Trump administration targets European antifa groups as ‘global terrorists’

The administration of United States President Donald Trump has designated four European groups as “specially designated global terrorists” for their links to the loose-knit, left-wing movement known as “antifa”.

Thursday’s announcement was yet another step in Trump’s campaign to dismantle antifa, short for “anti-fascist”.

The four sanctioned groups include Antifa Ost in Germany; the Informal Anarchist Federation/International Revolutionary Front (FAI/FRI) in Italy; Armed Proletarian Justice in Greece; and Revolutionary Class Self-Defense, also in Greece.

As part of Thursday’s statement, the US Department of State declared additional plans to list the four groups as “foreign terrorist organisations”, effective November 20.

It accused the four groups of a number of violent acts across Europe in their fights against capitalism, right-wing governments, and the oppression of the Palestinian people.

The US State Department warned that the designations came with consequences for any US-based person or entity that did business with the four groups.

“Persons that engage in certain transactions or activities with those designated today may expose themselves to sanctions risk,” the State Department said in its statement. ”Notably, engaging in certain transactions with them entails risk of secondary sanctions pursuant to counterterrorism authorities.”

Critics have accused the Trump administration of expanding the definition of “terrorism” far beyond its traditional meaning.

While “terrorism” is often used to describe domestic and international threats that use violence to achieve political aims, Trump has applied the label to drug cartels, Latin American gangs and antifa.

Experts, however, point out that antifa is a broad political and protest movement with no unified leader. It is generally seen as a collection of principles rather than an organised movement, and many antifa protests are peaceful.

Still, on September 22, Trump issued an executive order saying he would designate the left-wing group as a “domestic terrorist organisation”.

“Antifa is a militarist, anarchist enterprise that explicitly calls for the overthrow of the United States Government, law enforcement authorities, and our system of law,” Trump said in the order.

“It uses illegal means to organize and execute a campaign of violence and terrorism nationwide to accomplish these goals.”

That designation could potentially render antifa-related activity illegal. Providing “material support” for designated “terrorist” groups is a crime under federal law.

However, since antifa is not a cohesive group, there is no way of identifying the financiers of the movement, as it comprises several autonomous groups with varied funding sources, which are often not made public.

Experts have also raised concerns about the First Amendment right to free speech and association under the US Constitution, arguing that Trump’s designations could dampen left-wing activism.

“Speaking of ‘antifa’ in the singular is misleading and plays into Trump’s efforts to repress the left,” historian Mark Bray, author of Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook, told Al Jazeera in September.

Bray cast doubt on Trump’s assertions that antifa is a “coordinated” organisation that “conceal[s] its funding sources and operations in an effort to frustrate law enforcement”.

“He is trying to promote the common right-wing conspiracy theory that there are shadowy financiers like George Soros playing puppet master behind everything the left does,” Bray explained.

“The reality is that antifa groups do not have large budgets at all, and what they have is basically crowdsourced or generated from members themselves. It’s mostly for bail, really.”

Experts like Bray agree that antifa is an ideology rather than an organised group.

“Antifa is a kind of politics, not a specific group,” Bray told Al Jazeera, “in the same way that there are feminist groups but feminism is not, itself, a group.”

The historian warned that Trump’s efforts to label antifa a “terrorist organisation” could be used “as a blanket excuse for the regime to crack down on anyone to the left of them”, articulating fears of political repression under the right-wing president.