The federal government’s first-ever domestic terrorism convictions linked to “Antifa” came thanks to an “expert” witness who has never spent a day in government or academia, as non-public court transcripts I obtained show. He instead cut his teeth at various pro-Israel advocacy groups.
Shortly after Hamas' October 7 attacks, he said in a social media
post: "I would like every protesting communist scumbag to go to Gaza so the IDF can turn them into pink mist…"
His name is Kyle Shideler, and he is the worst of the worst kind of Washington expert. What he lacks in perspective and real world grounding he makes up in ideological fanaticism and deskwork. Before his current position at the right-wing fever dream factory called the Center for Security Policy, he spent years parroting Israel’s national security worldview: the “counterterrorism” mindset of pre-crime paranoia, in which threats lurk everywhere and the preemptive “security” crackdown they supposedly demand becomes its own form of oppression.
This paranoia was on full display at the trial of the Prairieland Eight
Last July 4, the eight protested Donald Trump’s immigration war by targeting the Prairieland Detention Center, an ICE facility in Alvarado, Texas. Seven of the eight gathered at the detention camp for a “noise demonstration” and began vandalizing cars and the facility walls, spray-painting graffiti and setting off what the government describes as commercial-grade fireworks to show support for the people locked inside. When local police arrived, one of the seven, 32-year-old Benjamin Hanil Song, shot Alvarado Police Lieutenant Thomas Gross in the neck. Gross survived.
Police later recovered 11 firearms, body armor, and tactical gear. The government charged Song with attempted murder. But the rest of the defendants were swept up not so much for what they did, but for what the government said they collectively
were: a “North Texas Antifa cell.” One of the targets, Daniel Sanchez Estrada, wasn’t even present that night. He was convicted of concealing documents — for moving a box of political zines. He was sentenced to 30 years.