorist organizations, incite violence in support of terrorist activities, or conceal their identities in order to harass and intimidate Jewish individuals and institutions with impunity.
The ADL made some passing references to “due process” after smearing Khalil without evidence. People have expressed shock and disappointment that the ADL would support outright fascism, but we should accept the reality that the ADL is not an anti-fascist organization. It’s strictly pro-Israel. Nationalism will inevitably give way to fascism. It’s why so many Americans who stand for the National Anthem and hang flags outside their home support Donald Trump.
I’ve been accused of antisemitism because I’ve criticized Israel’s policies and actions in Gaza. I don’t presume I’m necessarily any safer than Kahlil because I’m a U.S. citizen. Jared Moskowitz isn’t safe, either. His own nationalism won’t protect him once his dissent is deemed “anti-American” or “pro-terrorist.” He should hope there are still people left to protest on his behalf.
‘Freedom of Speech ... Just Watch What You Say!’
Mahmoud Khalil is the most recent example, but certainly not the last, of how bad actors have leveraged the Israel/Gaza war as an opportunity to suppress political speech. The war is considered too controversial to even discuss in supposed liberal circles. Meanwhile, political opportunists have weaponized people’s fears. You might say those fears are legitimate, but that just makes them easier to exploit and even more dangerous.
Ross Glick, a pro-Israel activist, had shared a list of campus protesters with federal immigration authorities. He reportedly discussed Khalil with aides to Senators Ted Cruz and John Fetterman who promised to “escalate” the issue.
These direct, state-sanctioned attacks on the First Amendment — along with the Fourth, Fifth, and 14th — are happening against the backdrop of Vice President JD Vance’s speech last month at the Munich Security Conference. He claimed that our European allies had abandoned “some its most fundamental values, values shared with the United States of America … In Britain, and across Europe, free speech, I fear, is in retreat.”
He criticized attempts in Brussels and Germany to combat hate speech, and he specifically called out Germany for maintaining a “firewall” against the far-right, nationalist Alternative for Germany. Meanwhile, the U.S. secretary of State wants to deport Khalil because he believes his views pose “serious adverse foreign policy consequences” for the nation. The Forward points out the perverse irony that a similar provision in immigration law was used in the early 1950s to “target Eastern European Jewish Holocaust survivors suspected of being Soviet agents.”
Vance said in Munich that “under Donald Trump’s leadership, we may disagree with your views, but we will fight to defend your right to offer it in the public square, agree or disagree.”
That’s obviously a lie from someone who lies professionally. A week later, at CPAC, he low-key threatened to withdraw U.S. troops from Germany over its hate speech laws.
“Germany’s entire defense is subsidized by the American taxpayer,” he claimed. “There are thousands of American troops in Germany today. Do you think the American taxpayer is going to stand for that if you get thrown in jail in Germany for posting a mean tweet?”
Ah, but what if the “mean tweet” said “from the river to the sea”? In the same political reality where some animals are more equal than others, then some speech is fundamentally less free than others. The Department of Homeland Security, Department of Justice and State Department are currently investigating Khalil and claim to have found “antisemitic and hateful” posts on his social media. This is literally the nightmare scenario Vance paints about Germany.
The German constitution makes a distinction between free speech, which is protected, and hate speech. German law prohibits any speech that might incite hatred or is deemed insulting. Yes, this has resulted in state police raiding people’s homes and confiscating their laptops because they posted hate speech online, but a single “mean tweet” won’t land a German in jail. That would only happen after repeated offenses.
Last week on Fox News, Vance warned that “shutting down free speech will destroy our civilization.” Yes, that seems shockingly hypocritical, but it reinforces a point I’ve made in a previous piece at
: “What MAGA celebrates as ‘free speech’ is more often rightwing propaganda, a necessary tool in authoritarian regimes, or outright hate speech that marginalizes the oppressed and promotes violence against them.”That’s why the Trump administration targets mostly powerless student protesters, especially those who challenge the administration’s own agenda, but when Trump attempted a coup and incited an attack on the Capitol, he eagerly shielded himself behind the First Amendment.
The ADL serves as a collaborative chump when it praises Trump for disappearing Khalil, while mostly ignoring the weapons-grade antisemitism Elon Musk has helped spread on his social media platform. Musk has personally endorsed antisemitic conspiracy theories, and he not only remains in the country, he’s currently running it.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer released a rambling statement about Khalil’s arrest that began with how odious he personally found Khalil’s speech and political views: “I abhor many of the opinions and policies that Mahmoud Khalil holds and supports, and have made my criticism of the anti-Semitic actions at Columbia loudly known.”
Schumer doesn’t specify what he finds so abhorrent about Khalil’s opinions and policies, but it’s reasonable that Schumer might find Khalil’s anti-Israel position offensive. In America, people are free to disagree. Yet somehow Schumer has harsher words for Khalil than many of his Republican colleagues who are outright bigots and insurrectionists.
Eventually, Schumer got around to meekly suggesting that perhaps it was “wrongheaded” for Trump to go full Stalin on Khalil. This was the absolute bare minimum, and it reflects the level of effort Schumer will likely expend on Khalil’s behalf. But this is bigger than Mahmoud Khalil. It’s about all of us. Fortunately, Chris Murphy sounded like an actual Senate leader in his video post on social media. (Watch below.)
Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said Khalil was arrested “in support of President Trump’s executive orders prohibiting anti-Semitism.” You can’t prohibit antisemitism in a free society, no more than you can “prohibit” racism, misogyny, homophobia, or anti-trans bigotry. We don’t get to deport Charlie Kirk, even if he weren’t a citizen. A nation that bans offensive thoughts and beliefs has not made anyone safer. It’s only made everyone less free. It’s the only form of diversity, equity, and inclusion that fascism promotes.
Fortunately most Jews (with some gross exceptions like ADL) are smart enough to know that when a fascist says they’re acting to protect Jews, it’s time to look the fuck out. Long experience in being scapegoated and pogrommed leads one to instinctively look out for the little guy, and fight hard against fascism even when it’s purportedly aiming to “protect” Jews. That of course leads fascists to hate them more for being “ungrateful.”
Our country is being tested all at once, and there are some rather distressing signs of what is to come. We need total opposition and may want to consider next steps if the institutions fail.
I just hope everyone avoids violence because this regime is aching fir it’s Reichstag Fire.
I’m curious why campuses are not flooded with protests now—or are they actually happening and they’re just under-reported? Because these clear violations of due process (and the administration’s strong-arming of colleges through funding threats) seems something protesters could more directly impact than the actions of a foreign country.
Did Americans just lose the will to fight after last year? If so this doesn’t bode well.