When Doing the Right Thing Makes You a “Terrorist”

 

When Doing the Right Thing Makes You a “Terrorist”

Alex Pretti

Have you noticed the new kind of “terrorist” the Department of Homeland Security now claims to be fighting?

This one doesn’t fit the old image. He isn’t hiding in caves or plotting violence. He works as a nurse in a VA ICU, caring for veterans. He loves animals. He is a U.S. citizen who legally carried a firearm. And when he saw a woman being shoved by ICE agents, he stepped forward to help.

For that, he was killed.

Video footage circulating widely shows Alex Pretti restrained by multiple federal agents. He is sprayed in the face with a chemical agent, visibly blinded. His legally owned firearm is taken away. At that point, he poses no apparent threat. And yet, moments later, he is shot multiple times.

After his death, federal officials labeled him a terrorist.

That claim invites an obvious question: what, exactly, made him a terrorist? A beard? A legal firearm? The act of helping someone being pushed? If that is enough, then the word “terrorism” has lost all meaning. What remains is profiling dressed up as national security, and fear replacing evidence.

Anyone who watches the video carefully sees something deeply troubling. Not a violent attacker. Not an imminent threat. But a man already subdued, disarmed, and incapacitated. What follows does not resemble law enforcement. It resembles an execution.

Language matters because it shapes accountability. Once the government labels someone a terrorist, questions stop. Force is retroactively justified. Due process disappears. The victim is erased.

This did not happen in isolation. It reflects a broader shift under the Trump administration, where federal power is increasingly deployed against civilians, protest is treated as provocation, and basic human decency is reframed as defiance. The definition of “criminal” keeps expanding, while the obligation to protect citizens keeps shrinking.

The most disturbing part is not only the killing itself, but what came after. Instead of transparency, we saw deflection. Instead of cooperation with local authorities, obstruction. Instead of evidence, rhetoric. When a government responds to a civilian death with labels rather than facts, it signals that power matters more than truth.

History warns us where this path leads. When governments redefine “terrorist” to mean “inconvenient,” and “order” to mean “unquestioned obedience,” the law no longer protects people. It protects authority.

Many Americans supported Trump, believing he would disrupt corruption or protect their interests. What they underestimated is what it takes to govern a nation built on diversity, pluralism, and restraint. Strength without restraint is not leadership. It is cruel with a uniform.

If helping someone can get you killed. If following the law is no longer enough. If video evidence can be dismissed with a single word.

Then the problem is not chaos in the streets. The problem is chaos in power.

What happened in Minneapolis should not be buried under official statements or sanitized by bureaucratic language. It should force a national reckoning. Because when a government can kill a citizen, call him a terrorist, and move on, the danger is no longer theoretical.

It is real. And it is here.


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