Trump goes after antifa, sparking fears about crackdown on dissent

An executive order labeling antifa as a domestic terrorist organization is spurring pushback from critics across the ideological spectrum who say President Trump is laying the groundwork to crack down on those with opposing views.

Short for anti-fascism, national security experts say antifa is not the sprawling, organized group that Trump has claimed but rather a loosely formed ideological movement, one at times embraced by protesters who have violently clashed with police.

“Antifa is a movement like feminism or environmental activism, as opposed to a distinct group,” said Faiza Patel, director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the left-leaning Brennan Center for Justice.

“This is not like a group that you can sort of target with financial sanctions in the same way you would with a foreign terrorist organization. So then that leads you to the question of, well, then what does this executive order actually do?” she said.

White House officials argue antifa and other left-wing groups were part of a complex network that has been creating chaos and fomenting political violence, and that it needed to be addressed through the power of the federal government.

“These are not lone, isolated events. This is part of an organized campaign of radical left terrorism,” deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller said Thursday. “It is structured, it is sophisticated, it is well-funded, it is well-planned. There is really no parallel like this to anything else in the country right now.”

The Trump order comes in the wake of the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, which has prompted an outcry from the White House over political violence it blames on the left.

At the same time, Trump’s desire to crack down on antifa and the left isn’t entirely new. Trump in 2020 said he would designate antifa as a terrorist organization amid the height of Black Lives Matter protests, though he never followed through with an official action.

Pat Eddington, a fellow with the libertarian Cato Institute, called the executive order "idiotic" but said it carries significant risks because Trump administration officials will take it seriously, and can use it as a pretext for going after those espousing views Trump doesn’t like.

“With a complete loyalist like [Attorney General] Pam Bondi in charge over at the Department of Justice, you can be sure that this is going to be treated with absolute seriousness. They're going to use this as an opportunity, essentially, to go after anybody that engages in the kind of activity that Trump described in his executive order,” he told The Hill.

The White House disagrees strongly with that view.

“ANTIFA is a militarist, anarchist enterprise that uses violence and terrorism to try and accomplish their sick goals. For many years, Democrat politicians have tried to downplay ANTIFA’s reign of terror and looked the other way while left-wing violence plagued American communities, just like these so-called ‘experts’ are doing now,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement to The Hill.

“No more. At President Trump’s direction, the entire federal government will work together to investigate, disrupt, and dismantle all illegal operations conducted by ANTIFA.” 

Friday’s order designates antifa as a “domestic terrorist organization,” a title for which there is no legal mechanism like there is for foreign terrorist groups (FTOs). Designation as an FTO is often used to stifle any financial backing of such groups, limiting access to banking and other methods of funding their activity.

The order gives government agencies a broad mandate to “investigate, disrupt, and dismantle” any operations conducted by antifa or for any operation where an antifa member “provided material support.”

The order also alleges antifa uses “illegal means to organize and execute a campaign of violence and terrorism nationwide” to accomplish its goals of overthrowing the government and law enforcement.

Trump on Thursday signed another presidential memorandum on countering domestic political violence. That memo instructed government agencies, including the Joint Terrorism Task Force at the Department of Defense, to pursue left-wing groups and those providing them resources.

“We’re looking at the funders of a lot of these groups,” Trump said. But when pressed on whom specifically he was targeting, he offered speculation that prominent liberals like George Soros and LinkedIn co-founder Reed Hoffman.

Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.), a member of the House Homeland Security Committee, said antifa ideology doesn’t match Trump’s allegations about the group, which he’s accused of being highly organized and carrying out widespread violence.

“If there is an organized group called antifa that is committing domestic terrorism, then we should go after them. But I think it's a bit of a figment of his imagination,” Swalwell said of Trump.

“It's a concept which is like, people are anti-fascism, and so they will act in the spirit of anti-fascism. If they do that in a violent way, that's wrong, and I don't want that to happen either. But I don't think you're going to find the minutes from the last antifa board meeting, because I don't think they exist.”

That would align with the take of Trump’s first FBI director, Christopher Wray, who in 2020 told Congress, “It’s not a group or an organization. It’s a movement or an ideology.”

But GOP voices said Trump is making the right call by looking to monitor and address a possible threat.

“Antifa is certainly engaged in what would be considered domestic terrorism. It would be the first time we have a domestic terror group, that’s I think where people are confused. But are these people engaged in this? Like, yes, violence with a political lens is a pretty good indicator of what we might call terrorism,” said Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas), a member of the House Intelligence Committee.

“They're definitely very structured. For a while, it seems to me like [they had] well organized meetings, almost like this uniform they wear, in a way, a symbology. They already grew. Now, you haven't seen or heard from them in a while,” he added.

“I think it's the right thing to do,” Rep. Rick Crawford (R-Ark.), the chair of the House Intelligence Committee, told The Hill. 

The FBI already monitors anti-government extremism, a category that includes those with a variety of ideological perspectives.

Patel disputed the need for the order, calling it a messaging tool from Trump that could be used to escalate pushback on opponents.

“They're basically taking something that is sort of generally recognized to be a movement of sort of different groups operating not in coordination with each other — to characterize it as an overall organized campaign. And that is a very important messaging move,” she said.

The goal, she said, is to brand antifa as “coordinating some massive national security threat across the country.”

“So it's painting this movement as extremely dangerous and extremely threatening and coordinated, so I think it is a really important step, because that potentially opens up other avenues for the government to target people who may in some way be associated with this movement.”

Eddington said it gives Trump officials a pretext to go after those criticizing the administration — something he argued has already happened in the immigration arena, where those critical of the U.S. response to the Israel's war efforts in Gaza were threatened with deportation.

“There's a pattern and practice there, and it's this template, essentially, that it can just turn around and use. And so instead of it being related to the Israel-Hamas conflict and Arab or Palestinian folks, now it's ... left-leaning people in an antifa context, engaging in anti-Trump related speech, and they're simply looking for additional pretext to go after them in order to get them so,” he said.

He fears the FBI could use the order from Trump as an "authorized purpose" — a way to ignite an investigation that doesn’t require showing probable cause, allowing law enforcement to recruit informants, question people without revealing they are an agent, and search government databases.

“So there's a huge amount they can do without ever having to go before a federal judge to get authorization for it when they're doing it as an assessment,” Eddington said.