Love to watch our fascist government weaponize already-existing American xenophobia and a 17+ month long, wholly mainstream and bipartisan campaign to conflate opposing a genocide with antisemitism and support for "terrorists," to construct an automated digital panopticon that absolutely *will* be used to hunt down anyone critical of the US regime regardless of whether or not they're "foreign" or "students" tho:
https://www.axios.com/2025/03/06/state-department-ai-revoke-foreign-student-visas-hamas
Scoop: State Dept. to use AI to revoke visas of foreign students who appear "pro-Hamas"
"Secretary of State Marco Rubio is launching an AI-fueled "Catch and Revoke" effort to cancel the visas of foreign nationals who appear to support Hamas or other designated terror groups, senior State Department officials tell Axios.
Why it matters: The effort — which includes AI-assisted reviews of tens of thousands of student visa holders' social media accounts — marks a dramatic escalation in the U.S. government's policing of foreign nationals' conduct and speech.
The reviews of social media accounts are particularly looking for evidence of alleged terrorist sympathies expressed after Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, officials say.
Officials plan to examine internal databases to see whether any visa holders were arrested but allowed to stay in the country during the Biden administration.
They say they're also checking news reports of anti-Israel demonstrations and Jewish students' lawsuits that highlight foreign nationals allegedly engaged in antisemitic activity without consequence.
The State Department is working with the departments of Justice and Homeland Security in what one senior State official called a "whole of government and whole of authority approach."
I'll give Axios partial credit for at least *implying* that this is all fascist made up bullshit; but only partial because they didn't actually say it and like most mainstream media orgs that are at least pretending to oppose fascism, they're relying on readers to reed between the lines - a skill which most Americans simply do not posses if our political discourse is any indication.
So let's say it out loud for them:
The first thing you need to understand here is that Trump and the fascist movement have ALREADY defined ALL protest against Israel's genocide in Gaza as criminal in nature. Frankly, as far as I can tell, the Trump administration considers ALL protest a criminal activity, but they are particularly keen on prosecuting this viewpoint through attacks on anti-genocide protestors at American universities.
The second thing you need to understand is that this same fascist regime (and a significant portion of the American "centrist" establishment) have ALREADY defined opposing Israel's genocide in Gaza as being "pro-Hamas" and our government has officially labelled Hamas as a terrorist group, which unlocks a plethora of nightmare fascist enforcement and punishment options our governments installed in response to 9/11. Please keep in mind that whether you agree or disagree with the official designation of Hamas as a terrorist group is irrelevant, that's the law as presently constructed and you absolutely don't have to be pro-Hamas for these chucklefucks to say you are because you oppose facilitating a genocide and bombing fucking hospitals.
The third thing you need to understand here is that while the Trump regime is using foreign students as the thin end of the wedge to justify this war on free speech because Americans are xenophobic and their media has taught them to hate student protestors, the fact is that there is absolutely nothing stopping them from expanding their targets to include every American or person in America because we have laws and regulations on the books already that allow the US government to destroy your life and imprison you for supporting "terrorism" and they (and their fascist in-pocket judges) get to define what "supporting" and "terrorism" mean in this context. I mean I don't want to imply these folks give a shit about "rules" at all, but we've stupidly allowed the US government to essentially revoke our civil rights if they yell "terrorism" loud enough, legally.
Taken together then, all of that more or less indicates that the Trump administration is actively criminalizing opposition to American imperialism, criticism of American client states (particularly Israel,) and opposing a genocide. Pretending they might not MEAN to go that far like our media continues to do, is a very naïve position to take at this late a day and with the available evidence of how the Trump regime operates.
Finally, an aside - remember when I told you AI is literally "a fascism machine?" This is the kinda shit I meant; computers can't think and AI is garbage, but repression and violating the rights of millions of people, absolutely CAN be automated.
