Donald Trump’s designation of antifa as a domestic terrorist organization last week was a perfect encapsulation of both the administration’s authoritarianism and its clownishness. Anyone old enough to remember the Bush administration’s response to 9/11 should get a chill when they hear government officials throwing around the word “terrorism.” That term tends to function as an all-purpose hall pass to justify encroachments on civil liberties.

On top of that, “antifa” is not even the name of an organization, although the general label (referring to militant forms of self-declared “anti-fascist” organizing) might describe varied and disparate small groups that do exist. Moreover, there’s no such category as a “domestic terrorist organization” in American law, so it’s unclear what practical import the order will have, if any.

The executive order used a catchall term to condemn a vague set of actors to an uncertain fate. It was almost as if, with great fanfare, the president had promised to extrajudicially execute vampires by exposing them to sunlight.