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The US state department has announced that it will designate four European self-described anti-fascist groups as Foreign Terrorist Organisations, as the Trump administration broadens its campaign against what it portrays as an international wave of leftist violence.
In a public statement on Thursday, the state department said it would designate Antifa Ost in Germany, the Italy-based International Revolutionary Front, and two organisations in Greece – Armed Proletarian Justice and Revolutionary Class Self Defense – as “Specially Designated Global Terrorists … conspiring to undermine the foundations of Western Civilization through their brutal attacks”.
The designation was the first time that “antifa” groups had been deemed a foreign terrorist threat, allowing law enforcement to use more aggressive techniques to oppose them. It also could extend to those deemed leftist supporters of the groups in the United States, allowing federal authorities to use similar surveillance and financial oversight tools against US citizens.
“Groups affiliated with this movement ascribe to revolutionary anarchist or Marxist ideologies, including anti-Americanism, ‘anti-capitalism’ and anti-Christianity, using these to incite and justify violent assaults domestically and overseas,” the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said in a statement.
The administration’s press release described incidents including the use of homemade explosive devices, shootings and hammer attacks as the cause for the listing. The designation would make financial transactions with the organisations or its members a criminal act in the United States.
The Trump administration has blamed leftist organisations for violent confrontations in the United States in the cities of Los Angeles, Chicago and Portland, following the assassination of the rightwing youth political organiser Charlie Kirk. The focus on antifa was first codified in a presidential executive action from September that declared “antifa” a “domestic terrorist organisation”.
National security experts have said that the designation is problematic because antifa, which is short for anti-fascist, does not have a clear membership or leadership structure.
Mary Bossi, emeritus professor of international security at Piraeus University in Athens, said it was “plain wrong” to conflate anti-fascist activists with violent extremists. While Greece, was once a hotbed of underground guerrilla activity where armed leftwing militants counted US diplomats and military personnel among their victims, antifa had never advocated violence.
Mary Bossi, emeritus professor of international security at Piraeus University, told the Guardian: “It is highly exaggerated to say that the antifa movement in Greece employs terror tactics. They even run in elections and have never shown any sign of violence.”
If anything, she said, terror groups snubbed the antifa movement, because “it talks too much”. Meanwhile, the online messaging of antifa activists across Europe had shown no sign of the violent rhetoric often seen in rightwing groups, Bossie said.
“It is so sad to see this extreme conservatism in the US,” added Bossi. “It seems to me that this is part of a [Trumpian] strategy to divide the world between the ‘good right’ and ‘bad left’. It makes no sense unless you see it in the light of blackening the name of anyone with centre-left or progressive views because these guys don’t advocate violence.”
