Trump’s War on Palestine Comes for Fergie Chambers
· Jacobin
On Tuesday, September 22, the Spanish Council of Ministers refused to block a US extradition request for James “Fergie” Chambers, a prominent and wealthy leftist activist and donor. The council did not determine whether the US citizen and activist will be sent to the United States, but only whether the request would proceed in Spanish courts, who will then make the final determination. Chambers’s legal team, which includes a number of legendary human rights lawyers, have vowed they will argue before the courts that Chambers’s extradition is politically motivated; thus granting it would violate the US-Spanish extradition treaty.The US indictment against the activist remains sealed, but Chambers’s lawyers have accused the US government of seeking to criminalize humanitarian aid to the Palestinian people, which has been a priority for Chambers to provide. The US extradition request has aroused considerable controversy within Spain. The electoral platform Sumar, a junior partner in Pedro Sánchez’s Socialist-led government, has opposed the extradition, as have a number of Spanish parliamentarians. They not only view the move as at odds with current Spanish government’s support for Palestine but as aiding the Trump administration as it seeks to internationalize its repression of pro-Palestinian voices.The attacks on Chambers come at a pivotal time. For the last three years, as Israel has waged a genocidal war of annihilation in Gaza, Western governments have sought to shield the apartheid state from accountability by restricting their own citizens’ free speech rights. The United States has not been immune from this. It has escalated a long-standing trend of using its anti-terrorism laws and sanctions to target global support for the Palestinian cause.After inheriting this assault on free speech, the Trump administration has sought to broaden its scope across the Left. And as the State Department has repeatedly made clear, this program is not to be limited to the United States domestically. It is in this context that the extradition request for Chambers must be understood.A Witch HuntChambers is a self-described communist. He also is a former heir to the Cox cable family fortune. He divested from his family’s fortune, granting him $250 million. With this money, Chambers began funding left-wing groups. The multimillionaire garnered media attention, some of it highly inflammatory, over his role in supporting the Stop Cop City protesters, an Atlanta-based activist movement opposed to the building of the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center on a mix of environmental and anti–police militarization grounds.The movement itself has faced heavy repression, with the state of Georgia bringing widely condemned charges against sixty-one supporters of the movement. According to Chambers, he donated a “couple of million dollars” to groups opposing the facility, as well as hundreds of thousands in bail support for those arrested. Chambers also funded the defense of a group of activists who vandalized Elbit Systems offices in New Hampshire, part of an international movement of direct actions against the Israeli weapons manufacturer.Chambers’s funding of activist causes and his underlying radical politics did not go unnoticed by the US media. In 2023, Los Angeles Magazine ran an exclusive on Chambers under the headline “Heir to Cox Family Fortune: ‘I Chant Death to America Every Day.’” In 2024, Mother Jones ran a profile of Chambers’s support for Stop Cop City with the headline, “There’s a Communist Multimillionaire Fomenting Revolution in Atlanta.” Days later, Rolling Stone published its own piece, “Fergie Chambers Is Heir to One of America’s Richest Families — and Determined to See the U.S. Fall.”Since Chambers’s arrest, Mother Jones has again written about him under the headline “Meet the Multi-Millionaire Pro-Hamas Activist Who Was Arrested in Spain.” (Shortly after October 7, 2023, Chambers tweeted “Stop calling it ‘collective punishment’. There’s nothing to be ‘punished’ for. No faction of the Palestinian resistance, Hamas or other, has done anything wrong. It’s simply genocide. Like it has been.”)The fact that an heir to one of the largest fortunes in the United States is now funding very left-wing activism is certainly newsworthy. And while many of these headlines were clearly designed to draw readership, it does not appear these profiles misrepresented Chambers’s views or misquoted him.But the attention to Chambers came at a time when the Right was increasingly targeting those who funded left-wing protest movements. As part of these efforts to stamp out political movements they disfavor, the Right has once again turned to an old rhetorical playbook, claiming such protests are not organic expressions of dissent but the sinister machinations of outside forces. While in the past the Communist Party has played the role of boogeyman, and today the nebulous “antifa” frequently also plays that role, significant focus has been placed on the role of funders as the supposed puppet masters inciting unrest in the United States. Attacking such funders is a clear strategy in Donald Trump’s National Security Presidential Memorandum-7 (NSPM-7).Rhetorically, much of this attention has been devoted to the liberal, well-connected philanthropist, George Soros, and his son, Alex Soros. But in terms of the actual mechanics of repression, the targets have increasingly been individuals like Chambers, whose views are more outside the mainstream.On Capitol Hill, Republicans, egged on by right-wing media, have engaged in a witch hunt reminiscent of the McCarthy era against Neville Roy Singham, even going as far as to subpoena a news outlet that received funding from him. Singham has been a left-wing activist for decades. A former member of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, Singham started his own software company, which he sold in 2017 for $785 million. Singham is the husband of Code Pink founder Jodie Evans, and his philanthropy came under fire as part of a series of attempts to demonize the venerable antiwar group as agents of China. Singham currently resides in Shanghai, and critics have asserted without evidence that he is an unregistered agent of China in order to taint the activism he funds. Anyone familiar with the McCarthyite campaign against him will immediately note that parts of NSPM-7 clearly allude to him.Fox News has played a significant role in fearmongering about Singham, so it is significant that in an article on Chambers’s arrest, the conservative outlet directly compared the two. In line with the Right’s growing narrative about US protests, the same article described Chambers as “bankrolling anti-cop, pro-Hamas communist revolution” and “years of financing anti-Israel and anti-West organizations and protests.” And while Chambers is certainly wealthy, unlike the Soroses, who fund mainstream causes and are close with powerful Democratic politicians, Chambers is certainly marginalized within US political life.With both Chambers and Singham, a huge factor in the attacks on them are their support for the Palestinian cause. It is this support that has now directly placed Chambers in the crosshairs of the Trump Justice Department.Human Rights Advocacy Is Too Much for TrumpThe US indictment against Chambers remains sealed, thus making it impossible to independently assess what the government is even alleging. According to his legal team and multiple media accounts, the indictment alleges money laundering in support of Hamas and “conspiracy to commit disorderly conduct.” The Grayzone, an independent media outlet focusing on US empire, claims to have viewed the sealed indictment. It describes the indictment as alleging “international money laundering. . . . with the intent to provide material support to and resources to foreign terrorist organizations.”In 2023, Chambers moved to Tunisia, though he has since relocated to Ireland. The indictment focuses on wire transfers Chambers made from banks in his native United States to banks in his then–home country of Tunisia. According to The Grayzone’s Kit Klarenberg, while the indictment focuses on these transfers, the indictment offers no evidence Chambers gave money to any foreign terrorist organizations.Chambers’s partner, Stella Schnabel, has publicly claimed the money was transferred as part of Chambers’s backing of Club Africain, a Tunisian soccer team, and youth soccer programs in the country. Chambers also has donated money to the Sameer Project, a humanitarian charity in Gaza. According to Middle East Eye, Chambers’s donation “helped establish a bakery in northern Gaza, complete a desalination plant and operate a free medical clinic.” Since Chambers’s arrest, Sameer has not paused its vitally needed humanitarian work.Without having access to the indictment, or understanding the wider US government case, it is unclear what role this laudable humanitarian work plays in the United States’ case against Chambers. His lawyers and supporters have repeatedly brought it up in the context of the extradition. And the United States has a long history of criminalizing such humanitarian efforts, oftentimes working in tandem with Israeli intelligence to do so.In one of the signature prosecutions of the post-9/11 war on terror, the US government put five leaders of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development on trial. They were not accused of supporting the 9/11 attacks, al-Qaeda, or even any act of violence. Instead, the Bush administration argued that the bona fide humanitarian aid they had sent to the occupied Palestinian Territories had gone through Hamas-controlled social-welfare committees, something the charity disputed. After two trials, and with help from the recently passed Patriot Act and Israeli intelligence services, they were convicted. The prosecution made clear that even pure humanitarian aid can be dubbed support for terrorism by the US government.Since Israel launched its genocidal war in Gaza, both the Biden and Trump administrations have escalated the use of this counterterrorism framework against Palestinian human rights advocacy. The Biden administration slapped Samidoun, a Palestinian prisoners’ rights group, with counterterrorism sanctions accusing them of being a sham charity. The Trump administration has continued this trend, including by sanctioning the organizers of the Freedom Flotilla on spurious claims that they are “terrorists.”It has also escalated by now sanctioning human rights groups and officials not accused of terrorism but of helping the International Criminal Court in attempting to prosecute Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. False allegations of terrorism are no longer necessary; mere human rights advocacy is enough. Such sanctions have sweeping reach, as the US government considers coordinating advocacy with a sanctioned party a violation of the sanctions regime, meaning US citizens seeking to work with these human rights groups or international officials risk prison sentences under the International Emergency Economics Powers Act by doing so.The Trump administration is also seeking the extradition of a Turkish national from the UK on claims that the charity he collected humanitarian aid for Gaza through was a “sham charity” on behalf of Hamas. In their press release announcing the request, the US Department of Justice explicitly thanked Israel’s domestic security service for their aid in the matter.And, in addition to internationalizing its attacks on aid for Palestine, it is also internationalizing its attacks on the Left. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Stephen Miller hosted a bizarre international conference on left-wing terrorism and are now extending the mania for sanctions beyond Palestinian human rights advocates to what it dubs “far-left terrorism.” This includes counterterrorism sanctions placed on Autistici/Inventati, an Italian volunteer collective that provides encrypted email services to activists. According to the Trump administration, they provided these services to “Marxist, anarchist, and other left-wing extremist groups in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere.”A Dark Precedent on the HorizonThe United States’ extradition request has rightfully generated opposition. Sumar, whose members include the vice prime minister and labor minister, have opposed it, as have a number of leftist members of the Spanish parliament. Over 150 prominent international activists, including Greta Thunberg, signed a petition opposing it. In Spain, Chambers is represented by Baltasar Garzón, a prominent human rights lawyer who, as a judge, issued an arrest warrant for former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet.The Left in the United States should also rise to the occasion and demand their government drop this extradition. Chambers has certainly been a polarizing figure on the US left, to put it mildly. Many on the Left disagree with many of his views, and Chambers has not been shy about voicing his own criticisms of the US left. But faced with political repression from a Trump administration hoping to both stamp out the Left and willing to aid Israel’s genocide in Gaza, such internal differences of opinion do not matter. The situation is urgent to stand against political repression, not just for Gaza but the entire international left. If the Trump administration succeeds in getting their hands on Chambers, it will set a dark precedent.This article originally appeared in Jacobin, a democratic socialist magazine publishing long-form essays and analysis on politics, economics, and culture. Subscribe to the print edition for $20 a year.
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