Matthew N Lyons RSS

antifascism, Matthew N Lyons, repression, Three Way Fight - July 8, 2026

Demonizing Antifa: Federal Prosecutions Target Radical Organizers [ThreeWayFight]

[Originally posted to ThreeWayFight.org on July 3, 2026] By Matthew N. Lyons With the court cases against the Prairieland ICE protesters and the Minnesota 15, the Trump administration has ratcheted up its authoritarian power drive. The regime is trying to criminalize radical politics and grassroots organizing, as a cornerstone of its campaign to suppress all political dissent. In the Prairieland case, a federal judge slapped extraordinarily harsh sentences—ranging from 30 to 100 years—on eight defendants connected with a July 4, 2025 demonstration at the Prairieland Detention Facility in Alvarado, Texas. Benjamin Song, who was convicted of attempted murder for shooting...

Southern Poverty Law Center tries to avoid angering MAGA but still gets targeted [ThreeWayFight]

Matthew N Lyons [Originally posted to ThreeWayFight.org on April 22, 2026] For decades the Southern Poverty Law Center was a mixed bag. On the plus side, it produced valuable research reports about the far right and brought lawsuits that helped shut down several important white supremacist groups, including United Klans of America, White Aryan Resistance, and Aryan Nations. On the negative side, it collaborated with the FBI, promoted a shallow and system-supporting anti-“hate” analytic framework, hoarded donations, and fostered a toxic and discriminatory workplace environment. It gets worse. An April 3, 2026, Substack article by former SPLC Senior Investigative Reporter...

Two Takes on Radical Strategy in the Time of Trump [ThreeWayFight]

[This article was originally posted to ThreeWayFight.org on March 20, 2026.] by Matthew N Lyons Fourteen months into Donald Trump’s second presidential administration, the political situation in the United States of America looks both more horrifying and more hopeful than it did, say, last summer. Since returning to the White House, Trump has pursued a drive toward dictatorship with a speed, scope, and effectiveness arguably beyond anything in U.S. history. His regime has sharply intensified repression—kidnapping hundreds of thousands of people in the name of immigration enforcement and using a host of measures to stifle political dissent—and has seized unprecedented...

On the roots of America First foreign policy [ThreeWayFight]

[This post is mirrored from ThreeWayFight.org, where it was originally posted on March 7, 2026.] by Matthew N Lyons Balancing war and peace has long been integral to Donald Trump’s popular image. Making America Great Again has always included making America militarily dominant and feared again, a longing that accords well with Trump’s fixation on winning, glorification of violence, and celebration of toxic masculinity. Yet Donald Trump’s absurd pretension to be the “peace president” isn’t just about narcissism and Obama envy, and it isn’t a sudden shift. In 2016, candidate Trump denounced “endless wars” and promised to bring US troops home...

Read more

antifascism, Matthew N Lyons, Three Way Fight - February 16, 2026

Remembering Chip Berlet [ThreeWayFight]

[This post is mirrored from ThreeWayFight.org, where it was originally posted 2026-02-15.] Three Way Fight mourns antifascist researcher, writer, and organizer Chip Berlet, who died on January 30th. For some fifty years, Chip was a dedicated opponent of both far right politics and state repression. As a paralegal with the National Lawyers Guild in the 1970s, he helped force the U.S. government to release 300,000 pages of documents about the FBI’s COINTELPRO (Counterintelligence Program) against leftists. In 1987, Chip Berlet and Jean Hardisty cofounded Political Research Associates, which quickly became one of the best sources of information and analysis on...

Read more