Masked criminals attacked several Citibank locations in New York City one night last September. They brandished no guns and demanded no cash. Instead, they squeezed epoxy and cemented stickers on debit-card readers, damaged door locks, and vandalized windows with profanities and threats of future violence. Rather than keep their identities hidden, the marauders filmed their work and posted it to their enterprise’s Instagram page. “Unity of Fields,” the recently rebranded group formerly known as Palestine Action US—the new name comes from a Palestinian Islamic Jihad call for violence across the world—included a lengthy caption in the post, exhorting followers: “These actions are not hard to do. Please escalate for Palestine and humanity. We will not rest until Palestine is liberated from the river to the sea.”

Over the last few years, but especially since Hamas massacred Israeli civilians on October 7, 2023, this type of organized criminal mayhem has increasingly become part of American life. The criminal bands that have arisen act for ideological reasons. They operate where they believe that they have the most latitude: on college campuses and in Democratic-controlled jurisdictions. And their beliefs are overwhelmingly left-wing: radically environmentalist (“Just Stop Oil”), anarcho-socialist (Antifa), and, most often, anti-Israel.

A framework beyond protest politics and civil disobedience is needed to understand this phenomenon. Today’s left-wing agitators deploy random acts of lawlessness designed to inconvenience and disrupt as many civilians as possible, hoping to pressure them to get the government to change course. This tactic is reasonably described as a form of terrorism, though the activists aren’t murderous like al-Qaida or Hamas—they don’t use guns, bombs, or threats of unpredictable bloodshed. Instead, they engage in civil terrorism.