Black Radicalism and the Return of the “Subversive Negro”

Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor and columnist

16 Sep 2026

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NSPM-7 and the State Department's international campaign against "far-left political terrorism" represent a twenty-first-century continuation of COINTELPRO, reconstructing the historical figure of the "subversive Negro" as a national security threat.

Established as the first nation-state based on the principle of racial superiority, in other words, the first White supremacist republic, there has always been a long and ugly history in the white republic of the United States America of seeing any form of Black consciousness that was not servile as a threat to national security. The examples of the horrific violence unleashed against Black veterans after the first and second imperialist wars, the bloody summer of 1919, lynchings, the targeting and eventual crushing of the Black radical organizations of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, have ensured that there would be no PTSD from savage racial violence and super-exploitation because there has never been a “post” in the ongoing trauma of living in a white supremacist settler colonial project that has never recognized the humanity and rights of Black people.

The state has repeatedly distinguished between the “acceptable” Black citizen—one willing to accept their subordinate status and unwilling to even attempt to pursue their democratic and human rights within the existing political order—and the Black political subject who not only questioned the order, but who would engage in active resistance to it. The latter has historically been constructed as dangerous: militant, extremist, radical, subversive, communist, nationalist, and terrorist.

Today, with the Trump administration’s National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7), “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence,” and the State Department’s subsequent international campaign against what it calls “far-left political terrorism,” we are witnessing the reconstruction of this political logic under the institutional technologies of the twenty-first-century national-security state.[1]

This does not mean that NSPM-7 is simply COINTELPRO resurrected. Historical precision matters. COINTELPRO was a covert FBI program that operated outside the normal boundaries of law enforcement and was explicitly designed to “disrupt” and “neutralize” domestic political organizations. NSPM-7 goes further. It openly directs the state’s national security apparatus, along with supporting agencies of the government, to investigate and disrupt networks, organizations, entities and funding sources of organizations designated by the state as domestic terrorist organizations before there is any evidence that those organizations have committed or intended to engage in activities not sanctioned and protected by the U.S. Constitution. [2]

So, while the scope of COINTELPRO was somewhat constrained by the illegality of most of its methods, the legal and political foundation established by NSPM-7 is attempting to legitimize a broad-based assault on real and/or potential political opposition under the guise of fighting left terrorism. This is a significant and ominous development.

And what makes this historical moment so dangerous for African/Black radicals is that once again African/Black opposition is seen as the most dangerous element of potential opposition to the consolidating neofascist regime in the U.S.

The historical construction of the “subversive Negro”

We must mark him now, if we have not done so before, as the most dangerous Negro of the future in this Nation from the standpoint of communism, the Negro and national security.” (FBI Deputy Director William Sullivan memorandum to FBI Assistant Director Alan Belmont on the role of Dr. Martin Luther King)

“We must at once intensify our coverage of communist influence on the Negro.” (Director from FBI director J. Edgar Hoover to field agents, 1963)

The Black freedom struggle has always contained a fundamental contradiction for the American state. Our existence represented a negation of all the pretensions and myths of the story of what became the United States of America. Our instinctual struggle for our individual and collective humanity meant that we were perpetually at odds with the dominant structures and institutions of white power, especially after the conclusion of the Civil War, when Black participation in the conflict turned the tide toward victory for the Northern capitalist forces. Of course, with Black labor still a valuable commodity in the fields and emerging industrial development in the South and then in the North, white power was not prepared to extend the recognition of humanity, self-determination and fundamental rights to African/Black people in the U.S. In fact, our continued subjugation was the agreement that cemented the white national reconciliation between the North and the South in 1877.

Our lived reality within the U.S. settler-colonial context that demanded African subjugation and the mass extermination and confinement of the Indigenous people with the potential that our lived experiences would congeal into what we refer to as the radical black tradition, made us dangerous. Dangerous because that tradition can be traced from the slave rebellions, to the Africans who fought against the U.S. in the U.S. war of independence, through the African/Indigenous wars against the U.S. army in Florida beginning in 1815, to the early 20th century and mid-century revolutionary African/Black anti-colonial, anti-capitalist liberation movement.

The U.S. radical Black tradition theoretically connected domestic racial oppression to capitalism, colonialism and imperialism. Marcus Garvey's internationalism, the African Blood Brotherhood, the Communist movement's Black Belt thesis, W.E.B. Dubois’s Pan Africanism, Malcolm X's internationalization of the Black human rights struggle, the Black Panther Party, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) opposition to imperialism and the internationalism of Black antiwar politics all challenged the ideological fiction advocated by Black liberals and their white liberal allies in the democrat party that the oppression of Black people could be understood exclusively as a domestic “race problem,” an assumption and position still being advanced by neoliberal opportunists attached to democrat party in 2026.

African/Black Internationalism as an intricate component of the Black radical tradition was always politically dangerous to the U.S. settler state because it transformed Black people from an object of U.S. governance into an independent political subject. The state has always understood this potential threat and is why it has reacted with murderous violence against African/Black leftist politics and movements.

The Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, known as the Church Committee, investigation of intelligence abuses documented the FBI's COINTELPRO campaigns against Black organizations and leaders. The Bureau's Black Nationalist program was not simply concerned with criminal acts. It sought to disrupt organizations, prevent coalitions, undermine leadership and prevent the emergence of political forces capable of consolidating independent Black power.[3]

But clearly identifiable left forces were not the only target of the state’s counterrevolutionary efforts. The FBI's campaign against Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is especially revealing. The National Archives records that in 1967 the FBI directed field offices to commence COINTELPRO activities against Black Nationalist organizations, with the stated purpose of exposing, disrupting, misdirecting or neutralizing specified organizations, including the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) that was Dr. King’s organizational base.[4]

This is the historical meaning of the “subversive Negro.” The threat was not simply that Black people might commit violence. The deeper threat was that elements of the colonized African/Black people of the U.S. inspired and guided by a “people(s)-centered human rights framework (PCHRs) even before it was labelled such, consistently attempted to organize themselves independently of the structures of the U.S. settler state in order to realize a core principle of PCHRs – the right to self-determination.

From COINTELPRO to NSPM-7

NSPM-7 should therefore be understood within this longer history, while recognizing what is different about the present moment.

The NSPM-7 memorandum identifies “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity,” opposition to what it calls traditional American views on family, religion and morality, and “extremism on migration, race, and gender” among supposed ideological currents associated with political violence.[5]

The inclusion of anti-capitalism is politically significant.

It does not mean that every anti-capitalist is being declared a terrorist. Nor does the memorandum itself create a new domestic-terrorism crime or domestic terrorist designation system. As the ACLU correctly emphasizes, those powers do not exist in the manner that foreign-terrorist designations exist.[6]

But the political significance lies elsewhere.

The administration is constructing an ideological map in which anti-capitalism, anti-fascism, opposition to immigration enforcement, racial politics and other forms of radical opposition can become objects of counterterrorism scrutiny, even when there is no association to political violence.

The history of state repression has demonstrated to us that the danger often does not begin with the declaration that every radical is a criminal. It begins when political movements are placed within a security framework that encourages investigators to search for networks, relationships, funding sources and ideological connections.

The ACLU has specifically noted the parallel between NSPM-7's instruction to investigate and disrupt networks and the earlier COINTELPRO effort to expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit and neutralize Black leaders, civil-rights groups and protest movements.[7]

This is the continuity that characterizes something more extreme than what we faced in the 1950s through the early 1980s – the consolidation and normalization of neofascism that has moved from the ghettos, barrios and reservations to mainstream U.S. culture and politics.

Why Does this Mean for Black radical organizations

Neofascist consolidation means that for Black radical organizations our traditional concerns and political stances are precisely those most likely to cross the boundaries that the contemporary fascist security state increasingly seeks to police.

For example, Black internationalism rejects the artificial separation between domestic and international politics. The Black Alliance for Peace, as a Black radical organization understands police militarization in relation to U.S. imperialism; migration in relation to colonialism; Palestine in relation to settler colonialism and U.S. power; African political struggles in relation to global capitalism; and the conditions of Black workers in the United States in relation to racial capitalism.

This is not evidence of terrorism, but internationalism informed by an anti-colonial, anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist frame constructed over years of political opposition and struggle. But for the U.S. state’s emerging security framework, this position almost confirms the existence of foreign networks, foreign relationships, funding and ideological connections. Africans in the U.S. certainly wouldn’t adopt politics in fundamental opposition to the U.S. state and capitalist ruling class, unless it was foreign inspired.

And while historically the state often attempted to portray internationalist Black politics as evidence of foreign influence, today the potential mechanism is different: international political relationships can be interpreted through a transnational counterterrorism framework and unleash the full weight of the national security state apparatus. That is the mandate of NSPM-7!

The internationalization of the “far-left terrorist” frame

In July 2026, Secretary of State Marco Rubio convened an international ministerial focused explicitly on what the administration calls “far-left political terrorism,” with representatives from more than sixty countries.[10]

This gathering was important because the report and declaration of war against the left that emerged connected fascist intentions and a policy frame that would facilitate the global consolidation of fascism as an international security project led by the U.S. The new “white man’s burden.” Rubio argued that far-left terrorism had become a global threat and called for international cooperation against movements described as Marxist, anarchist, communist and anti-capitalist.[11]

The objective: Prevent Autonomous Political Capacity

The deepest lesson of COINTELPRO is not that the FBI spied on radicals. That is already well known. The deeper lesson is that state repression was directed toward preempting the consolidation of independent left popular political power.

The Church Committee documented COINTELPRO's efforts to prevent speaking, teaching, writing, publishing and meeting, as well as its use of propaganda, factionalism, hostile third parties and government processes against targeted organizations.[12]

The objective was political demobilization. That history should make us cautious about defining the contemporary threat simply as “criminalization.” A movement can be weakened without being outlawed, isolated without being imprisoned; financially strangled without being formally banned; and delegitimized through the insinuation that its members, donors, allies or international contacts are somehow connected to terrorism.

This is why the greatest danger to Black radical politics may not be the immediate declaration that a particular organization is terrorist. The greater danger is the gradual construction of a political environment in which independent Black organizing becomes institutionally expensive, legally precarious and socially stigmatized.

Organization is the answer

The response cannot be retreat in the face of the fascist threat. The lesson of COINTELPRO is that isolation is a weapon.

The Black radical response, and response of the left in general facing consolidating fascism, must be the opposite of isolation or self-imposed marginalization: deeper political education, stronger mass organization, greater organizational independence, broader alliances among popular movements domestically and internationally, Black left unity, serious legal-defense capacity, and a political culture capable of exercising the other core principles of people(s)-centered human rights – self-organization, self-reliance and self-defense are necessary.

The central strategic question, therefore, is not whether the state will attempt to repress radical politics and the left in general. History tells us that it will.

The challenge of the moment is whether the Black Left will possess the independent political organization necessary to survive that repression.

The “subversive Negro” is not simply a term from the past.

It represents a recurring function of American political power: the systematic efforts to control, manage and destroy, when necessary, expressions of Black self-determinant politics transforming those efforts into a security problem for white settler state authorities. NSPM-7 should be understood within that history.

The task before us is not to retreat from political opposition because the state has begun to call it terrorism. It is to build the kind of mass, internationalist, anti-imperialist and people-centered political movement that makes clear where the real threat lies:

Not in the people's struggle for liberation, but in the rapacious greed and absolute disregard for human life of the Pan European colonial/capitalist, white supremacist patriarchy. It is the defeat of that system of power that peace can be realized and the life affirming movement of the peoples of this planet. In other words, in order for collective humanity to live, what we understand to be the West, must die. Yes, that is a subversive position, but history demands no less.

Ajamu Baraka is an editor and contributing columnist for the Black Agenda Report. He is the Director of the North-South Project for People(s)-Centered Human Rights and serves on the Executive Committee of the U.S. Peace Council and leadership body of the U.S.-based United National Anti-War Coalition (UNAC).

Endnotes

Donald J. Trump, “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence,” National Security Presidential Memorandum 7, September 25, 2025, White House. NSPM-7 directs federal agencies to investigate and disrupt networks, entities and organizations associated by the administration with political violence. See also Hina Shamsi, “How NSPM-7 Seeks to Use ‘Domestic Terrorism’ to Target Nonprofits and Activists,” American Civil Liberties Union, October 15, 2025.
Trump, “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence,” NSPM-7. Reuters' contemporary account notes that the memorandum directed federal agencies to detect and disrupt radical groups and identified structures, networks, entities, organizations and funding sources as objects of concern.
U.S. Senate, Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans, Book III: Supplementary Detailed Staff Reports on Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans, “COINTELPRO: The FBI's Covert Action Programs Against American Citizens,” April 23, 1976. The report describes COINTELPRO as going beyond intelligence collection to secret actions intended to “disrupt” and “neutralize” domestic groups.
U.S. National Archives, “Findings on MLK Assassination,” reporting the House Select Committee's findings concerning FBI COINTELPRO activities against Black Nationalist organizations and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
Trump, NSPM-7. The memorandum identifies “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity,” among other ideological currents, as purportedly animating political violence. Reuters reproduced and reported this language in its September 25, 2025, coverage.
Hina Shamsi, “How NSPM-7 Seeks to Use ‘Domestic Terrorism’ to Target Nonprofits and Activists,” ACLU, October 15, 2025. Shamsi notes that U.S. law contains no standalone crime of domestic terrorism and no domestic-terrorist designation regime comparable to the foreign-terrorist designation system.
Ibid. Shamsi specifically compares NSPM-7's call to investigate and disrupt networks, entities and organizations with COINTELPRO's historical campaign against Black leaders, civil-rights organizations and protest movements.
USA PATRIOT Act, Pub. L. 107-56, §802, 115 Stat. 272, 376 (2001), codified in relevant part at 18 U.S.C. §2331(5). The statutory definition of domestic terrorism concerns acts dangerous to human life that violate criminal law and are intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population or influence government policy; it does not itself create a separate domestic-terrorism offense.
Shamsi, “How NSPM-7 Seeks to Use ‘Domestic Terrorism’ to Target Nonprofits and Activists.” The ACLU's analysis places NSPM-7 within a longer post-9/11 history of expansive domestic-terrorism and national-security investigations affecting Black, Brown, Muslim and other communities and social movements.
Reuters, “Rubio to host conference on ‘far-left terrorism’ on Thursday,” July 15, 2026. Reuters reported that representatives from at least 65 countries were expected to participate in the State Department ministerial.
Marco Rubio, remarks opening the July 16, 2026 State Department Ministerial on the Resurgence of Political Terrorism. Rubio characterized far-left political terrorism as an international threat and argued for greater international cooperation against it. Reuters reported the administration's international initiative and its focus on far-left political violence.
U.S. Senate, Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans, Book III, “COINTELPRO: The FBI's Covert Action Programs Against American Citizens.” The report includes sections on efforts to prevent speaking, teaching, writing, publishing and meeting, and documents techniques including propaganda, factionalism, hostile third parties and misuse of government processes.