{"id":303710,"date":"2025-09-29T12:00:57","date_gmt":"2025-09-29T11:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=303710"},"modified":"2025-09-24T09:48:49","modified_gmt":"2025-09-24T08:48:49","slug":"what-is-antifa-and-why-has-trump-branded-it-a-terrorist-organization","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2025\/09\/what-is-antifa-and-why-has-trump-branded-it-a-terrorist-organization\/","title":{"rendered":"What Is \u2018Antifa\u2019 and Why Has Trump Branded It a \u2018Terrorist Organization\u2019?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

A protester waves an anti-fascist flag at the Oregon statehouse in Salem on 28 Mar 2021.\u00a0 Photograph: Nathan Howard\/Getty Images<\/p><\/div>\n

There is no such formal entity called antifa, yet the US president has designated it an \u2018anarchist enterprise\u2019, raising concerns from civil liberties experts.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

23 Sep 2025\u00a0<\/em>– In a broadly-worded executive order<\/a> issued Monday evening, Donald Trump<\/a> declared \u201cantifa\u201d\u2013 the decentralized antifascist movement \u2013 as a \u201cdomestic terrorist organization\u201d.<\/p>\n

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With his order, Trump is delivering red meat to his base after years of drumming up fears around left-wing activism, which his administration has characterized as a dangerous scourge.<\/p>\n

Following the murder of right-wing commentator Charlie Kirk at a speaking event in Utah earlier this month, Trump and his allies vowed an aggressive crackdown on leftists, despite the fact that prosecutors are yet to surface any evidence<\/a> that the shooter was aligned with far-left groups.<\/p>\n

In his order, Trump describes antifa as a \u201cmilitarist, anarchist enterprise that explicitly calls for the overthrow of the United States Government, law enforcement authorities, and our system of law\u201d. In a statement he called it a \u201cSICK, DANGEROUS RADICAL LEFT DISASTER.\u201d<\/p>\n

The order and an accompanying \u201cfact sheet\u201d states that antifa\u2019s \u201ccampaign of violence and terrorism nationwide\u201d includes doxing of \u201cpolitical figures and activists\u201d, assaults against Ice officers and organized riots. The designation was met with immediate concern online by activists and civil liberties experts that it could be used to broadly suppress and criminalize first amendment activity such as protests against Ice activity.<\/p>\n

Fears that such a designation could be applied broadly are rooted in the fact that there is no such formal entity called antifa.<\/p>\n

Antifa is the organizing principle behind a loose nationwide network of local chapters of far-left activists. It has no command structure or leadership, but has remained a favorite boogeyman to describe a grab bag of left\u2013wing activism. Though the activities of antifascist organizations vary according to chapters and geographical location, they became best known for \u201cblack bloc\u201d counterprotest tactics in opposition to far-right demonstrations, particularly those led by the Proud Boys, during Trump\u2019s first administration.<\/p>\n

Kirk\u2019s death on 10 September unleashed a torrent of heavy-handed rhetoric and threats from Trump and his allies against the left. In a post on X, Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff, took aim<\/a> at an ideology that \u201ccelebrates everything that is warped, twisted and depraved\u201d, whose \u201cone unifying threat is the insatiable thirst for destruction\u201d. Trump said he\u2019d spoken to Pam Bondi, the attorney general, about exploring Rico charges against left-wing activists.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey should be put in jail, what they\u2019re doing to this country is really subversive,\u201d he said<\/a> in the Oval Office earlier this month.<\/p>\n

Though political violence across the spectrum has been on the rise, data does not support the Trump administration\u2019s portrait of an unchecked violent threat from the far-left. Data does show that attacks by right-wing extremists are often far deadlier. There have been 391 deaths caused by right-wing attacks in the US since 1975, compared to 65 deaths from left-wing attacks, according to the Cato Institute<\/a>, a libertarian think-tank.<\/p>\n

The last decade in the US has seen a steady drumbeat of mass murders by white supremacists who were radicalized by anti-immigrant ideology, including the 2018 shooting at a synagogue in Pittsburgh, the 2019 shooting at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas that targeted Latinos, the 2022 shooting at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York targeting Black people. These are facts that may be inconvenient to the Trump administration\u2019s narrative pretext for its crackdown against leftists.<\/p>\n

Days after Kirk\u2019s shooting, the Department of Justice quietly scrubbed<\/a> a now-archived report from its website finding that far-right extremists have killed more Americans than any other domestic terrorist group.<\/p>\n

What Trump\u2019s executive order will actually mean in practice is not entirely clear. It directs \u201call relative executive departments and agencies\u201d to utilize \u201call applicable authorities to investigate, disrupt, and dismantle any and all illegal operations \u2013 especially those involving terrorist actions \u2013 conducted by Antifa or any person claiming to act on behalf of Antifa, or for which Antifa or any person claiming to act on behalf of Antifa provided material support\u201d.<\/p>\n

There is no federal domestic terrorism statute in the US. <\/strong>Much of the modern counterterrorism infrastructure was created in the aftermath of 9\/11 to combat the threat posed by foreign terror groups.<\/p>\n

Although the 2001 Patriot Act does offer a legal definition of domestic terrorism, there is no associated crime in the federal penal code, though federal prosecutors can bring domestic terrorism charges in a handful of narrow circumstances and US sentencing guidelines provide for terrorism enhancement.<\/p>\n

Some counterterrorism experts have pushed for the creation of a domestic terror law in recent years, arguing that it would lend moral equivalence between attacks by white supremacists and those committed by Islamist extremists. Those efforts were met with concerns by civil liberties<\/a> experts that such a law, in the wrong hands, could lead to its weaponization.<\/p>\n

______________________________________________<\/p>\n

Tess Owen is a freelance reporter covering extremism, disinformation, politics and more.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original – theguardian.com<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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