Janet Reitman Janet Reitman is an longtime investigative journalist and author of the forthcoming book, "The Inheritance: An American Tragedy in Five Acts."

“A number of the activists were involved in an anarchist book group called the Emma Goldman Book Club, which was exactly what it sounds like. It was a book club. And yet, the government considered the Emma Goldman Book Club to be the recruiting ground for the Antifa cell.”

The Daily (NYT) · October 2026

Context

Reitman describing the prosecution's case at the Fort Worth trial of activists charged with material support for terrorism after a protest at an ICE facility where an officer was shot. To show political motive, prosecutors put the defendants' ideology in front of the jury: chats, guns, zines and their reading group.

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Transcript

The Daily (NYT) Around 29:44 into the episode

Janet Reitman

…law enforcement. The ICE facility was manned by people on contract to the federal government, so they qualified as some form of federal law enforcement, and Lieutenant Gross was coming to their aid. So, the shooting of him qualified as the attempted murder that could qualify as a terrorist act.

Michael Barbaro

So, once this prosecutor breaks all kinds of norms and files these charges in a way that the Department of Justice has long avoided, what happens once those charges actually reach the courtroom?

Janet Reitman

…and photographs of weapons. And they bring in the fact that Ben Song and a number of the other activists were members of the SRA, the Socialist Rifle Association. Some were members of the John Brown Gun Club, which is a much more militant kind of organization. And they bring in the fact that they had all these zines and flyers and books. And one of the most important parts of this case was that a number of the activists were involved in an anarchist book group called the Emma Goldman Book Club, which was exactly what it sounds like. It was a book club. And yet, the government considered the Emma Goldman Book Club to be the recruiting ground for the Antifa cell.

Michael Barbaro

So, the prosecution is connecting a lot of dots here. And they say, in our view, this is terrorism and this is Antifa. But I have the question of why, so far in our conversation and the way you've talked about this group of protesters and what motivated them, why you never mentioned the word…

Janet Reitman

A question was put to five activists who pled guilty and were cooperators and testified about Antifa. Not one of them denied that they held anti-fascist views. And in fact, some of them said, Isn't it a good thing to be anti-fascist, right? Don't we all hate fascism? None of them, however…

Michael Barbaro

isn't really an organized group.

Speaker names come from our own diarization. The position is estimated from where the line sits in the episode.

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