https://www.profitableratecpm.com/f4ffsdxe?key=39b1ebce72f3758345b2155c98e6709c
When Secretary of State Marco Rubio added four European antifascist groups to the list of foreign terrorist organizations last week, he failed to tell the public one thing: how, exactly, these groups threaten Americans.
Bray told TPM that he wasn’t surprised to see what Posobiec said, but he doubted that Posobiec or the State Department understood the basic questions about the movement. He called the designations “lazy,” telling TPM: “I have a very low estimate of their knowledge on the subject, based on what they have said and written. »
He argued that the problem was not so much with European Antifa groups or Antifa in the United States, but rather with the intimidation of opposition in the United States.
“I don’t even think they really care about the real Antifa groups in the United States,” he said. “It’s a bogeyman, and a sort of guilt-by-association framework for a sort of bogeyman repression.”
“You know what I would like to see? I really want to see this Spanish Antifa group designated, because I find it really interesting that Dr. Antifa fled directly to Spain,” Posobiec mused. “Remember when he left Rutgers? He fled straight to Spain and immediately started working with Spanish Antifa. It’s almost like he was providing material support to a terrorist organization. Let’s put that thought to rest.”
Bray told TPM that he wasn’t surprised to see what Posobiec said, but he doubted that Posobiec or the State Department understood the basic questions about the movement. He called the designations “lazy,” telling TPM: “I have a very low estimate of their knowledge on the subject, based on what they have said and written. »
He argued that the problem was not so much with European Antifa groups or Antifa in the United States, but rather with the intimidation of opposition in the United States.
“I don’t even think they really care about the real Antifa groups in the United States,” he said. “It’s a bogeyman, and a sort of guilt-by-association framework for a sort of bogeyman repression.”
Even abroad, he remains in the crosshairs of the far right. Posobiec called for Bray to be prosecuted under Antifa designations during his podcast last week.
“You know what I would like to see? I really want to see this Spanish Antifa group designated, because I find it really interesting that Dr. Antifa fled directly to Spain,” Posobiec mused. “Remember when he left Rutgers? He fled straight to Spain and immediately started working with Spanish Antifa. It’s almost like he was providing material support to a terrorist organization. Let’s put that thought to rest.”
Bray told TPM that he wasn’t surprised to see what Posobiec said, but he doubted that Posobiec or the State Department understood the basic questions about the movement. He called the designations “lazy,” telling TPM: “I have a very low estimate of their knowledge on the subject, based on what they have said and written. »
He argued that the problem was not so much with European Antifa groups or Antifa in the United States, but rather with the intimidation of opposition in the United States.
“I don’t even think they really care about the real Antifa groups in the United States,” he said. “It’s a bogeyman, and a sort of guilt-by-association framework for a sort of bogeyman repression.”
After Kirk’s death, the Rutgers chapter of Turning Point USA called him “a prominent leader of the Antifa movement on campus.” Bray received more and more death threats and decided it was time for his family to leave for their safety. He fled to Spain in October.
Even abroad, he remains in the crosshairs of the far right. Posobiec called for Bray to be prosecuted under Antifa designations during his podcast last week.
“You know what I would like to see? I really want to see this Spanish Antifa group designated, because I find it really interesting that Dr. Antifa fled directly to Spain,” Posobiec mused. “Remember when he left Rutgers? He fled straight to Spain and immediately started working with Spanish Antifa. It’s almost like he was providing material support to a terrorist organization. Let’s put that thought to rest.”
Bray told TPM that he wasn’t surprised to see what Posobiec said, but he doubted that Posobiec or the State Department understood the basic questions about the movement. He called the designations “lazy,” telling TPM: “I have a very low estimate of their knowledge on the subject, based on what they have said and written. »
He argued that the problem was not so much with European Antifa groups or Antifa in the United States, but rather with the intimidation of opposition in the United States.
“I don’t even think they really care about the real Antifa groups in the United States,” he said. “It’s a bogeyman, and a sort of guilt-by-association framework for a sort of bogeyman repression.”
One of the people who suffered the consequences was Mark Bray, a professor at Rutgers and author of a book called “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook.”
After Kirk’s death, the Rutgers chapter of Turning Point USA called him “a prominent leader of the Antifa movement on campus.” Bray received more and more death threats and decided it was time for his family to leave for their safety. He fled to Spain in October.
Even abroad, he remains in the crosshairs of the far right. Posobiec called for Bray to be prosecuted under Antifa designations during his podcast last week.
“You know what I would like to see? I really want to see this Spanish Antifa group designated, because I find it really interesting that Dr. Antifa fled directly to Spain,” Posobiec mused. “Remember when he left Rutgers? He fled straight to Spain and immediately started working with Spanish Antifa. It’s almost like he was providing material support to a terrorist organization. Let’s put that thought to rest.”
Bray told TPM that he wasn’t surprised to see what Posobiec said, but he doubted that Posobiec or the State Department understood the basic questions about the movement. He called the designations “lazy,” telling TPM: “I have a very low estimate of their knowledge on the subject, based on what they have said and written. »
He argued that the problem was not so much with European Antifa groups or Antifa in the United States, but rather with the intimidation of opposition in the United States.
“I don’t even think they really care about the real Antifa groups in the United States,” he said. “It’s a bogeyman, and a sort of guilt-by-association framework for a sort of bogeyman repression.”
“It’s potentially very dangerous because anti-fascism is a way of thinking and an ideology,” Blazakis said.
One of the people who suffered the consequences was Mark Bray, a professor at Rutgers and author of a book called “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook.”
After Kirk’s death, the Rutgers chapter of Turning Point USA called him “a prominent leader of the Antifa movement on campus.” Bray received more and more death threats and decided it was time for his family to leave for their safety. He fled to Spain in October.
Even abroad, he remains in the crosshairs of the far right. Posobiec called for Bray to be prosecuted under Antifa designations during his podcast last week.
“You know what I would like to see? I really want to see this Spanish Antifa group designated, because I find it really interesting that Dr. Antifa fled directly to Spain,” Posobiec mused. “Remember when he left Rutgers? He fled straight to Spain and immediately started working with Spanish Antifa. It’s almost like he was providing material support to a terrorist organization. Let’s put that thought to rest.”
Bray told TPM that he wasn’t surprised to see what Posobiec said, but he doubted that Posobiec or the State Department understood the basic questions about the movement. He called the designations “lazy,” telling TPM: “I have a very low estimate of their knowledge on the subject, based on what they have said and written. »
He argued that the problem was not so much with European Antifa groups or Antifa in the United States, but rather with the intimidation of opposition in the United States.
“I don’t even think they really care about the real Antifa groups in the United States,” he said. “It’s a bogeyman, and a sort of guilt-by-association framework for a sort of bogeyman repression.”
But their presence on the list suggests the government is already looking into Antifa movements and their ties to the United States, Blazakis said. Private companies like banks and social media companies, which traditionally pay attention to foreign terrorist designations, are also being alerted, he added.
“It’s potentially very dangerous because anti-fascism is a way of thinking and an ideology,” Blazakis said.
One of the people who suffered the consequences was Mark Bray, a professor at Rutgers and author of a book called “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook.”
After Kirk’s death, the Rutgers chapter of Turning Point USA called him “a prominent leader of the Antifa movement on campus.” Bray received more and more death threats and decided it was time for his family to leave for their safety. He fled to Spain in October.
Even abroad, he remains in the crosshairs of the far right. Posobiec called for Bray to be prosecuted under Antifa designations during his podcast last week.
“You know what I would like to see? I really want to see this Spanish Antifa group designated, because I find it really interesting that Dr. Antifa fled directly to Spain,” Posobiec mused. “Remember when he left Rutgers? He fled straight to Spain and immediately started working with Spanish Antifa. It’s almost like he was providing material support to a terrorist organization. Let’s put that thought to rest.”
Bray told TPM that he wasn’t surprised to see what Posobiec said, but he doubted that Posobiec or the State Department understood the basic questions about the movement. He called the designations “lazy,” telling TPM: “I have a very low estimate of their knowledge on the subject, based on what they have said and written. »
He argued that the problem was not so much with European Antifa groups or Antifa in the United States, but rather with the intimidation of opposition in the United States.
“I don’t even think they really care about the real Antifa groups in the United States,” he said. “It’s a bogeyman, and a sort of guilt-by-association framework for a sort of bogeyman repression.”
The four groups named by Rubio are fringe actors who, according to state evidence, neither planned nor executed anything approaching the type of large-scale, 9/11-like attacks that gave rise to the system of designating the groups as foreign terrorist organizations.
But their presence on the list suggests the government is already looking into Antifa movements and their ties to the United States, Blazakis said. Private companies like banks and social media companies, which traditionally pay attention to foreign terrorist designations, are also being alerted, he added.
“It’s potentially very dangerous because anti-fascism is a way of thinking and an ideology,” Blazakis said.
One of the people who suffered the consequences was Mark Bray, a professor at Rutgers and author of a book called “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook.”
After Kirk’s death, the Rutgers chapter of Turning Point USA called him “a prominent leader of the Antifa movement on campus.” Bray received more and more death threats and decided it was time for his family to leave for their safety. He fled to Spain in October.
Even abroad, he remains in the crosshairs of the far right. Posobiec called for Bray to be prosecuted under Antifa designations during his podcast last week.
“You know what I would like to see? I really want to see this Spanish Antifa group designated, because I find it really interesting that Dr. Antifa fled directly to Spain,” Posobiec mused. “Remember when he left Rutgers? He fled straight to Spain and immediately started working with Spanish Antifa. It’s almost like he was providing material support to a terrorist organization. Let’s put that thought to rest.”
Bray told TPM that he wasn’t surprised to see what Posobiec said, but he doubted that Posobiec or the State Department understood the basic questions about the movement. He called the designations “lazy,” telling TPM: “I have a very low estimate of their knowledge on the subject, based on what they have said and written. »
He argued that the problem was not so much with European Antifa groups or Antifa in the United States, but rather with the intimidation of opposition in the United States.
“I don’t even think they really care about the real Antifa groups in the United States,” he said. “It’s a bogeyman, and a sort of guilt-by-association framework for a sort of bogeyman repression.”
The vagueness of what Antifa is and how far the government will go in its pursuit helps the Trump administration use one of its favorite tools: intimidation.
The four groups named by Rubio are fringe actors who, according to state evidence, neither planned nor executed anything approaching the type of large-scale, 9/11-like attacks that gave rise to the system of designating the groups as foreign terrorist organizations.
But their presence on the list suggests the government is already looking into Antifa movements and their ties to the United States, Blazakis said. Private companies like banks and social media companies, which traditionally pay attention to foreign terrorist designations, are also being alerted, he added.
“It’s potentially very dangerous because anti-fascism is a way of thinking and an ideology,” Blazakis said.
One of the people who suffered the consequences was Mark Bray, a professor at Rutgers and author of a book called “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook.”
After Kirk’s death, the Rutgers chapter of Turning Point USA called him “a prominent leader of the Antifa movement on campus.” Bray received more and more death threats and decided it was time for his family to leave for their safety. He fled to Spain in October.
Even abroad, he remains in the crosshairs of the far right. Posobiec called for Bray to be prosecuted under Antifa designations during his podcast last week.
“You know what I would like to see? I really want to see this Spanish Antifa group designated, because I find it really interesting that Dr. Antifa fled directly to Spain,” Posobiec mused. “Remember when he left Rutgers? He fled straight to Spain and immediately started working with Spanish Antifa. It’s almost like he was providing material support to a terrorist organization. Let’s put that thought to rest.”
Bray told TPM that he wasn’t surprised to see what Posobiec said, but he doubted that Posobiec or the State Department understood the basic questions about the movement. He called the designations “lazy,” telling TPM: “I have a very low estimate of their knowledge on the subject, based on what they have said and written. »
He argued that the problem was not so much with European Antifa groups or Antifa in the United States, but rather with the intimidation of opposition in the United States.
“I don’t even think they really care about the real Antifa groups in the United States,” he said. “It’s a bogeyman, and a sort of guilt-by-association framework for a sort of bogeyman repression.”
The vagueness of what Antifa is and how far the government will go in its pursuit helps the Trump administration use one of its favorite tools: intimidation.
The four groups named by Rubio are fringe actors who, according to state evidence, neither planned nor executed anything approaching the type of large-scale, 9/11-like attacks that gave rise to the system of designating the groups as foreign terrorist organizations.
But their presence on the list suggests the government is already looking into Antifa movements and their ties to the United States, Blazakis said. Private companies like banks and social media companies, which traditionally pay attention to foreign terrorist designations, are also being alerted, he added.
“It’s potentially very dangerous because anti-fascism is a way of thinking and an ideology,” Blazakis said.
One of the people who suffered the consequences was Mark Bray, a professor at Rutgers and author of a book called “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook.”
After Kirk’s death, the Rutgers chapter of Turning Point USA called him “a prominent leader of the Antifa movement on campus.” Bray received more and more death threats and decided it was time for his family to leave for their safety. He fled to Spain in October.
Even abroad, he remains in the crosshairs of the far right. Posobiec called for Bray to be prosecuted under Antifa designations during his podcast last week.
“You know what I would like to see? I really want to see this Spanish Antifa group designated, because I find it really interesting that Dr. Antifa fled directly to Spain,” Posobiec mused. “Remember when he left Rutgers? He fled straight to Spain and immediately started working with Spanish Antifa. It’s almost like he was providing material support to a terrorist organization. Let’s put that thought to rest.”
Bray told TPM that he wasn’t surprised to see what Posobiec said, but he doubted that Posobiec or the State Department understood the basic questions about the movement. He called the designations “lazy,” telling TPM: “I have a very low estimate of their knowledge on the subject, based on what they have said and written. »
He argued that the problem was not so much with European Antifa groups or Antifa in the United States, but rather with the intimidation of opposition in the United States.
“I don’t even think they really care about the real Antifa groups in the United States,” he said. “It’s a bogeyman, and a sort of guilt-by-association framework for a sort of bogeyman repression.”
Posobiec exaggerated the move, saying the administration itself had designated Antifa a foreign terrorist group.
What Rubio did last week fell short. Of the four designated groups, only one – Germany’s Antifa Ost – has an explicit connection to the movement. Even they call themselves “hammerbande,” a reference to the weapons they have used in attacks on people they call neo-Nazis. In September, the Hungarian government of Viktor Orbán labeled it a terrorist organization.
New powers
The vagueness of what Antifa is and how far the government will go in its pursuit helps the Trump administration use one of its favorite tools: intimidation.
The four groups named by Rubio are fringe actors who, according to state evidence, neither planned nor executed anything approaching the type of large-scale, 9/11-like attacks that gave rise to the system of designating the groups as foreign terrorist organizations.
But their presence on the list suggests the government is already looking into Antifa movements and their ties to the United States, Blazakis said. Private companies like banks and social media companies, which traditionally pay attention to foreign terrorist designations, are also being alerted, he added.
“It’s potentially very dangerous because anti-fascism is a way of thinking and an ideology,” Blazakis said.
One of the people who suffered the consequences was Mark Bray, a professor at Rutgers and author of a book called “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook.”
After Kirk’s death, the Rutgers chapter of Turning Point USA called him “a prominent leader of the Antifa movement on campus.” Bray received more and more death threats and decided it was time for his family to leave for their safety. He fled to Spain in October.
Even abroad, he remains in the crosshairs of the far right. Posobiec called for Bray to be prosecuted under Antifa designations during his podcast last week.
“You know what I would like to see? I really want to see this Spanish Antifa group designated, because I find it really interesting that Dr. Antifa fled directly to Spain,” Posobiec mused. “Remember when he left Rutgers? He fled straight to Spain and immediately started working with Spanish Antifa. It’s almost like he was providing material support to a terrorist organization. Let’s put that thought to rest.”
Bray told TPM that he wasn’t surprised to see what Posobiec said, but he doubted that Posobiec or the State Department understood the basic questions about the movement. He called the designations “lazy,” telling TPM: “I have a very low estimate of their knowledge on the subject, based on what they have said and written. »
He argued that the problem was not so much with European Antifa groups or Antifa in the United States, but rather with the intimidation of opposition in the United States.
“I don’t even think they really care about the real Antifa groups in the United States,” he said. “It’s a bogeyman, and a sort of guilt-by-association framework for a sort of bogeyman repression.”
“Antifa was created in Germany, in the Weimar Republic, and that has always been Antifa’s home base,” he said, recalling something he said to Trump during the meeting. “And so, we’re now seeing direct action from the Trump administration on this. »
Posobiec exaggerated the move, saying the administration itself had designated Antifa a foreign terrorist group.
What Rubio did last week fell short. Of the four designated groups, only one – Germany’s Antifa Ost – has an explicit connection to the movement. Even they call themselves “hammerbande,” a reference to the weapons they have used in attacks on people they call neo-Nazis. In September, the Hungarian government of Viktor Orbán labeled it a terrorist organization.
New powers
The vagueness of what Antifa is and how far the government will go in its pursuit helps the Trump administration use one of its favorite tools: intimidation.
The four groups named by Rubio are fringe actors who, according to state evidence, neither planned nor executed anything approaching the type of large-scale, 9/11-like attacks that gave rise to the system of designating the groups as foreign terrorist organizations.
But their presence on the list suggests the government is already looking into Antifa movements and their ties to the United States, Blazakis said. Private companies like banks and social media companies, which traditionally pay attention to foreign terrorist designations, are also being alerted, he added.
“It’s potentially very dangerous because anti-fascism is a way of thinking and an ideology,” Blazakis said.
One of the people who suffered the consequences was Mark Bray, a professor at Rutgers and author of a book called “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook.”
After Kirk’s death, the Rutgers chapter of Turning Point USA called him “a prominent leader of the Antifa movement on campus.” Bray received more and more death threats and decided it was time for his family to leave for their safety. He fled to Spain in October.
Even abroad, he remains in the crosshairs of the far right. Posobiec called for Bray to be prosecuted under Antifa designations during his podcast last week.
“You know what I would like to see? I really want to see this Spanish Antifa group designated, because I find it really interesting that Dr. Antifa fled directly to Spain,” Posobiec mused. “Remember when he left Rutgers? He fled straight to Spain and immediately started working with Spanish Antifa. It’s almost like he was providing material support to a terrorist organization. Let’s put that thought to rest.”
Bray told TPM that he wasn’t surprised to see what Posobiec said, but he doubted that Posobiec or the State Department understood the basic questions about the movement. He called the designations “lazy,” telling TPM: “I have a very low estimate of their knowledge on the subject, based on what they have said and written. »
He argued that the problem was not so much with European Antifa groups or Antifa in the United States, but rather with the intimidation of opposition in the United States.
“I don’t even think they really care about the real Antifa groups in the United States,” he said. “It’s a bogeyman, and a sort of guilt-by-association framework for a sort of bogeyman repression.”
Posobiec celebrated the designations on his podcast last week as a continuation of a fight that began in Weimar, Germany.
“Antifa was created in Germany, in the Weimar Republic, and that has always been Antifa’s home base,” he said, recalling something he said to Trump during the meeting. “And so, we’re now seeing direct action from the Trump administration on this. »
Posobiec exaggerated the move, saying the administration itself had designated Antifa a foreign terrorist group.
What Rubio did last week fell short. Of the four designated groups, only one – Germany’s Antifa Ost – has an explicit connection to the movement. Even they call themselves “hammerbande,” a reference to the weapons they have used in attacks on people they call neo-Nazis. In September, the Hungarian government of Viktor Orbán labeled it a terrorist organization.
New powers
The vagueness of what Antifa is and how far the government will go in its pursuit helps the Trump administration use one of its favorite tools: intimidation.
The four groups named by Rubio are fringe actors who, according to state evidence, neither planned nor executed anything approaching the type of large-scale, 9/11-like attacks that gave rise to the system of designating the groups as foreign terrorist organizations.
But their presence on the list suggests the government is already looking into Antifa movements and their ties to the United States, Blazakis said. Private companies like banks and social media companies, which traditionally pay attention to foreign terrorist designations, are also being alerted, he added.
“It’s potentially very dangerous because anti-fascism is a way of thinking and an ideology,” Blazakis said.
One of the people who suffered the consequences was Mark Bray, a professor at Rutgers and author of a book called “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook.”
After Kirk’s death, the Rutgers chapter of Turning Point USA called him “a prominent leader of the Antifa movement on campus.” Bray received more and more death threats and decided it was time for his family to leave for their safety. He fled to Spain in October.
Even abroad, he remains in the crosshairs of the far right. Posobiec called for Bray to be prosecuted under Antifa designations during his podcast last week.
“You know what I would like to see? I really want to see this Spanish Antifa group designated, because I find it really interesting that Dr. Antifa fled directly to Spain,” Posobiec mused. “Remember when he left Rutgers? He fled straight to Spain and immediately started working with Spanish Antifa. It’s almost like he was providing material support to a terrorist organization. Let’s put that thought to rest.”
Bray told TPM that he wasn’t surprised to see what Posobiec said, but he doubted that Posobiec or the State Department understood the basic questions about the movement. He called the designations “lazy,” telling TPM: “I have a very low estimate of their knowledge on the subject, based on what they have said and written. »
He argued that the problem was not so much with European Antifa groups or Antifa in the United States, but rather with the intimidation of opposition in the United States.
“I don’t even think they really care about the real Antifa groups in the United States,” he said. “It’s a bogeyman, and a sort of guilt-by-association framework for a sort of bogeyman repression.”
Cabinet officials, like Rubio, have since sought to demonstrate their anti-Antifa bona fides to Trump and the MAGA base. Last month, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced that his department was compiling lists of nonprofit organizations, comparing Charlie Kirk’s death to a “national 9/11.”
Posobiec celebrated the designations on his podcast last week as a continuation of a fight that began in Weimar, Germany.
“Antifa was created in Germany, in the Weimar Republic, and that has always been Antifa’s home base,” he said, recalling something he said to Trump during the meeting. “And so, we’re now seeing direct action from the Trump administration on this. »
Posobiec exaggerated the move, saying the administration itself had designated Antifa a foreign terrorist group.
What Rubio did last week fell short. Of the four designated groups, only one – Germany’s Antifa Ost – has an explicit connection to the movement. Even they call themselves “hammerbande,” a reference to the weapons they have used in attacks on people they call neo-Nazis. In September, the Hungarian government of Viktor Orbán labeled it a terrorist organization.
New powers
The vagueness of what Antifa is and how far the government will go in its pursuit helps the Trump administration use one of its favorite tools: intimidation.
The four groups named by Rubio are fringe actors who, according to state evidence, neither planned nor executed anything approaching the type of large-scale, 9/11-like attacks that gave rise to the system of designating the groups as foreign terrorist organizations.
But their presence on the list suggests the government is already looking into Antifa movements and their ties to the United States, Blazakis said. Private companies like banks and social media companies, which traditionally pay attention to foreign terrorist designations, are also being alerted, he added.
“It’s potentially very dangerous because anti-fascism is a way of thinking and an ideology,” Blazakis said.
One of the people who suffered the consequences was Mark Bray, a professor at Rutgers and author of a book called “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook.”
After Kirk’s death, the Rutgers chapter of Turning Point USA called him “a prominent leader of the Antifa movement on campus.” Bray received more and more death threats and decided it was time for his family to leave for their safety. He fled to Spain in October.
Even abroad, he remains in the crosshairs of the far right. Posobiec called for Bray to be prosecuted under Antifa designations during his podcast last week.
“You know what I would like to see? I really want to see this Spanish Antifa group designated, because I find it really interesting that Dr. Antifa fled directly to Spain,” Posobiec mused. “Remember when he left Rutgers? He fled straight to Spain and immediately started working with Spanish Antifa. It’s almost like he was providing material support to a terrorist organization. Let’s put that thought to rest.”
Bray told TPM that he wasn’t surprised to see what Posobiec said, but he doubted that Posobiec or the State Department understood the basic questions about the movement. He called the designations “lazy,” telling TPM: “I have a very low estimate of their knowledge on the subject, based on what they have said and written. »
He argued that the problem was not so much with European Antifa groups or Antifa in the United States, but rather with the intimidation of opposition in the United States.
“I don’t even think they really care about the real Antifa groups in the United States,” he said. “It’s a bogeyman, and a sort of guilt-by-association framework for a sort of bogeyman repression.”
“Let’s do this, Marco,” Trump told Rubio during the meeting. “We’ll take care of it.”
Cabinet officials, like Rubio, have since sought to demonstrate their anti-Antifa bona fides to Trump and the MAGA base. Last month, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced that his department was compiling lists of nonprofit organizations, comparing Charlie Kirk’s death to a “national 9/11.”
Posobiec celebrated the designations on his podcast last week as a continuation of a fight that began in Weimar, Germany.
“Antifa was created in Germany, in the Weimar Republic, and that has always been Antifa’s home base,” he said, recalling something he said to Trump during the meeting. “And so, we’re now seeing direct action from the Trump administration on this. »
Posobiec exaggerated the move, saying the administration itself had designated Antifa a foreign terrorist group.
What Rubio did last week fell short. Of the four designated groups, only one – Germany’s Antifa Ost – has an explicit connection to the movement. Even they call themselves “hammerbande,” a reference to the weapons they have used in attacks on people they call neo-Nazis. In September, the Hungarian government of Viktor Orbán labeled it a terrorist organization.
New powers
The vagueness of what Antifa is and how far the government will go in its pursuit helps the Trump administration use one of its favorite tools: intimidation.
The four groups named by Rubio are fringe actors who, according to state evidence, neither planned nor executed anything approaching the type of large-scale, 9/11-like attacks that gave rise to the system of designating the groups as foreign terrorist organizations.
But their presence on the list suggests the government is already looking into Antifa movements and their ties to the United States, Blazakis said. Private companies like banks and social media companies, which traditionally pay attention to foreign terrorist designations, are also being alerted, he added.
“It’s potentially very dangerous because anti-fascism is a way of thinking and an ideology,” Blazakis said.
One of the people who suffered the consequences was Mark Bray, a professor at Rutgers and author of a book called “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook.”
After Kirk’s death, the Rutgers chapter of Turning Point USA called him “a prominent leader of the Antifa movement on campus.” Bray received more and more death threats and decided it was time for his family to leave for their safety. He fled to Spain in October.
Even abroad, he remains in the crosshairs of the far right. Posobiec called for Bray to be prosecuted under Antifa designations during his podcast last week.
“You know what I would like to see? I really want to see this Spanish Antifa group designated, because I find it really interesting that Dr. Antifa fled directly to Spain,” Posobiec mused. “Remember when he left Rutgers? He fled straight to Spain and immediately started working with Spanish Antifa. It’s almost like he was providing material support to a terrorist organization. Let’s put that thought to rest.”
Bray told TPM that he wasn’t surprised to see what Posobiec said, but he doubted that Posobiec or the State Department understood the basic questions about the movement. He called the designations “lazy,” telling TPM: “I have a very low estimate of their knowledge on the subject, based on what they have said and written. »
He argued that the problem was not so much with European Antifa groups or Antifa in the United States, but rather with the intimidation of opposition in the United States.
“I don’t even think they really care about the real Antifa groups in the United States,” he said. “It’s a bogeyman, and a sort of guilt-by-association framework for a sort of bogeyman repression.”
During the roundtable, both urged Trump to designate Antifa a foreign terrorist group; in Posobiec, Trump said yes.
“Let’s do this, Marco,” Trump told Rubio during the meeting. “We’ll take care of it.”
Cabinet officials, like Rubio, have since sought to demonstrate their anti-Antifa bona fides to Trump and the MAGA base. Last month, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced that his department was compiling lists of nonprofit organizations, comparing Charlie Kirk’s death to a “national 9/11.”
Posobiec celebrated the designations on his podcast last week as a continuation of a fight that began in Weimar, Germany.
“Antifa was created in Germany, in the Weimar Republic, and that has always been Antifa’s home base,” he said, recalling something he said to Trump during the meeting. “And so, we’re now seeing direct action from the Trump administration on this. »
Posobiec exaggerated the move, saying the administration itself had designated Antifa a foreign terrorist group.
What Rubio did last week fell short. Of the four designated groups, only one – Germany’s Antifa Ost – has an explicit connection to the movement. Even they call themselves “hammerbande,” a reference to the weapons they have used in attacks on people they call neo-Nazis. In September, the Hungarian government of Viktor Orbán labeled it a terrorist organization.
New powers
The vagueness of what Antifa is and how far the government will go in its pursuit helps the Trump administration use one of its favorite tools: intimidation.
The four groups named by Rubio are fringe actors who, according to state evidence, neither planned nor executed anything approaching the type of large-scale, 9/11-like attacks that gave rise to the system of designating the groups as foreign terrorist organizations.
But their presence on the list suggests the government is already looking into Antifa movements and their ties to the United States, Blazakis said. Private companies like banks and social media companies, which traditionally pay attention to foreign terrorist designations, are also being alerted, he added.
“It’s potentially very dangerous because anti-fascism is a way of thinking and an ideology,” Blazakis said.
One of the people who suffered the consequences was Mark Bray, a professor at Rutgers and author of a book called “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook.”
After Kirk’s death, the Rutgers chapter of Turning Point USA called him “a prominent leader of the Antifa movement on campus.” Bray received more and more death threats and decided it was time for his family to leave for their safety. He fled to Spain in October.
Even abroad, he remains in the crosshairs of the far right. Posobiec called for Bray to be prosecuted under Antifa designations during his podcast last week.
“You know what I would like to see? I really want to see this Spanish Antifa group designated, because I find it really interesting that Dr. Antifa fled directly to Spain,” Posobiec mused. “Remember when he left Rutgers? He fled straight to Spain and immediately started working with Spanish Antifa. It’s almost like he was providing material support to a terrorist organization. Let’s put that thought to rest.”
Bray told TPM that he wasn’t surprised to see what Posobiec said, but he doubted that Posobiec or the State Department understood the basic questions about the movement. He called the designations “lazy,” telling TPM: “I have a very low estimate of their knowledge on the subject, based on what they have said and written. »
He argued that the problem was not so much with European Antifa groups or Antifa in the United States, but rather with the intimidation of opposition in the United States.
“I don’t even think they really care about the real Antifa groups in the United States,” he said. “It’s a bogeyman, and a sort of guilt-by-association framework for a sort of bogeyman repression.”
The idea of designating Antifa as a foreign terrorist organization first surfaced publicly in October, during the administration’s “Antifa Roundtable.” The event brought together senior administration officials and right-wing activist-influencers like Andy Ngo and Jack Posobiec. Both men spent years rejecting violent left-wing extremists as part of an organized domestic conspiracy capable of undermining the foundations of the American government.
During the roundtable, both urged Trump to designate Antifa a foreign terrorist group; in Posobiec, Trump said yes.
“Let’s do this, Marco,” Trump told Rubio during the meeting. “We’ll take care of it.”
Cabinet officials, like Rubio, have since sought to demonstrate their anti-Antifa bona fides to Trump and the MAGA base. Last month, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced that his department was compiling lists of nonprofit organizations, comparing Charlie Kirk’s death to a “national 9/11.”
Posobiec celebrated the designations on his podcast last week as a continuation of a fight that began in Weimar, Germany.
“Antifa was created in Germany, in the Weimar Republic, and that has always been Antifa’s home base,” he said, recalling something he said to Trump during the meeting. “And so, we’re now seeing direct action from the Trump administration on this. »
Posobiec exaggerated the move, saying the administration itself had designated Antifa a foreign terrorist group.
What Rubio did last week fell short. Of the four designated groups, only one – Germany’s Antifa Ost – has an explicit connection to the movement. Even they call themselves “hammerbande,” a reference to the weapons they have used in attacks on people they call neo-Nazis. In September, the Hungarian government of Viktor Orbán labeled it a terrorist organization.
New powers
The vagueness of what Antifa is and how far the government will go in its pursuit helps the Trump administration use one of its favorite tools: intimidation.
The four groups named by Rubio are fringe actors who, according to state evidence, neither planned nor executed anything approaching the type of large-scale, 9/11-like attacks that gave rise to the system of designating the groups as foreign terrorist organizations.
But their presence on the list suggests the government is already looking into Antifa movements and their ties to the United States, Blazakis said. Private companies like banks and social media companies, which traditionally pay attention to foreign terrorist designations, are also being alerted, he added.
“It’s potentially very dangerous because anti-fascism is a way of thinking and an ideology,” Blazakis said.
One of the people who suffered the consequences was Mark Bray, a professor at Rutgers and author of a book called “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook.”
After Kirk’s death, the Rutgers chapter of Turning Point USA called him “a prominent leader of the Antifa movement on campus.” Bray received more and more death threats and decided it was time for his family to leave for their safety. He fled to Spain in October.
Even abroad, he remains in the crosshairs of the far right. Posobiec called for Bray to be prosecuted under Antifa designations during his podcast last week.
“You know what I would like to see? I really want to see this Spanish Antifa group designated, because I find it really interesting that Dr. Antifa fled directly to Spain,” Posobiec mused. “Remember when he left Rutgers? He fled straight to Spain and immediately started working with Spanish Antifa. It’s almost like he was providing material support to a terrorist organization. Let’s put that thought to rest.”
Bray told TPM that he wasn’t surprised to see what Posobiec said, but he doubted that Posobiec or the State Department understood the basic questions about the movement. He called the designations “lazy,” telling TPM: “I have a very low estimate of their knowledge on the subject, based on what they have said and written. »
He argued that the problem was not so much with European Antifa groups or Antifa in the United States, but rather with the intimidation of opposition in the United States.
“I don’t even think they really care about the real Antifa groups in the United States,” he said. “It’s a bogeyman, and a sort of guilt-by-association framework for a sort of bogeyman repression.”
The idea of designating Antifa as a foreign terrorist organization first surfaced publicly in October, during the administration’s “Antifa Roundtable.” The event brought together senior administration officials and right-wing activist-influencers like Andy Ngo and Jack Posobiec. Both men spent years rejecting violent left-wing extremists as part of an organized domestic conspiracy capable of undermining the foundations of the American government.
During the roundtable, both urged Trump to designate Antifa a foreign terrorist group; in Posobiec, Trump said yes.
“Let’s do this, Marco,” Trump told Rubio during the meeting. “We’ll take care of it.”
Cabinet officials, like Rubio, have since sought to demonstrate their anti-Antifa bona fides to Trump and the MAGA base. Last month, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced that his department was compiling lists of nonprofit organizations, comparing Charlie Kirk’s death to a “national 9/11.”
Posobiec celebrated the designations on his podcast last week as a continuation of a fight that began in Weimar, Germany.
“Antifa was created in Germany, in the Weimar Republic, and that has always been Antifa’s home base,” he said, recalling something he said to Trump during the meeting. “And so, we’re now seeing direct action from the Trump administration on this. »
Posobiec exaggerated the move, saying the administration itself had designated Antifa a foreign terrorist group.
What Rubio did last week fell short. Of the four designated groups, only one – Germany’s Antifa Ost – has an explicit connection to the movement. Even they call themselves “hammerbande,” a reference to the weapons they have used in attacks on people they call neo-Nazis. In September, the Hungarian government of Viktor Orbán labeled it a terrorist organization.
New powers
The vagueness of what Antifa is and how far the government will go in its pursuit helps the Trump administration use one of its favorite tools: intimidation.
The four groups named by Rubio are fringe actors who, according to state evidence, neither planned nor executed anything approaching the type of large-scale, 9/11-like attacks that gave rise to the system of designating the groups as foreign terrorist organizations.
But their presence on the list suggests the government is already looking into Antifa movements and their ties to the United States, Blazakis said. Private companies like banks and social media companies, which traditionally pay attention to foreign terrorist designations, are also being alerted, he added.
“It’s potentially very dangerous because anti-fascism is a way of thinking and an ideology,” Blazakis said.
One of the people who suffered the consequences was Mark Bray, a professor at Rutgers and author of a book called “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook.”
After Kirk’s death, the Rutgers chapter of Turning Point USA called him “a prominent leader of the Antifa movement on campus.” Bray received more and more death threats and decided it was time for his family to leave for their safety. He fled to Spain in October.
Even abroad, he remains in the crosshairs of the far right. Posobiec called for Bray to be prosecuted under Antifa designations during his podcast last week.
“You know what I would like to see? I really want to see this Spanish Antifa group designated, because I find it really interesting that Dr. Antifa fled directly to Spain,” Posobiec mused. “Remember when he left Rutgers? He fled straight to Spain and immediately started working with Spanish Antifa. It’s almost like he was providing material support to a terrorist organization. Let’s put that thought to rest.”
Bray told TPM that he wasn’t surprised to see what Posobiec said, but he doubted that Posobiec or the State Department understood the basic questions about the movement. He called the designations “lazy,” telling TPM: “I have a very low estimate of their knowledge on the subject, based on what they have said and written. »
He argued that the problem was not so much with European Antifa groups or Antifa in the United States, but rather with the intimidation of opposition in the United States.
“I don’t even think they really care about the real Antifa groups in the United States,” he said. “It’s a bogeyman, and a sort of guilt-by-association framework for a sort of bogeyman repression.”
“It depends on how you could criminalize ideology,” Blazakis told TPM. “It’s this deterrent effect that this is going to have as part of a process of trying to diminish legitimate political opposition.”
This could be a new line of attack against a progressive nonprofit sector that is, to some extent, already crippled, several executives told TPM recently, as it prepares to resist federal investigations.
Weimar Redux
The idea of designating Antifa as a foreign terrorist organization first surfaced publicly in October, during the administration’s “Antifa Roundtable.” The event brought together senior administration officials and right-wing activist-influencers like Andy Ngo and Jack Posobiec. Both men spent years rejecting violent left-wing extremists as part of an organized domestic conspiracy capable of undermining the foundations of the American government.
During the roundtable, both urged Trump to designate Antifa a foreign terrorist group; in Posobiec, Trump said yes.
“Let’s do this, Marco,” Trump told Rubio during the meeting. “We’ll take care of it.”
Cabinet officials, like Rubio, have since sought to demonstrate their anti-Antifa bona fides to Trump and the MAGA base. Last month, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced that his department was compiling lists of nonprofit organizations, comparing Charlie Kirk’s death to a “national 9/11.”
Posobiec celebrated the designations on his podcast last week as a continuation of a fight that began in Weimar, Germany.
“Antifa was created in Germany, in the Weimar Republic, and that has always been Antifa’s home base,” he said, recalling something he said to Trump during the meeting. “And so, we’re now seeing direct action from the Trump administration on this. »
Posobiec exaggerated the move, saying the administration itself had designated Antifa a foreign terrorist group.
What Rubio did last week fell short. Of the four designated groups, only one – Germany’s Antifa Ost – has an explicit connection to the movement. Even they call themselves “hammerbande,” a reference to the weapons they have used in attacks on people they call neo-Nazis. In September, the Hungarian government of Viktor Orbán labeled it a terrorist organization.
New powers
The vagueness of what Antifa is and how far the government will go in its pursuit helps the Trump administration use one of its favorite tools: intimidation.
The four groups named by Rubio are fringe actors who, according to state evidence, neither planned nor executed anything approaching the type of large-scale, 9/11-like attacks that gave rise to the system of designating the groups as foreign terrorist organizations.
But their presence on the list suggests the government is already looking into Antifa movements and their ties to the United States, Blazakis said. Private companies like banks and social media companies, which traditionally pay attention to foreign terrorist designations, are also being alerted, he added.
“It’s potentially very dangerous because anti-fascism is a way of thinking and an ideology,” Blazakis said.
One of the people who suffered the consequences was Mark Bray, a professor at Rutgers and author of a book called “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook.”
After Kirk’s death, the Rutgers chapter of Turning Point USA called him “a prominent leader of the Antifa movement on campus.” Bray received more and more death threats and decided it was time for his family to leave for their safety. He fled to Spain in October.
Even abroad, he remains in the crosshairs of the far right. Posobiec called for Bray to be prosecuted under Antifa designations during his podcast last week.
“You know what I would like to see? I really want to see this Spanish Antifa group designated, because I find it really interesting that Dr. Antifa fled directly to Spain,” Posobiec mused. “Remember when he left Rutgers? He fled straight to Spain and immediately started working with Spanish Antifa. It’s almost like he was providing material support to a terrorist organization. Let’s put that thought to rest.”
Bray told TPM that he wasn’t surprised to see what Posobiec said, but he doubted that Posobiec or the State Department understood the basic questions about the movement. He called the designations “lazy,” telling TPM: “I have a very low estimate of their knowledge on the subject, based on what they have said and written. »
He argued that the problem was not so much with European Antifa groups or Antifa in the United States, but rather with the intimidation of opposition in the United States.
“I don’t even think they really care about the real Antifa groups in the United States,” he said. “It’s a bogeyman, and a sort of guilt-by-association framework for a sort of bogeyman repression.”
He warned that these designations could allow for more aggressive tactics by law enforcement, including efforts to infiltrate domestic groups while searching for suspected ties to foreign entities.
“It depends on how you could criminalize ideology,” Blazakis told TPM. “It’s this deterrent effect that this is going to have as part of a process of trying to diminish legitimate political opposition.”
This could be a new line of attack against a progressive nonprofit sector that is, to some extent, already crippled, several executives told TPM recently, as it prepares to resist federal investigations.
Weimar Redux
The idea of designating Antifa as a foreign terrorist organization first surfaced publicly in October, during the administration’s “Antifa Roundtable.” The event brought together senior administration officials and right-wing activist-influencers like Andy Ngo and Jack Posobiec. Both men spent years rejecting violent left-wing extremists as part of an organized domestic conspiracy capable of undermining the foundations of the American government.
During the roundtable, both urged Trump to designate Antifa a foreign terrorist group; in Posobiec, Trump said yes.
“Let’s do this, Marco,” Trump told Rubio during the meeting. “We’ll take care of it.”
Cabinet officials, like Rubio, have since sought to demonstrate their anti-Antifa bona fides to Trump and the MAGA base. Last month, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced that his department was compiling lists of nonprofit organizations, comparing Charlie Kirk’s death to a “national 9/11.”
Posobiec celebrated the designations on his podcast last week as a continuation of a fight that began in Weimar, Germany.
“Antifa was created in Germany, in the Weimar Republic, and that has always been Antifa’s home base,” he said, recalling something he said to Trump during the meeting. “And so, we’re now seeing direct action from the Trump administration on this. »
Posobiec exaggerated the move, saying the administration itself had designated Antifa a foreign terrorist group.
What Rubio did last week fell short. Of the four designated groups, only one – Germany’s Antifa Ost – has an explicit connection to the movement. Even they call themselves “hammerbande,” a reference to the weapons they have used in attacks on people they call neo-Nazis. In September, the Hungarian government of Viktor Orbán labeled it a terrorist organization.
New powers
The vagueness of what Antifa is and how far the government will go in its pursuit helps the Trump administration use one of its favorite tools: intimidation.
The four groups named by Rubio are fringe actors who, according to state evidence, neither planned nor executed anything approaching the type of large-scale, 9/11-like attacks that gave rise to the system of designating the groups as foreign terrorist organizations.
But their presence on the list suggests the government is already looking into Antifa movements and their ties to the United States, Blazakis said. Private companies like banks and social media companies, which traditionally pay attention to foreign terrorist designations, are also being alerted, he added.
“It’s potentially very dangerous because anti-fascism is a way of thinking and an ideology,” Blazakis said.
One of the people who suffered the consequences was Mark Bray, a professor at Rutgers and author of a book called “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook.”
After Kirk’s death, the Rutgers chapter of Turning Point USA called him “a prominent leader of the Antifa movement on campus.” Bray received more and more death threats and decided it was time for his family to leave for their safety. He fled to Spain in October.
Even abroad, he remains in the crosshairs of the far right. Posobiec called for Bray to be prosecuted under Antifa designations during his podcast last week.
“You know what I would like to see? I really want to see this Spanish Antifa group designated, because I find it really interesting that Dr. Antifa fled directly to Spain,” Posobiec mused. “Remember when he left Rutgers? He fled straight to Spain and immediately started working with Spanish Antifa. It’s almost like he was providing material support to a terrorist organization. Let’s put that thought to rest.”
Bray told TPM that he wasn’t surprised to see what Posobiec said, but he doubted that Posobiec or the State Department understood the basic questions about the movement. He called the designations “lazy,” telling TPM: “I have a very low estimate of their knowledge on the subject, based on what they have said and written. »
He argued that the problem was not so much with European Antifa groups or Antifa in the United States, but rather with the intimidation of opposition in the United States.
“I don’t even think they really care about the real Antifa groups in the United States,” he said. “It’s a bogeyman, and a sort of guilt-by-association framework for a sort of bogeyman repression.”
Jason Blazakis, former director of the Office of Counterterrorism Financing and Designations in the State Department’s Office of Counterterrorism, called the move “problematic.”
He warned that these designations could allow for more aggressive tactics by law enforcement, including efforts to infiltrate domestic groups while searching for suspected ties to foreign entities.
“It depends on how you could criminalize ideology,” Blazakis told TPM. “It’s this deterrent effect that this is going to have as part of a process of trying to diminish legitimate political opposition.”
This could be a new line of attack against a progressive nonprofit sector that is, to some extent, already crippled, several executives told TPM recently, as it prepares to resist federal investigations.
Weimar Redux
The idea of designating Antifa as a foreign terrorist organization first surfaced publicly in October, during the administration’s “Antifa Roundtable.” The event brought together senior administration officials and right-wing activist-influencers like Andy Ngo and Jack Posobiec. Both men spent years rejecting violent left-wing extremists as part of an organized domestic conspiracy capable of undermining the foundations of the American government.
During the roundtable, both urged Trump to designate Antifa a foreign terrorist group; in Posobiec, Trump said yes.
“Let’s do this, Marco,” Trump told Rubio during the meeting. “We’ll take care of it.”
Cabinet officials, like Rubio, have since sought to demonstrate their anti-Antifa bona fides to Trump and the MAGA base. Last month, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced that his department was compiling lists of nonprofit organizations, comparing Charlie Kirk’s death to a “national 9/11.”
Posobiec celebrated the designations on his podcast last week as a continuation of a fight that began in Weimar, Germany.
“Antifa was created in Germany, in the Weimar Republic, and that has always been Antifa’s home base,” he said, recalling something he said to Trump during the meeting. “And so, we’re now seeing direct action from the Trump administration on this. »
Posobiec exaggerated the move, saying the administration itself had designated Antifa a foreign terrorist group.
What Rubio did last week fell short. Of the four designated groups, only one – Germany’s Antifa Ost – has an explicit connection to the movement. Even they call themselves “hammerbande,” a reference to the weapons they have used in attacks on people they call neo-Nazis. In September, the Hungarian government of Viktor Orbán labeled it a terrorist organization.
New powers
The vagueness of what Antifa is and how far the government will go in its pursuit helps the Trump administration use one of its favorite tools: intimidation.
The four groups named by Rubio are fringe actors who, according to state evidence, neither planned nor executed anything approaching the type of large-scale, 9/11-like attacks that gave rise to the system of designating the groups as foreign terrorist organizations.
But their presence on the list suggests the government is already looking into Antifa movements and their ties to the United States, Blazakis said. Private companies like banks and social media companies, which traditionally pay attention to foreign terrorist designations, are also being alerted, he added.
“It’s potentially very dangerous because anti-fascism is a way of thinking and an ideology,” Blazakis said.
One of the people who suffered the consequences was Mark Bray, a professor at Rutgers and author of a book called “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook.”
After Kirk’s death, the Rutgers chapter of Turning Point USA called him “a prominent leader of the Antifa movement on campus.” Bray received more and more death threats and decided it was time for his family to leave for their safety. He fled to Spain in October.
Even abroad, he remains in the crosshairs of the far right. Posobiec called for Bray to be prosecuted under Antifa designations during his podcast last week.
“You know what I would like to see? I really want to see this Spanish Antifa group designated, because I find it really interesting that Dr. Antifa fled directly to Spain,” Posobiec mused. “Remember when he left Rutgers? He fled straight to Spain and immediately started working with Spanish Antifa. It’s almost like he was providing material support to a terrorist organization. Let’s put that thought to rest.”
Bray told TPM that he wasn’t surprised to see what Posobiec said, but he doubted that Posobiec or the State Department understood the basic questions about the movement. He called the designations “lazy,” telling TPM: “I have a very low estimate of their knowledge on the subject, based on what they have said and written. »
He argued that the problem was not so much with European Antifa groups or Antifa in the United States, but rather with the intimidation of opposition in the United States.
“I don’t even think they really care about the real Antifa groups in the United States,” he said. “It’s a bogeyman, and a sort of guilt-by-association framework for a sort of bogeyman repression.”
Now, the administration appears to be attempting to add a new tool to its “Antifa” targeting toolbox. By designating foreign groups, the government opens the door to using counterterrorism authorities to investigate whether Americans are providing “material support” to what Pigott described as a vast and violent conspiracy that spans Europe and the United States. (To emphasize: there is no indication that this is based in reality; in Europe and the United States, “Antifa” is a broad description of a scattered, disorganized collection of groups and style of protest.)
Jason Blazakis, former director of the Office of Counterterrorism Financing and Designations in the State Department’s Office of Counterterrorism, called the move “problematic.”
He warned that these designations could allow for more aggressive tactics by law enforcement, including efforts to infiltrate domestic groups while searching for suspected ties to foreign entities.
“It depends on how you could criminalize ideology,” Blazakis told TPM. “It’s this deterrent effect that this is going to have as part of a process of trying to diminish legitimate political opposition.”
This could be a new line of attack against a progressive nonprofit sector that is, to some extent, already crippled, several executives told TPM recently, as it prepares to resist federal investigations.
Weimar Redux
The idea of designating Antifa as a foreign terrorist organization first surfaced publicly in October, during the administration’s “Antifa Roundtable.” The event brought together senior administration officials and right-wing activist-influencers like Andy Ngo and Jack Posobiec. Both men spent years rejecting violent left-wing extremists as part of an organized domestic conspiracy capable of undermining the foundations of the American government.
During the roundtable, both urged Trump to designate Antifa a foreign terrorist group; in Posobiec, Trump said yes.
“Let’s do this, Marco,” Trump told Rubio during the meeting. “We’ll take care of it.”
Cabinet officials, like Rubio, have since sought to demonstrate their anti-Antifa bona fides to Trump and the MAGA base. Last month, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced that his department was compiling lists of nonprofit organizations, comparing Charlie Kirk’s death to a “national 9/11.”
Posobiec celebrated the designations on his podcast last week as a continuation of a fight that began in Weimar, Germany.
“Antifa was created in Germany, in the Weimar Republic, and that has always been Antifa’s home base,” he said, recalling something he said to Trump during the meeting. “And so, we’re now seeing direct action from the Trump administration on this. »
Posobiec exaggerated the move, saying the administration itself had designated Antifa a foreign terrorist group.
What Rubio did last week fell short. Of the four designated groups, only one – Germany’s Antifa Ost – has an explicit connection to the movement. Even they call themselves “hammerbande,” a reference to the weapons they have used in attacks on people they call neo-Nazis. In September, the Hungarian government of Viktor Orbán labeled it a terrorist organization.
New powers
The vagueness of what Antifa is and how far the government will go in its pursuit helps the Trump administration use one of its favorite tools: intimidation.
The four groups named by Rubio are fringe actors who, according to state evidence, neither planned nor executed anything approaching the type of large-scale, 9/11-like attacks that gave rise to the system of designating the groups as foreign terrorist organizations.
But their presence on the list suggests the government is already looking into Antifa movements and their ties to the United States, Blazakis said. Private companies like banks and social media companies, which traditionally pay attention to foreign terrorist designations, are also being alerted, he added.
“It’s potentially very dangerous because anti-fascism is a way of thinking and an ideology,” Blazakis said.
One of the people who suffered the consequences was Mark Bray, a professor at Rutgers and author of a book called “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook.”
After Kirk’s death, the Rutgers chapter of Turning Point USA called him “a prominent leader of the Antifa movement on campus.” Bray received more and more death threats and decided it was time for his family to leave for their safety. He fled to Spain in October.
Even abroad, he remains in the crosshairs of the far right. Posobiec called for Bray to be prosecuted under Antifa designations during his podcast last week.
“You know what I would like to see? I really want to see this Spanish Antifa group designated, because I find it really interesting that Dr. Antifa fled directly to Spain,” Posobiec mused. “Remember when he left Rutgers? He fled straight to Spain and immediately started working with Spanish Antifa. It’s almost like he was providing material support to a terrorist organization. Let’s put that thought to rest.”
Bray told TPM that he wasn’t surprised to see what Posobiec said, but he doubted that Posobiec or the State Department understood the basic questions about the movement. He called the designations “lazy,” telling TPM: “I have a very low estimate of their knowledge on the subject, based on what they have said and written. »
He argued that the problem was not so much with European Antifa groups or Antifa in the United States, but rather with the intimidation of opposition in the United States.
“I don’t even think they really care about the real Antifa groups in the United States,” he said. “It’s a bogeyman, and a sort of guilt-by-association framework for a sort of bogeyman repression.”
NSPM-7 did not create a new law that would allow Americans to be investigated as members of “Antifa” — a catch-all term that encompasses large swaths of people who describe themselves as opposed to fascism — for potential terrorism violations. Still, federal prosecutors have charged a group of people who staged a July attack on an ICE facility in Texas with alleged membership in a criminal enterprise that, in a second indictment filed months after the attack, they dubbed “Antifa cell.”
Now, the administration appears to be attempting to add a new tool to its “Antifa” targeting toolbox. By designating foreign groups, the government opens the door to using counterterrorism authorities to investigate whether Americans are providing “material support” to what Pigott described as a vast and violent conspiracy that spans Europe and the United States. (To emphasize: there is no indication that this is based in reality; in Europe and the United States, “Antifa” is a broad description of a scattered, disorganized collection of groups and style of protest.)
Jason Blazakis, former director of the Office of Counterterrorism Financing and Designations in the State Department’s Office of Counterterrorism, called the move “problematic.”
He warned that these designations could allow for more aggressive tactics by law enforcement, including efforts to infiltrate domestic groups while searching for suspected ties to foreign entities.
“It depends on how you could criminalize ideology,” Blazakis told TPM. “It’s this deterrent effect that this is going to have as part of a process of trying to diminish legitimate political opposition.”
This could be a new line of attack against a progressive nonprofit sector that is, to some extent, already crippled, several executives told TPM recently, as it prepares to resist federal investigations.
Weimar Redux
The idea of designating Antifa as a foreign terrorist organization first surfaced publicly in October, during the administration’s “Antifa Roundtable.” The event brought together senior administration officials and right-wing activist-influencers like Andy Ngo and Jack Posobiec. Both men spent years rejecting violent left-wing extremists as part of an organized domestic conspiracy capable of undermining the foundations of the American government.
During the roundtable, both urged Trump to designate Antifa a foreign terrorist group; in Posobiec, Trump said yes.
“Let’s do this, Marco,” Trump told Rubio during the meeting. “We’ll take care of it.”
Cabinet officials, like Rubio, have since sought to demonstrate their anti-Antifa bona fides to Trump and the MAGA base. Last month, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced that his department was compiling lists of nonprofit organizations, comparing Charlie Kirk’s death to a “national 9/11.”
Posobiec celebrated the designations on his podcast last week as a continuation of a fight that began in Weimar, Germany.
“Antifa was created in Germany, in the Weimar Republic, and that has always been Antifa’s home base,” he said, recalling something he said to Trump during the meeting. “And so, we’re now seeing direct action from the Trump administration on this. »
Posobiec exaggerated the move, saying the administration itself had designated Antifa a foreign terrorist group.
What Rubio did last week fell short. Of the four designated groups, only one – Germany’s Antifa Ost – has an explicit connection to the movement. Even they call themselves “hammerbande,” a reference to the weapons they have used in attacks on people they call neo-Nazis. In September, the Hungarian government of Viktor Orbán labeled it a terrorist organization.
New powers
The vagueness of what Antifa is and how far the government will go in its pursuit helps the Trump administration use one of its favorite tools: intimidation.
The four groups named by Rubio are fringe actors who, according to state evidence, neither planned nor executed anything approaching the type of large-scale, 9/11-like attacks that gave rise to the system of designating the groups as foreign terrorist organizations.
But their presence on the list suggests the government is already looking into Antifa movements and their ties to the United States, Blazakis said. Private companies like banks and social media companies, which traditionally pay attention to foreign terrorist designations, are also being alerted, he added.
“It’s potentially very dangerous because anti-fascism is a way of thinking and an ideology,” Blazakis said.
One of the people who suffered the consequences was Mark Bray, a professor at Rutgers and author of a book called “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook.”
After Kirk’s death, the Rutgers chapter of Turning Point USA called him “a prominent leader of the Antifa movement on campus.” Bray received more and more death threats and decided it was time for his family to leave for their safety. He fled to Spain in October.
Even abroad, he remains in the crosshairs of the far right. Posobiec called for Bray to be prosecuted under Antifa designations during his podcast last week.
“You know what I would like to see? I really want to see this Spanish Antifa group designated, because I find it really interesting that Dr. Antifa fled directly to Spain,” Posobiec mused. “Remember when he left Rutgers? He fled straight to Spain and immediately started working with Spanish Antifa. It’s almost like he was providing material support to a terrorist organization. Let’s put that thought to rest.”
Bray told TPM that he wasn’t surprised to see what Posobiec said, but he doubted that Posobiec or the State Department understood the basic questions about the movement. He called the designations “lazy,” telling TPM: “I have a very low estimate of their knowledge on the subject, based on what they have said and written. »
He argued that the problem was not so much with European Antifa groups or Antifa in the United States, but rather with the intimidation of opposition in the United States.
“I don’t even think they really care about the real Antifa groups in the United States,” he said. “It’s a bogeyman, and a sort of guilt-by-association framework for a sort of bogeyman repression.”
In late September, Trump took two executive actions. One of them reportedly designated Antifa as a domestic terrorist organization. Legal experts have rejected the order as “void” since there is no law under which any group, real or not, could become a domestic terrorist organization. The other, Presidential National Security Memorandum-7, sparked more concern among civil liberties advocates because of what it directed law enforcement to do: examine groups that support “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity,” saying they are potential sources of political violence.
NSPM-7 did not create a new law that would allow Americans to be investigated as members of “Antifa” — a catch-all term that encompasses large swaths of people who describe themselves as opposed to fascism — for potential terrorism violations. Still, federal prosecutors have charged a group of people who staged a July attack on an ICE facility in Texas with alleged membership in a criminal enterprise that, in a second indictment filed months after the attack, they dubbed “Antifa cell.”
Now, the administration appears to be attempting to add a new tool to its “Antifa” targeting toolbox. By designating foreign groups, the government opens the door to using counterterrorism authorities to investigate whether Americans are providing “material support” to what Pigott described as a vast and violent conspiracy that spans Europe and the United States. (To emphasize: there is no indication that this is based in reality; in Europe and the United States, “Antifa” is a broad description of a scattered, disorganized collection of groups and style of protest.)
Jason Blazakis, former director of the Office of Counterterrorism Financing and Designations in the State Department’s Office of Counterterrorism, called the move “problematic.”
He warned that these designations could allow for more aggressive tactics by law enforcement, including efforts to infiltrate domestic groups while searching for suspected ties to foreign entities.
“It depends on how you could criminalize ideology,” Blazakis told TPM. “It’s this deterrent effect that this is going to have as part of a process of trying to diminish legitimate political opposition.”
This could be a new line of attack against a progressive nonprofit sector that is, to some extent, already crippled, several executives told TPM recently, as it prepares to resist federal investigations.
Weimar Redux
The idea of designating Antifa as a foreign terrorist organization first surfaced publicly in October, during the administration’s “Antifa Roundtable.” The event brought together senior administration officials and right-wing activist-influencers like Andy Ngo and Jack Posobiec. Both men spent years rejecting violent left-wing extremists as part of an organized domestic conspiracy capable of undermining the foundations of the American government.
During the roundtable, both urged Trump to designate Antifa a foreign terrorist group; in Posobiec, Trump said yes.
“Let’s do this, Marco,” Trump told Rubio during the meeting. “We’ll take care of it.”
Cabinet officials, like Rubio, have since sought to demonstrate their anti-Antifa bona fides to Trump and the MAGA base. Last month, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced that his department was compiling lists of nonprofit organizations, comparing Charlie Kirk’s death to a “national 9/11.”
Posobiec celebrated the designations on his podcast last week as a continuation of a fight that began in Weimar, Germany.
“Antifa was created in Germany, in the Weimar Republic, and that has always been Antifa’s home base,” he said, recalling something he said to Trump during the meeting. “And so, we’re now seeing direct action from the Trump administration on this. »
Posobiec exaggerated the move, saying the administration itself had designated Antifa a foreign terrorist group.
What Rubio did last week fell short. Of the four designated groups, only one – Germany’s Antifa Ost – has an explicit connection to the movement. Even they call themselves “hammerbande,” a reference to the weapons they have used in attacks on people they call neo-Nazis. In September, the Hungarian government of Viktor Orbán labeled it a terrorist organization.
New powers
The vagueness of what Antifa is and how far the government will go in its pursuit helps the Trump administration use one of its favorite tools: intimidation.
The four groups named by Rubio are fringe actors who, according to state evidence, neither planned nor executed anything approaching the type of large-scale, 9/11-like attacks that gave rise to the system of designating the groups as foreign terrorist organizations.
But their presence on the list suggests the government is already looking into Antifa movements and their ties to the United States, Blazakis said. Private companies like banks and social media companies, which traditionally pay attention to foreign terrorist designations, are also being alerted, he added.
“It’s potentially very dangerous because anti-fascism is a way of thinking and an ideology,” Blazakis said.
One of the people who suffered the consequences was Mark Bray, a professor at Rutgers and author of a book called “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook.”
After Kirk’s death, the Rutgers chapter of Turning Point USA called him “a prominent leader of the Antifa movement on campus.” Bray received more and more death threats and decided it was time for his family to leave for their safety. He fled to Spain in October.
Even abroad, he remains in the crosshairs of the far right. Posobiec called for Bray to be prosecuted under Antifa designations during his podcast last week.
“You know what I would like to see? I really want to see this Spanish Antifa group designated, because I find it really interesting that Dr. Antifa fled directly to Spain,” Posobiec mused. “Remember when he left Rutgers? He fled straight to Spain and immediately started working with Spanish Antifa. It’s almost like he was providing material support to a terrorist organization. Let’s put that thought to rest.”
Bray told TPM that he wasn’t surprised to see what Posobiec said, but he doubted that Posobiec or the State Department understood the basic questions about the movement. He called the designations “lazy,” telling TPM: “I have a very low estimate of their knowledge on the subject, based on what they have said and written. »
He argued that the problem was not so much with European Antifa groups or Antifa in the United States, but rather with the intimidation of opposition in the United States.
“I don’t even think they really care about the real Antifa groups in the United States,” he said. “It’s a bogeyman, and a sort of guilt-by-association framework for a sort of bogeyman repression.”
In late September, Trump took two executive actions. One of them reportedly designated Antifa as a domestic terrorist organization. Legal experts have rejected the order as “void” since there is no law under which any group, real or not, could become a domestic terrorist organization. The other, Presidential National Security Memorandum-7, sparked more concern among civil liberties advocates because of what it directed law enforcement to do: examine groups that support “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity,” saying they are potential sources of political violence.
NSPM-7 did not create a new law that would allow Americans to be investigated as members of “Antifa” — a catch-all term that encompasses large swaths of people who describe themselves as opposed to fascism — for potential terrorism violations. Still, federal prosecutors have charged a group of people who staged a July attack on an ICE facility in Texas with alleged membership in a criminal enterprise that, in a second indictment filed months after the attack, they dubbed “Antifa cell.”
Now, the administration appears to be attempting to add a new tool to its “Antifa” targeting toolbox. By designating foreign groups, the government opens the door to using counterterrorism authorities to investigate whether Americans are providing “material support” to what Pigott described as a vast and violent conspiracy that spans Europe and the United States. (To emphasize: there is no indication that this is based in reality; in Europe and the United States, “Antifa” is a broad description of a scattered, disorganized collection of groups and style of protest.)
Jason Blazakis, former director of the Office of Counterterrorism Financing and Designations in the State Department’s Office of Counterterrorism, called the move “problematic.”
He warned that these designations could allow for more aggressive tactics by law enforcement, including efforts to infiltrate domestic groups while searching for suspected ties to foreign entities.
“It depends on how you could criminalize ideology,” Blazakis told TPM. “It’s this deterrent effect that this is going to have as part of a process of trying to diminish legitimate political opposition.”
This could be a new line of attack against a progressive nonprofit sector that is, to some extent, already crippled, several executives told TPM recently, as it prepares to resist federal investigations.
Weimar Redux
The idea of designating Antifa as a foreign terrorist organization first surfaced publicly in October, during the administration’s “Antifa Roundtable.” The event brought together senior administration officials and right-wing activist-influencers like Andy Ngo and Jack Posobiec. Both men spent years rejecting violent left-wing extremists as part of an organized domestic conspiracy capable of undermining the foundations of the American government.
During the roundtable, both urged Trump to designate Antifa a foreign terrorist group; in Posobiec, Trump said yes.
“Let’s do this, Marco,” Trump told Rubio during the meeting. “We’ll take care of it.”
Cabinet officials, like Rubio, have since sought to demonstrate their anti-Antifa bona fides to Trump and the MAGA base. Last month, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced that his department was compiling lists of nonprofit organizations, comparing Charlie Kirk’s death to a “national 9/11.”
Posobiec celebrated the designations on his podcast last week as a continuation of a fight that began in Weimar, Germany.
“Antifa was created in Germany, in the Weimar Republic, and that has always been Antifa’s home base,” he said, recalling something he said to Trump during the meeting. “And so, we’re now seeing direct action from the Trump administration on this. »
Posobiec exaggerated the move, saying the administration itself had designated Antifa a foreign terrorist group.
What Rubio did last week fell short. Of the four designated groups, only one – Germany’s Antifa Ost – has an explicit connection to the movement. Even they call themselves “hammerbande,” a reference to the weapons they have used in attacks on people they call neo-Nazis. In September, the Hungarian government of Viktor Orbán labeled it a terrorist organization.
New powers
The vagueness of what Antifa is and how far the government will go in its pursuit helps the Trump administration use one of its favorite tools: intimidation.
The four groups named by Rubio are fringe actors who, according to state evidence, neither planned nor executed anything approaching the type of large-scale, 9/11-like attacks that gave rise to the system of designating the groups as foreign terrorist organizations.
But their presence on the list suggests the government is already looking into Antifa movements and their ties to the United States, Blazakis said. Private companies like banks and social media companies, which traditionally pay attention to foreign terrorist designations, are also being alerted, he added.
“It’s potentially very dangerous because anti-fascism is a way of thinking and an ideology,” Blazakis said.
One of the people who suffered the consequences was Mark Bray, a professor at Rutgers and author of a book called “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook.”
After Kirk’s death, the Rutgers chapter of Turning Point USA called him “a prominent leader of the Antifa movement on campus.” Bray received more and more death threats and decided it was time for his family to leave for their safety. He fled to Spain in October.
Even abroad, he remains in the crosshairs of the far right. Posobiec called for Bray to be prosecuted under Antifa designations during his podcast last week.
“You know what I would like to see? I really want to see this Spanish Antifa group designated, because I find it really interesting that Dr. Antifa fled directly to Spain,” Posobiec mused. “Remember when he left Rutgers? He fled straight to Spain and immediately started working with Spanish Antifa. It’s almost like he was providing material support to a terrorist organization. Let’s put that thought to rest.”
Bray told TPM that he wasn’t surprised to see what Posobiec said, but he doubted that Posobiec or the State Department understood the basic questions about the movement. He called the designations “lazy,” telling TPM: “I have a very low estimate of their knowledge on the subject, based on what they have said and written. »
He argued that the problem was not so much with European Antifa groups or Antifa in the United States, but rather with the intimidation of opposition in the United States.
“I don’t even think they really care about the real Antifa groups in the United States,” he said. “It’s a bogeyman, and a sort of guilt-by-association framework for a sort of bogeyman repression.”
The group, according to Pigott, represents both an ideological and violent threat, fueling a desire to “suppress the will of the people and violently overthrow” the foundations of the United States and the West.
For the administration, the appellations fill a void.
Looking for Antifa
In late September, Trump took two executive actions. One of them reportedly designated Antifa as a domestic terrorist organization. Legal experts have rejected the order as “void” since there is no law under which any group, real or not, could become a domestic terrorist organization. The other, Presidential National Security Memorandum-7, sparked more concern among civil liberties advocates because of what it directed law enforcement to do: examine groups that support “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity,” saying they are potential sources of political violence.
NSPM-7 did not create a new law that would allow Americans to be investigated as members of “Antifa” — a catch-all term that encompasses large swaths of people who describe themselves as opposed to fascism — for potential terrorism violations. Still, federal prosecutors have charged a group of people who staged a July attack on an ICE facility in Texas with alleged membership in a criminal enterprise that, in a second indictment filed months after the attack, they dubbed “Antifa cell.”
Now, the administration appears to be attempting to add a new tool to its “Antifa” targeting toolbox. By designating foreign groups, the government opens the door to using counterterrorism authorities to investigate whether Americans are providing “material support” to what Pigott described as a vast and violent conspiracy that spans Europe and the United States. (To emphasize: there is no indication that this is based in reality; in Europe and the United States, “Antifa” is a broad description of a scattered, disorganized collection of groups and style of protest.)
Jason Blazakis, former director of the Office of Counterterrorism Financing and Designations in the State Department’s Office of Counterterrorism, called the move “problematic.”
He warned that these designations could allow for more aggressive tactics by law enforcement, including efforts to infiltrate domestic groups while searching for suspected ties to foreign entities.
“It depends on how you could criminalize ideology,” Blazakis told TPM. “It’s this deterrent effect that this is going to have as part of a process of trying to diminish legitimate political opposition.”
This could be a new line of attack against a progressive nonprofit sector that is, to some extent, already crippled, several executives told TPM recently, as it prepares to resist federal investigations.
Weimar Redux
The idea of designating Antifa as a foreign terrorist organization first surfaced publicly in October, during the administration’s “Antifa Roundtable.” The event brought together senior administration officials and right-wing activist-influencers like Andy Ngo and Jack Posobiec. Both men spent years rejecting violent left-wing extremists as part of an organized domestic conspiracy capable of undermining the foundations of the American government.
During the roundtable, both urged Trump to designate Antifa a foreign terrorist group; in Posobiec, Trump said yes.
“Let’s do this, Marco,” Trump told Rubio during the meeting. “We’ll take care of it.”
Cabinet officials, like Rubio, have since sought to demonstrate their anti-Antifa bona fides to Trump and the MAGA base. Last month, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced that his department was compiling lists of nonprofit organizations, comparing Charlie Kirk’s death to a “national 9/11.”
Posobiec celebrated the designations on his podcast last week as a continuation of a fight that began in Weimar, Germany.
“Antifa was created in Germany, in the Weimar Republic, and that has always been Antifa’s home base,” he said, recalling something he said to Trump during the meeting. “And so, we’re now seeing direct action from the Trump administration on this. »
Posobiec exaggerated the move, saying the administration itself had designated Antifa a foreign terrorist group.
What Rubio did last week fell short. Of the four designated groups, only one – Germany’s Antifa Ost – has an explicit connection to the movement. Even they call themselves “hammerbande,” a reference to the weapons they have used in attacks on people they call neo-Nazis. In September, the Hungarian government of Viktor Orbán labeled it a terrorist organization.
New powers
The vagueness of what Antifa is and how far the government will go in its pursuit helps the Trump administration use one of its favorite tools: intimidation.
The four groups named by Rubio are fringe actors who, according to state evidence, neither planned nor executed anything approaching the type of large-scale, 9/11-like attacks that gave rise to the system of designating the groups as foreign terrorist organizations.
But their presence on the list suggests the government is already looking into Antifa movements and their ties to the United States, Blazakis said. Private companies like banks and social media companies, which traditionally pay attention to foreign terrorist designations, are also being alerted, he added.
“It’s potentially very dangerous because anti-fascism is a way of thinking and an ideology,” Blazakis said.
One of the people who suffered the consequences was Mark Bray, a professor at Rutgers and author of a book called “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook.”
After Kirk’s death, the Rutgers chapter of Turning Point USA called him “a prominent leader of the Antifa movement on campus.” Bray received more and more death threats and decided it was time for his family to leave for their safety. He fled to Spain in October.
Even abroad, he remains in the crosshairs of the far right. Posobiec called for Bray to be prosecuted under Antifa designations during his podcast last week.
“You know what I would like to see? I really want to see this Spanish Antifa group designated, because I find it really interesting that Dr. Antifa fled directly to Spain,” Posobiec mused. “Remember when he left Rutgers? He fled straight to Spain and immediately started working with Spanish Antifa. It’s almost like he was providing material support to a terrorist organization. Let’s put that thought to rest.”
Bray told TPM that he wasn’t surprised to see what Posobiec said, but he doubted that Posobiec or the State Department understood the basic questions about the movement. He called the designations “lazy,” telling TPM: “I have a very low estimate of their knowledge on the subject, based on what they have said and written. »
He argued that the problem was not so much with European Antifa groups or Antifa in the United States, but rather with the intimidation of opposition in the United States.
“I don’t even think they really care about the real Antifa groups in the United States,” he said. “It’s a bogeyman, and a sort of guilt-by-association framework for a sort of bogeyman repression.”
If you manage to wade through the mud, you will still have find no claims that these groups have harmed Americans or the country’s national interests. In other words, except for one thing: their supposed connection with “Antifa” and other left-wing movements. The Trump administration has for years described “Antifa” as a vast domestic enemy. After the assassination of Trump-aligned activist Charlie Kirk in September, the administration stepped up its rhetoric.
The group, according to Pigott, represents both an ideological and violent threat, fueling a desire to “suppress the will of the people and violently overthrow” the foundations of the United States and the West.
For the administration, the appellations fill a void.
Looking for Antifa
In late September, Trump took two executive actions. One of them reportedly designated Antifa as a domestic terrorist organization. Legal experts have rejected the order as “void” since there is no law under which any group, real or not, could become a domestic terrorist organization. The other, Presidential National Security Memorandum-7, sparked more concern among civil liberties advocates because of what it directed law enforcement to do: examine groups that support “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity,” saying they are potential sources of political violence.
NSPM-7 did not create a new law that would allow Americans to be investigated as members of “Antifa” — a catch-all term that encompasses large swaths of people who describe themselves as opposed to fascism — for potential terrorism violations. Still, federal prosecutors have charged a group of people who staged a July attack on an ICE facility in Texas with alleged membership in a criminal enterprise that, in a second indictment filed months after the attack, they dubbed “Antifa cell.”
Now, the administration appears to be attempting to add a new tool to its “Antifa” targeting toolbox. By designating foreign groups, the government opens the door to using counterterrorism authorities to investigate whether Americans are providing “material support” to what Pigott described as a vast and violent conspiracy that spans Europe and the United States. (To emphasize: there is no indication that this is based in reality; in Europe and the United States, “Antifa” is a broad description of a scattered, disorganized collection of groups and style of protest.)
Jason Blazakis, former director of the Office of Counterterrorism Financing and Designations in the State Department’s Office of Counterterrorism, called the move “problematic.”
He warned that these designations could allow for more aggressive tactics by law enforcement, including efforts to infiltrate domestic groups while searching for suspected ties to foreign entities.
“It depends on how you could criminalize ideology,” Blazakis told TPM. “It’s this deterrent effect that this is going to have as part of a process of trying to diminish legitimate political opposition.”
This could be a new line of attack against a progressive nonprofit sector that is, to some extent, already crippled, several executives told TPM recently, as it prepares to resist federal investigations.
Weimar Redux
The idea of designating Antifa as a foreign terrorist organization first surfaced publicly in October, during the administration’s “Antifa Roundtable.” The event brought together senior administration officials and right-wing activist-influencers like Andy Ngo and Jack Posobiec. Both men spent years rejecting violent left-wing extremists as part of an organized domestic conspiracy capable of undermining the foundations of the American government.
During the roundtable, both urged Trump to designate Antifa a foreign terrorist group; in Posobiec, Trump said yes.
“Let’s do this, Marco,” Trump told Rubio during the meeting. “We’ll take care of it.”
Cabinet officials, like Rubio, have since sought to demonstrate their anti-Antifa bona fides to Trump and the MAGA base. Last month, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced that his department was compiling lists of nonprofit organizations, comparing Charlie Kirk’s death to a “national 9/11.”
Posobiec celebrated the designations on his podcast last week as a continuation of a fight that began in Weimar, Germany.
“Antifa was created in Germany, in the Weimar Republic, and that has always been Antifa’s home base,” he said, recalling something he said to Trump during the meeting. “And so, we’re now seeing direct action from the Trump administration on this. »
Posobiec exaggerated the move, saying the administration itself had designated Antifa a foreign terrorist group.
What Rubio did last week fell short. Of the four designated groups, only one – Germany’s Antifa Ost – has an explicit connection to the movement. Even they call themselves “hammerbande,” a reference to the weapons they have used in attacks on people they call neo-Nazis. In September, the Hungarian government of Viktor Orbán labeled it a terrorist organization.
New powers
The vagueness of what Antifa is and how far the government will go in its pursuit helps the Trump administration use one of its favorite tools: intimidation.
The four groups named by Rubio are fringe actors who, according to state evidence, neither planned nor executed anything approaching the type of large-scale, 9/11-like attacks that gave rise to the system of designating the groups as foreign terrorist organizations.
But their presence on the list suggests the government is already looking into Antifa movements and their ties to the United States, Blazakis said. Private companies like banks and social media companies, which traditionally pay attention to foreign terrorist designations, are also being alerted, he added.
“It’s potentially very dangerous because anti-fascism is a way of thinking and an ideology,” Blazakis said.
One of the people who suffered the consequences was Mark Bray, a professor at Rutgers and author of a book called “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook.”
After Kirk’s death, the Rutgers chapter of Turning Point USA called him “a prominent leader of the Antifa movement on campus.” Bray received more and more death threats and decided it was time for his family to leave for their safety. He fled to Spain in October.
Even abroad, he remains in the crosshairs of the far right. Posobiec called for Bray to be prosecuted under Antifa designations during his podcast last week.
“You know what I would like to see? I really want to see this Spanish Antifa group designated, because I find it really interesting that Dr. Antifa fled directly to Spain,” Posobiec mused. “Remember when he left Rutgers? He fled straight to Spain and immediately started working with Spanish Antifa. It’s almost like he was providing material support to a terrorist organization. Let’s put that thought to rest.”
Bray told TPM that he wasn’t surprised to see what Posobiec said, but he doubted that Posobiec or the State Department understood the basic questions about the movement. He called the designations “lazy,” telling TPM: “I have a very low estimate of their knowledge on the subject, based on what they have said and written. »
He argued that the problem was not so much with European Antifa groups or Antifa in the United States, but rather with the intimidation of opposition in the United States.
“I don’t even think they really care about the real Antifa groups in the United States,” he said. “It’s a bogeyman, and a sort of guilt-by-association framework for a sort of bogeyman repression.”
“Antifa anarchists, Marxists and violent extremists have waged a campaign of terror in the United States and the Western world for decades, carrying out bombings, beatings, shootings and riots in service of their extremist agenda,” Pigott told TPM. “The State Department is committed to identifying and dismantling these terrorist networks that conspire to ruthlessly suppress the will of the people and violently overthrow the very foundations of the United States and Western civilization. »
If you manage to wade through the mud, you will still have find no claims that these groups have harmed Americans or the country’s national interests. In other words, except for one thing: their supposed connection with “Antifa” and other left-wing movements. The Trump administration has for years described “Antifa” as a vast domestic enemy. After the assassination of Trump-aligned activist Charlie Kirk in September, the administration stepped up its rhetoric.
The group, according to Pigott, represents both an ideological and violent threat, fueling a desire to “suppress the will of the people and violently overthrow” the foundations of the United States and the West.
For the administration, the appellations fill a void.
Looking for Antifa
In late September, Trump took two executive actions. One of them reportedly designated Antifa as a domestic terrorist organization. Legal experts have rejected the order as “void” since there is no law under which any group, real or not, could become a domestic terrorist organization. The other, Presidential National Security Memorandum-7, sparked more concern among civil liberties advocates because of what it directed law enforcement to do: examine groups that support “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity,” saying they are potential sources of political violence.
NSPM-7 did not create a new law that would allow Americans to be investigated as members of “Antifa” — a catch-all term that encompasses large swaths of people who describe themselves as opposed to fascism — for potential terrorism violations. Still, federal prosecutors have charged a group of people who staged a July attack on an ICE facility in Texas with alleged membership in a criminal enterprise that, in a second indictment filed months after the attack, they dubbed “Antifa cell.”
Now, the administration appears to be attempting to add a new tool to its “Antifa” targeting toolbox. By designating foreign groups, the government opens the door to using counterterrorism authorities to investigate whether Americans are providing “material support” to what Pigott described as a vast and violent conspiracy that spans Europe and the United States. (To emphasize: there is no indication that this is based in reality; in Europe and the United States, “Antifa” is a broad description of a scattered, disorganized collection of groups and style of protest.)
Jason Blazakis, former director of the Office of Counterterrorism Financing and Designations in the State Department’s Office of Counterterrorism, called the move “problematic.”
He warned that these designations could allow for more aggressive tactics by law enforcement, including efforts to infiltrate domestic groups while searching for suspected ties to foreign entities.
“It depends on how you could criminalize ideology,” Blazakis told TPM. “It’s this deterrent effect that this is going to have as part of a process of trying to diminish legitimate political opposition.”
This could be a new line of attack against a progressive nonprofit sector that is, to some extent, already crippled, several executives told TPM recently, as it prepares to resist federal investigations.
Weimar Redux
The idea of designating Antifa as a foreign terrorist organization first surfaced publicly in October, during the administration’s “Antifa Roundtable.” The event brought together senior administration officials and right-wing activist-influencers like Andy Ngo and Jack Posobiec. Both men spent years rejecting violent left-wing extremists as part of an organized domestic conspiracy capable of undermining the foundations of the American government.
During the roundtable, both urged Trump to designate Antifa a foreign terrorist group; in Posobiec, Trump said yes.
“Let’s do this, Marco,” Trump told Rubio during the meeting. “We’ll take care of it.”
Cabinet officials, like Rubio, have since sought to demonstrate their anti-Antifa bona fides to Trump and the MAGA base. Last month, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced that his department was compiling lists of nonprofit organizations, comparing Charlie Kirk’s death to a “national 9/11.”
Posobiec celebrated the designations on his podcast last week as a continuation of a fight that began in Weimar, Germany.
“Antifa was created in Germany, in the Weimar Republic, and that has always been Antifa’s home base,” he said, recalling something he said to Trump during the meeting. “And so, we’re now seeing direct action from the Trump administration on this. »
Posobiec exaggerated the move, saying the administration itself had designated Antifa a foreign terrorist group.
What Rubio did last week fell short. Of the four designated groups, only one – Germany’s Antifa Ost – has an explicit connection to the movement. Even they call themselves “hammerbande,” a reference to the weapons they have used in attacks on people they call neo-Nazis. In September, the Hungarian government of Viktor Orbán labeled it a terrorist organization.
New powers
The vagueness of what Antifa is and how far the government will go in its pursuit helps the Trump administration use one of its favorite tools: intimidation.
The four groups named by Rubio are fringe actors who, according to state evidence, neither planned nor executed anything approaching the type of large-scale, 9/11-like attacks that gave rise to the system of designating the groups as foreign terrorist organizations.
But their presence on the list suggests the government is already looking into Antifa movements and their ties to the United States, Blazakis said. Private companies like banks and social media companies, which traditionally pay attention to foreign terrorist designations, are also being alerted, he added.
“It’s potentially very dangerous because anti-fascism is a way of thinking and an ideology,” Blazakis said.
One of the people who suffered the consequences was Mark Bray, a professor at Rutgers and author of a book called “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook.”
After Kirk’s death, the Rutgers chapter of Turning Point USA called him “a prominent leader of the Antifa movement on campus.” Bray received more and more death threats and decided it was time for his family to leave for their safety. He fled to Spain in October.
Even abroad, he remains in the crosshairs of the far right. Posobiec called for Bray to be prosecuted under Antifa designations during his podcast last week.
“You know what I would like to see? I really want to see this Spanish Antifa group designated, because I find it really interesting that Dr. Antifa fled directly to Spain,” Posobiec mused. “Remember when he left Rutgers? He fled straight to Spain and immediately started working with Spanish Antifa. It’s almost like he was providing material support to a terrorist organization. Let’s put that thought to rest.”
Bray told TPM that he wasn’t surprised to see what Posobiec said, but he doubted that Posobiec or the State Department understood the basic questions about the movement. He called the designations “lazy,” telling TPM: “I have a very low estimate of their knowledge on the subject, based on what they have said and written. »
He argued that the problem was not so much with European Antifa groups or Antifa in the United States, but rather with the intimidation of opposition in the United States.
“I don’t even think they really care about the real Antifa groups in the United States,” he said. “It’s a bogeyman, and a sort of guilt-by-association framework for a sort of bogeyman repression.”
Spokesperson Tommy Pigott responded:
“Antifa anarchists, Marxists and violent extremists have waged a campaign of terror in the United States and the Western world for decades, carrying out bombings, beatings, shootings and riots in service of their extremist agenda,” Pigott told TPM. “The State Department is committed to identifying and dismantling these terrorist networks that conspire to ruthlessly suppress the will of the people and violently overthrow the very foundations of the United States and Western civilization. »
If you manage to wade through the mud, you will still have find no claims that these groups have harmed Americans or the country’s national interests. In other words, except for one thing: their supposed connection with “Antifa” and other left-wing movements. The Trump administration has for years described “Antifa” as a vast domestic enemy. After the assassination of Trump-aligned activist Charlie Kirk in September, the administration stepped up its rhetoric.
The group, according to Pigott, represents both an ideological and violent threat, fueling a desire to “suppress the will of the people and violently overthrow” the foundations of the United States and the West.
For the administration, the appellations fill a void.
Looking for Antifa
In late September, Trump took two executive actions. One of them reportedly designated Antifa as a domestic terrorist organization. Legal experts have rejected the order as “void” since there is no law under which any group, real or not, could become a domestic terrorist organization. The other, Presidential National Security Memorandum-7, sparked more concern among civil liberties advocates because of what it directed law enforcement to do: examine groups that support “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity,” saying they are potential sources of political violence.
NSPM-7 did not create a new law that would allow Americans to be investigated as members of “Antifa” — a catch-all term that encompasses large swaths of people who describe themselves as opposed to fascism — for potential terrorism violations. Still, federal prosecutors have charged a group of people who staged a July attack on an ICE facility in Texas with alleged membership in a criminal enterprise that, in a second indictment filed months after the attack, they dubbed “Antifa cell.”
Now, the administration appears to be attempting to add a new tool to its “Antifa” targeting toolbox. By designating foreign groups, the government opens the door to using counterterrorism authorities to investigate whether Americans are providing “material support” to what Pigott described as a vast and violent conspiracy that spans Europe and the United States. (To emphasize: there is no indication that this is based in reality; in Europe and the United States, “Antifa” is a broad description of a scattered, disorganized collection of groups and style of protest.)
Jason Blazakis, former director of the Office of Counterterrorism Financing and Designations in the State Department’s Office of Counterterrorism, called the move “problematic.”
He warned that these designations could allow for more aggressive tactics by law enforcement, including efforts to infiltrate domestic groups while searching for suspected ties to foreign entities.
“It depends on how you could criminalize ideology,” Blazakis told TPM. “It’s this deterrent effect that this is going to have as part of a process of trying to diminish legitimate political opposition.”
This could be a new line of attack against a progressive nonprofit sector that is, to some extent, already crippled, several executives told TPM recently, as it prepares to resist federal investigations.
Weimar Redux
The idea of designating Antifa as a foreign terrorist organization first surfaced publicly in October, during the administration’s “Antifa Roundtable.” The event brought together senior administration officials and right-wing activist-influencers like Andy Ngo and Jack Posobiec. Both men spent years rejecting violent left-wing extremists as part of an organized domestic conspiracy capable of undermining the foundations of the American government.
During the roundtable, both urged Trump to designate Antifa a foreign terrorist group; in Posobiec, Trump said yes.
“Let’s do this, Marco,” Trump told Rubio during the meeting. “We’ll take care of it.”
Cabinet officials, like Rubio, have since sought to demonstrate their anti-Antifa bona fides to Trump and the MAGA base. Last month, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced that his department was compiling lists of nonprofit organizations, comparing Charlie Kirk’s death to a “national 9/11.”
Posobiec celebrated the designations on his podcast last week as a continuation of a fight that began in Weimar, Germany.
“Antifa was created in Germany, in the Weimar Republic, and that has always been Antifa’s home base,” he said, recalling something he said to Trump during the meeting. “And so, we’re now seeing direct action from the Trump administration on this. »
Posobiec exaggerated the move, saying the administration itself had designated Antifa a foreign terrorist group.
What Rubio did last week fell short. Of the four designated groups, only one – Germany’s Antifa Ost – has an explicit connection to the movement. Even they call themselves “hammerbande,” a reference to the weapons they have used in attacks on people they call neo-Nazis. In September, the Hungarian government of Viktor Orbán labeled it a terrorist organization.
New powers
The vagueness of what Antifa is and how far the government will go in its pursuit helps the Trump administration use one of its favorite tools: intimidation.
The four groups named by Rubio are fringe actors who, according to state evidence, neither planned nor executed anything approaching the type of large-scale, 9/11-like attacks that gave rise to the system of designating the groups as foreign terrorist organizations.
But their presence on the list suggests the government is already looking into Antifa movements and their ties to the United States, Blazakis said. Private companies like banks and social media companies, which traditionally pay attention to foreign terrorist designations, are also being alerted, he added.
“It’s potentially very dangerous because anti-fascism is a way of thinking and an ideology,” Blazakis said.
One of the people who suffered the consequences was Mark Bray, a professor at Rutgers and author of a book called “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook.”
After Kirk’s death, the Rutgers chapter of Turning Point USA called him “a prominent leader of the Antifa movement on campus.” Bray received more and more death threats and decided it was time for his family to leave for their safety. He fled to Spain in October.
Even abroad, he remains in the crosshairs of the far right. Posobiec called for Bray to be prosecuted under Antifa designations during his podcast last week.
“You know what I would like to see? I really want to see this Spanish Antifa group designated, because I find it really interesting that Dr. Antifa fled directly to Spain,” Posobiec mused. “Remember when he left Rutgers? He fled straight to Spain and immediately started working with Spanish Antifa. It’s almost like he was providing material support to a terrorist organization. Let’s put that thought to rest.”
Bray told TPM that he wasn’t surprised to see what Posobiec said, but he doubted that Posobiec or the State Department understood the basic questions about the movement. He called the designations “lazy,” telling TPM: “I have a very low estimate of their knowledge on the subject, based on what they have said and written. »
He argued that the problem was not so much with European Antifa groups or Antifa in the United States, but rather with the intimidation of opposition in the United States.
“I don’t even think they really care about the real Antifa groups in the United States,” he said. “It’s a bogeyman, and a sort of guilt-by-association framework for a sort of bogeyman repression.”
Classified or non-public information may support the decision. But since none of this was in the government’s announcement, I asked the State Department this simple question: What threat to U.S. national security interests or to American citizens warranted these burdensome designations?
Spokesperson Tommy Pigott responded:
“Antifa anarchists, Marxists and violent extremists have waged a campaign of terror in the United States and the Western world for decades, carrying out bombings, beatings, shootings and riots in service of their extremist agenda,” Pigott told TPM. “The State Department is committed to identifying and dismantling these terrorist networks that conspire to ruthlessly suppress the will of the people and violently overthrow the very foundations of the United States and Western civilization. »
If you manage to wade through the mud, you will still have find no claims that these groups have harmed Americans or the country’s national interests. In other words, except for one thing: their supposed connection with “Antifa” and other left-wing movements. The Trump administration has for years described “Antifa” as a vast domestic enemy. After the assassination of Trump-aligned activist Charlie Kirk in September, the administration stepped up its rhetoric.
The group, according to Pigott, represents both an ideological and violent threat, fueling a desire to “suppress the will of the people and violently overthrow” the foundations of the United States and the West.
For the administration, the appellations fill a void.
Looking for Antifa
In late September, Trump took two executive actions. One of them reportedly designated Antifa as a domestic terrorist organization. Legal experts have rejected the order as “void” since there is no law under which any group, real or not, could become a domestic terrorist organization. The other, Presidential National Security Memorandum-7, sparked more concern among civil liberties advocates because of what it directed law enforcement to do: examine groups that support “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity,” saying they are potential sources of political violence.
NSPM-7 did not create a new law that would allow Americans to be investigated as members of “Antifa” — a catch-all term that encompasses large swaths of people who describe themselves as opposed to fascism — for potential terrorism violations. Still, federal prosecutors have charged a group of people who staged a July attack on an ICE facility in Texas with alleged membership in a criminal enterprise that, in a second indictment filed months after the attack, they dubbed “Antifa cell.”
Now, the administration appears to be attempting to add a new tool to its “Antifa” targeting toolbox. By designating foreign groups, the government opens the door to using counterterrorism authorities to investigate whether Americans are providing “material support” to what Pigott described as a vast and violent conspiracy that spans Europe and the United States. (To emphasize: there is no indication that this is based in reality; in Europe and the United States, “Antifa” is a broad description of a scattered, disorganized collection of groups and style of protest.)
Jason Blazakis, former director of the Office of Counterterrorism Financing and Designations in the State Department’s Office of Counterterrorism, called the move “problematic.”
He warned that these designations could allow for more aggressive tactics by law enforcement, including efforts to infiltrate domestic groups while searching for suspected ties to foreign entities.
“It depends on how you could criminalize ideology,” Blazakis told TPM. “It’s this deterrent effect that this is going to have as part of a process of trying to diminish legitimate political opposition.”
This could be a new line of attack against a progressive nonprofit sector that is, to some extent, already crippled, several executives told TPM recently, as it prepares to resist federal investigations.
Weimar Redux
The idea of designating Antifa as a foreign terrorist organization first surfaced publicly in October, during the administration’s “Antifa Roundtable.” The event brought together senior administration officials and right-wing activist-influencers like Andy Ngo and Jack Posobiec. Both men spent years rejecting violent left-wing extremists as part of an organized domestic conspiracy capable of undermining the foundations of the American government.
During the roundtable, both urged Trump to designate Antifa a foreign terrorist group; in Posobiec, Trump said yes.
“Let’s do this, Marco,” Trump told Rubio during the meeting. “We’ll take care of it.”
Cabinet officials, like Rubio, have since sought to demonstrate their anti-Antifa bona fides to Trump and the MAGA base. Last month, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced that his department was compiling lists of nonprofit organizations, comparing Charlie Kirk’s death to a “national 9/11.”
Posobiec celebrated the designations on his podcast last week as a continuation of a fight that began in Weimar, Germany.
“Antifa was created in Germany, in the Weimar Republic, and that has always been Antifa’s home base,” he said, recalling something he said to Trump during the meeting. “And so, we’re now seeing direct action from the Trump administration on this. »
Posobiec exaggerated the move, saying the administration itself had designated Antifa a foreign terrorist group.
What Rubio did last week fell short. Of the four designated groups, only one – Germany’s Antifa Ost – has an explicit connection to the movement. Even they call themselves “hammerbande,” a reference to the weapons they have used in attacks on people they call neo-Nazis. In September, the Hungarian government of Viktor Orbán labeled it a terrorist organization.
New powers
The vagueness of what Antifa is and how far the government will go in its pursuit helps the Trump administration use one of its favorite tools: intimidation.
The four groups named by Rubio are fringe actors who, according to state evidence, neither planned nor executed anything approaching the type of large-scale, 9/11-like attacks that gave rise to the system of designating the groups as foreign terrorist organizations.
But their presence on the list suggests the government is already looking into Antifa movements and their ties to the United States, Blazakis said. Private companies like banks and social media companies, which traditionally pay attention to foreign terrorist designations, are also being alerted, he added.
“It’s potentially very dangerous because anti-fascism is a way of thinking and an ideology,” Blazakis said.
One of the people who suffered the consequences was Mark Bray, a professor at Rutgers and author of a book called “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook.”
After Kirk’s death, the Rutgers chapter of Turning Point USA called him “a prominent leader of the Antifa movement on campus.” Bray received more and more death threats and decided it was time for his family to leave for their safety. He fled to Spain in October.
Even abroad, he remains in the crosshairs of the far right. Posobiec called for Bray to be prosecuted under Antifa designations during his podcast last week.
“You know what I would like to see? I really want to see this Spanish Antifa group designated, because I find it really interesting that Dr. Antifa fled directly to Spain,” Posobiec mused. “Remember when he left Rutgers? He fled straight to Spain and immediately started working with Spanish Antifa. It’s almost like he was providing material support to a terrorist organization. Let’s put that thought to rest.”
Bray told TPM that he wasn’t surprised to see what Posobiec said, but he doubted that Posobiec or the State Department understood the basic questions about the movement. He called the designations “lazy,” telling TPM: “I have a very low estimate of their knowledge on the subject, based on what they have said and written. »
He argued that the problem was not so much with European Antifa groups or Antifa in the United States, but rather with the intimidation of opposition in the United States.
“I don’t even think they really care about the real Antifa groups in the United States,” he said. “It’s a bogeyman, and a sort of guilt-by-association framework for a sort of bogeyman repression.”
The State Department has accused these groups, with some evidence, of planning violent attacks in Europe, including bombings and street fights. But nothing in the department’s announcement suggests that any of these groups pose a threat to Americans, particularly given this law’s historical application to groups like al-Qaeda or the Islamic State. There are no allegations of deaths and, more importantly, no assertion that any US or American interest was harmed. According to the announcement, the groups appear to be local extremists, willing to carry out small-scale acts of violence in their home countries.
Classified or non-public information may support the decision. But since none of this was in the government’s announcement, I asked the State Department this simple question: What threat to U.S. national security interests or to American citizens warranted these burdensome designations?
Spokesperson Tommy Pigott responded:
“Antifa anarchists, Marxists and violent extremists have waged a campaign of terror in the United States and the Western world for decades, carrying out bombings, beatings, shootings and riots in service of their extremist agenda,” Pigott told TPM. “The State Department is committed to identifying and dismantling these terrorist networks that conspire to ruthlessly suppress the will of the people and violently overthrow the very foundations of the United States and Western civilization. »
If you manage to wade through the mud, you will still have find no claims that these groups have harmed Americans or the country’s national interests. In other words, except for one thing: their supposed connection with “Antifa” and other left-wing movements. The Trump administration has for years described “Antifa” as a vast domestic enemy. After the assassination of Trump-aligned activist Charlie Kirk in September, the administration stepped up its rhetoric.
The group, according to Pigott, represents both an ideological and violent threat, fueling a desire to “suppress the will of the people and violently overthrow” the foundations of the United States and the West.
For the administration, the appellations fill a void.
Looking for Antifa
In late September, Trump took two executive actions. One of them reportedly designated Antifa as a domestic terrorist organization. Legal experts have rejected the order as “void” since there is no law under which any group, real or not, could become a domestic terrorist organization. The other, Presidential National Security Memorandum-7, sparked more concern among civil liberties advocates because of what it directed law enforcement to do: examine groups that support “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity,” saying they are potential sources of political violence.
NSPM-7 did not create a new law that would allow Americans to be investigated as members of “Antifa” — a catch-all term that encompasses large swaths of people who describe themselves as opposed to fascism — for potential terrorism violations. Still, federal prosecutors have charged a group of people who staged a July attack on an ICE facility in Texas with alleged membership in a criminal enterprise that, in a second indictment filed months after the attack, they dubbed “Antifa cell.”
Now, the administration appears to be attempting to add a new tool to its “Antifa” targeting toolbox. By designating foreign groups, the government opens the door to using counterterrorism authorities to investigate whether Americans are providing “material support” to what Pigott described as a vast and violent conspiracy that spans Europe and the United States. (To emphasize: there is no indication that this is based in reality; in Europe and the United States, “Antifa” is a broad description of a scattered, disorganized collection of groups and style of protest.)
Jason Blazakis, former director of the Office of Counterterrorism Financing and Designations in the State Department’s Office of Counterterrorism, called the move “problematic.”
He warned that these designations could allow for more aggressive tactics by law enforcement, including efforts to infiltrate domestic groups while searching for suspected ties to foreign entities.
“It depends on how you could criminalize ideology,” Blazakis told TPM. “It’s this deterrent effect that this is going to have as part of a process of trying to diminish legitimate political opposition.”
This could be a new line of attack against a progressive nonprofit sector that is, to some extent, already crippled, several executives told TPM recently, as it prepares to resist federal investigations.
Weimar Redux
The idea of designating Antifa as a foreign terrorist organization first surfaced publicly in October, during the administration’s “Antifa Roundtable.” The event brought together senior administration officials and right-wing activist-influencers like Andy Ngo and Jack Posobiec. Both men spent years rejecting violent left-wing extremists as part of an organized domestic conspiracy capable of undermining the foundations of the American government.
During the roundtable, both urged Trump to designate Antifa a foreign terrorist group; in Posobiec, Trump said yes.
“Let’s do this, Marco,” Trump told Rubio during the meeting. “We’ll take care of it.”
Cabinet officials, like Rubio, have since sought to demonstrate their anti-Antifa bona fides to Trump and the MAGA base. Last month, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced that his department was compiling lists of nonprofit organizations, comparing Charlie Kirk’s death to a “national 9/11.”
Posobiec celebrated the designations on his podcast last week as a continuation of a fight that began in Weimar, Germany.
“Antifa was created in Germany, in the Weimar Republic, and that has always been Antifa’s home base,” he said, recalling something he said to Trump during the meeting. “And so, we’re now seeing direct action from the Trump administration on this. »
Posobiec exaggerated the move, saying the administration itself had designated Antifa a foreign terrorist group.
What Rubio did last week fell short. Of the four designated groups, only one – Germany’s Antifa Ost – has an explicit connection to the movement. Even they call themselves “hammerbande,” a reference to the weapons they have used in attacks on people they call neo-Nazis. In September, the Hungarian government of Viktor Orbán labeled it a terrorist organization.
New powers
The vagueness of what Antifa is and how far the government will go in its pursuit helps the Trump administration use one of its favorite tools: intimidation.
The four groups named by Rubio are fringe actors who, according to state evidence, neither planned nor executed anything approaching the type of large-scale, 9/11-like attacks that gave rise to the system of designating the groups as foreign terrorist organizations.
But their presence on the list suggests the government is already looking into Antifa movements and their ties to the United States, Blazakis said. Private companies like banks and social media companies, which traditionally pay attention to foreign terrorist designations, are also being alerted, he added.
“It’s potentially very dangerous because anti-fascism is a way of thinking and an ideology,” Blazakis said.
One of the people who suffered the consequences was Mark Bray, a professor at Rutgers and author of a book called “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook.”
After Kirk’s death, the Rutgers chapter of Turning Point USA called him “a prominent leader of the Antifa movement on campus.” Bray received more and more death threats and decided it was time for his family to leave for their safety. He fled to Spain in October.
Even abroad, he remains in the crosshairs of the far right. Posobiec called for Bray to be prosecuted under Antifa designations during his podcast last week.
“You know what I would like to see? I really want to see this Spanish Antifa group designated, because I find it really interesting that Dr. Antifa fled directly to Spain,” Posobiec mused. “Remember when he left Rutgers? He fled straight to Spain and immediately started working with Spanish Antifa. It’s almost like he was providing material support to a terrorist organization. Let’s put that thought to rest.”
Bray told TPM that he wasn’t surprised to see what Posobiec said, but he doubted that Posobiec or the State Department understood the basic questions about the movement. He called the designations “lazy,” telling TPM: “I have a very low estimate of their knowledge on the subject, based on what they have said and written. »
He argued that the problem was not so much with European Antifa groups or Antifa in the United States, but rather with the intimidation of opposition in the United States.
“I don’t even think they really care about the real Antifa groups in the United States,” he said. “It’s a bogeyman, and a sort of guilt-by-association framework for a sort of bogeyman repression.”
But the other two conclusions are more complicated. Rubio must demonstrate that the groups engage in terrorism and that their activities threaten Americans or U.S. national security interests.
The State Department has accused these groups, with some evidence, of planning violent attacks in Europe, including bombings and street fights. But nothing in the department’s announcement suggests that any of these groups pose a threat to Americans, particularly given this law’s historical application to groups like al-Qaeda or the Islamic State. There are no allegations of deaths and, more importantly, no assertion that any US or American interest was harmed. According to the announcement, the groups appear to be local extremists, willing to carry out small-scale acts of violence in their home countries.
Classified or non-public information may support the decision. But since none of this was in the government’s announcement, I asked the State Department this simple question: What threat to U.S. national security interests or to American citizens warranted these burdensome designations?
Spokesperson Tommy Pigott responded:
“Antifa anarchists, Marxists and violent extremists have waged a campaign of terror in the United States and the Western world for decades, carrying out bombings, beatings, shootings and riots in service of their extremist agenda,” Pigott told TPM. “The State Department is committed to identifying and dismantling these terrorist networks that conspire to ruthlessly suppress the will of the people and violently overthrow the very foundations of the United States and Western civilization. »
If you manage to wade through the mud, you will still have find no claims that these groups have harmed Americans or the country’s national interests. In other words, except for one thing: their supposed connection with “Antifa” and other left-wing movements. The Trump administration has for years described “Antifa” as a vast domestic enemy. After the assassination of Trump-aligned activist Charlie Kirk in September, the administration stepped up its rhetoric.
The group, according to Pigott, represents both an ideological and violent threat, fueling a desire to “suppress the will of the people and violently overthrow” the foundations of the United States and the West.
For the administration, the appellations fill a void.
Looking for Antifa
In late September, Trump took two executive actions. One of them reportedly designated Antifa as a domestic terrorist organization. Legal experts have rejected the order as “void” since there is no law under which any group, real or not, could become a domestic terrorist organization. The other, Presidential National Security Memorandum-7, sparked more concern among civil liberties advocates because of what it directed law enforcement to do: examine groups that support “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity,” saying they are potential sources of political violence.
NSPM-7 did not create a new law that would allow Americans to be investigated as members of “Antifa” — a catch-all term that encompasses large swaths of people who describe themselves as opposed to fascism — for potential terrorism violations. Still, federal prosecutors have charged a group of people who staged a July attack on an ICE facility in Texas with alleged membership in a criminal enterprise that, in a second indictment filed months after the attack, they dubbed “Antifa cell.”
Now, the administration appears to be attempting to add a new tool to its “Antifa” targeting toolbox. By designating foreign groups, the government opens the door to using counterterrorism authorities to investigate whether Americans are providing “material support” to what Pigott described as a vast and violent conspiracy that spans Europe and the United States. (To emphasize: there is no indication that this is based in reality; in Europe and the United States, “Antifa” is a broad description of a scattered, disorganized collection of groups and style of protest.)
Jason Blazakis, former director of the Office of Counterterrorism Financing and Designations in the State Department’s Office of Counterterrorism, called the move “problematic.”
He warned that these designations could allow for more aggressive tactics by law enforcement, including efforts to infiltrate domestic groups while searching for suspected ties to foreign entities.
“It depends on how you could criminalize ideology,” Blazakis told TPM. “It’s this deterrent effect that this is going to have as part of a process of trying to diminish legitimate political opposition.”
This could be a new line of attack against a progressive nonprofit sector that is, to some extent, already crippled, several executives told TPM recently, as it prepares to resist federal investigations.
Weimar Redux
The idea of designating Antifa as a foreign terrorist organization first surfaced publicly in October, during the administration’s “Antifa Roundtable.” The event brought together senior administration officials and right-wing activist-influencers like Andy Ngo and Jack Posobiec. Both men spent years rejecting violent left-wing extremists as part of an organized domestic conspiracy capable of undermining the foundations of the American government.
During the roundtable, both urged Trump to designate Antifa a foreign terrorist group; in Posobiec, Trump said yes.
“Let’s do this, Marco,” Trump told Rubio during the meeting. “We’ll take care of it.”
Cabinet officials, like Rubio, have since sought to demonstrate their anti-Antifa bona fides to Trump and the MAGA base. Last month, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced that his department was compiling lists of nonprofit organizations, comparing Charlie Kirk’s death to a “national 9/11.”
Posobiec celebrated the designations on his podcast last week as a continuation of a fight that began in Weimar, Germany.
“Antifa was created in Germany, in the Weimar Republic, and that has always been Antifa’s home base,” he said, recalling something he said to Trump during the meeting. “And so, we’re now seeing direct action from the Trump administration on this. »
Posobiec exaggerated the move, saying the administration itself had designated Antifa a foreign terrorist group.
What Rubio did last week fell short. Of the four designated groups, only one – Germany’s Antifa Ost – has an explicit connection to the movement. Even they call themselves “hammerbande,” a reference to the weapons they have used in attacks on people they call neo-Nazis. In September, the Hungarian government of Viktor Orbán labeled it a terrorist organization.
New powers
The vagueness of what Antifa is and how far the government will go in its pursuit helps the Trump administration use one of its favorite tools: intimidation.
The four groups named by Rubio are fringe actors who, according to state evidence, neither planned nor executed anything approaching the type of large-scale, 9/11-like attacks that gave rise to the system of designating the groups as foreign terrorist organizations.
But their presence on the list suggests the government is already looking into Antifa movements and their ties to the United States, Blazakis said. Private companies like banks and social media companies, which traditionally pay attention to foreign terrorist designations, are also being alerted, he added.
“It’s potentially very dangerous because anti-fascism is a way of thinking and an ideology,” Blazakis said.
One of the people who suffered the consequences was Mark Bray, a professor at Rutgers and author of a book called “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook.”
After Kirk’s death, the Rutgers chapter of Turning Point USA called him “a prominent leader of the Antifa movement on campus.” Bray received more and more death threats and decided it was time for his family to leave for their safety. He fled to Spain in October.
Even abroad, he remains in the crosshairs of the far right. Posobiec called for Bray to be prosecuted under Antifa designations during his podcast last week.
“You know what I would like to see? I really want to see this Spanish Antifa group designated, because I find it really interesting that Dr. Antifa fled directly to Spain,” Posobiec mused. “Remember when he left Rutgers? He fled straight to Spain and immediately started working with Spanish Antifa. It’s almost like he was providing material support to a terrorist organization. Let’s put that thought to rest.”
Bray told TPM that he wasn’t surprised to see what Posobiec said, but he doubted that Posobiec or the State Department understood the basic questions about the movement. He called the designations “lazy,” telling TPM: “I have a very low estimate of their knowledge on the subject, based on what they have said and written. »
He argued that the problem was not so much with European Antifa groups or Antifa in the United States, but rather with the intimidation of opposition in the United States.
“I don’t even think they really care about the real Antifa groups in the United States,” he said. “It’s a bogeyman, and a sort of guilt-by-association framework for a sort of bogeyman repression.”
First, the group must be foreign. It’s simple: of the four “violent Antifa” groups designated by Rubio, one is German, two are Greek and the fourth is Italian.
But the other two conclusions are more complicated. Rubio must demonstrate that the groups engage in terrorism and that their activities threaten Americans or U.S. national security interests.
The State Department has accused these groups, with some evidence, of planning violent attacks in Europe, including bombings and street fights. But nothing in the department’s announcement suggests that any of these groups pose a threat to Americans, particularly given this law’s historical application to groups like al-Qaeda or the Islamic State. There are no allegations of deaths and, more importantly, no assertion that any US or American interest was harmed. According to the announcement, the groups appear to be local extremists, willing to carry out small-scale acts of violence in their home countries.
Classified or non-public information may support the decision. But since none of this was in the government’s announcement, I asked the State Department this simple question: What threat to U.S. national security interests or to American citizens warranted these burdensome designations?
Spokesperson Tommy Pigott responded:
“Antifa anarchists, Marxists and violent extremists have waged a campaign of terror in the United States and the Western world for decades, carrying out bombings, beatings, shootings and riots in service of their extremist agenda,” Pigott told TPM. “The State Department is committed to identifying and dismantling these terrorist networks that conspire to ruthlessly suppress the will of the people and violently overthrow the very foundations of the United States and Western civilization. »
If you manage to wade through the mud, you will still have find no claims that these groups have harmed Americans or the country’s national interests. In other words, except for one thing: their supposed connection with “Antifa” and other left-wing movements. The Trump administration has for years described “Antifa” as a vast domestic enemy. After the assassination of Trump-aligned activist Charlie Kirk in September, the administration stepped up its rhetoric.
The group, according to Pigott, represents both an ideological and violent threat, fueling a desire to “suppress the will of the people and violently overthrow” the foundations of the United States and the West.
For the administration, the appellations fill a void.
Looking for Antifa
In late September, Trump took two executive actions. One of them reportedly designated Antifa as a domestic terrorist organization. Legal experts have rejected the order as “void” since there is no law under which any group, real or not, could become a domestic terrorist organization. The other, Presidential National Security Memorandum-7, sparked more concern among civil liberties advocates because of what it directed law enforcement to do: examine groups that support “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity,” saying they are potential sources of political violence.
NSPM-7 did not create a new law that would allow Americans to be investigated as members of “Antifa” — a catch-all term that encompasses large swaths of people who describe themselves as opposed to fascism — for potential terrorism violations. Still, federal prosecutors have charged a group of people who staged a July attack on an ICE facility in Texas with alleged membership in a criminal enterprise that, in a second indictment filed months after the attack, they dubbed “Antifa cell.”
Now, the administration appears to be attempting to add a new tool to its “Antifa” targeting toolbox. By designating foreign groups, the government opens the door to using counterterrorism authorities to investigate whether Americans are providing “material support” to what Pigott described as a vast and violent conspiracy that spans Europe and the United States. (To emphasize: there is no indication that this is based in reality; in Europe and the United States, “Antifa” is a broad description of a scattered, disorganized collection of groups and style of protest.)
Jason Blazakis, former director of the Office of Counterterrorism Financing and Designations in the State Department’s Office of Counterterrorism, called the move “problematic.”
He warned that these designations could allow for more aggressive tactics by law enforcement, including efforts to infiltrate domestic groups while searching for suspected ties to foreign entities.
“It depends on how you could criminalize ideology,” Blazakis told TPM. “It’s this deterrent effect that this is going to have as part of a process of trying to diminish legitimate political opposition.”
This could be a new line of attack against a progressive nonprofit sector that is, to some extent, already crippled, several executives told TPM recently, as it prepares to resist federal investigations.
Weimar Redux
The idea of designating Antifa as a foreign terrorist organization first surfaced publicly in October, during the administration’s “Antifa Roundtable.” The event brought together senior administration officials and right-wing activist-influencers like Andy Ngo and Jack Posobiec. Both men spent years rejecting violent left-wing extremists as part of an organized domestic conspiracy capable of undermining the foundations of the American government.
During the roundtable, both urged Trump to designate Antifa a foreign terrorist group; in Posobiec, Trump said yes.
“Let’s do this, Marco,” Trump told Rubio during the meeting. “We’ll take care of it.”
Cabinet officials, like Rubio, have since sought to demonstrate their anti-Antifa bona fides to Trump and the MAGA base. Last month, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced that his department was compiling lists of nonprofit organizations, comparing Charlie Kirk’s death to a “national 9/11.”
Posobiec celebrated the designations on his podcast last week as a continuation of a fight that began in Weimar, Germany.
“Antifa was created in Germany, in the Weimar Republic, and that has always been Antifa’s home base,” he said, recalling something he said to Trump during the meeting. “And so, we’re now seeing direct action from the Trump administration on this. »
Posobiec exaggerated the move, saying the administration itself had designated Antifa a foreign terrorist group.
What Rubio did last week fell short. Of the four designated groups, only one – Germany’s Antifa Ost – has an explicit connection to the movement. Even they call themselves “hammerbande,” a reference to the weapons they have used in attacks on people they call neo-Nazis. In September, the Hungarian government of Viktor Orbán labeled it a terrorist organization.
New powers
The vagueness of what Antifa is and how far the government will go in its pursuit helps the Trump administration use one of its favorite tools: intimidation.
The four groups named by Rubio are fringe actors who, according to state evidence, neither planned nor executed anything approaching the type of large-scale, 9/11-like attacks that gave rise to the system of designating the groups as foreign terrorist organizations.
But their presence on the list suggests the government is already looking into Antifa movements and their ties to the United States, Blazakis said. Private companies like banks and social media companies, which traditionally pay attention to foreign terrorist designations, are also being alerted, he added.
“It’s potentially very dangerous because anti-fascism is a way of thinking and an ideology,” Blazakis said.
One of the people who suffered the consequences was Mark Bray, a professor at Rutgers and author of a book called “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook.”
After Kirk’s death, the Rutgers chapter of Turning Point USA called him “a prominent leader of the Antifa movement on campus.” Bray received more and more death threats and decided it was time for his family to leave for their safety. He fled to Spain in October.
Even abroad, he remains in the crosshairs of the far right. Posobiec called for Bray to be prosecuted under Antifa designations during his podcast last week.
“You know what I would like to see? I really want to see this Spanish Antifa group designated, because I find it really interesting that Dr. Antifa fled directly to Spain,” Posobiec mused. “Remember when he left Rutgers? He fled straight to Spain and immediately started working with Spanish Antifa. It’s almost like he was providing material support to a terrorist organization. Let’s put that thought to rest.”
Bray told TPM that he wasn’t surprised to see what Posobiec said, but he doubted that Posobiec or the State Department understood the basic questions about the movement. He called the designations “lazy,” telling TPM: “I have a very low estimate of their knowledge on the subject, based on what they have said and written. »
He argued that the problem was not so much with European Antifa groups or Antifa in the United States, but rather with the intimidation of opposition in the United States.
“I don’t even think they really care about the real Antifa groups in the United States,” he said. “It’s a bogeyman, and a sort of guilt-by-association framework for a sort of bogeyman repression.”
This is a critical omission. Under the Immigration and Nationality Act, the secretary of state can only designate a group a foreign terrorist organization — a powerful tool that blocks access to the U.S. financial system and makes it a crime to provide support — if three criteria are met.
First, the group must be foreign. It’s simple: of the four “violent Antifa” groups designated by Rubio, one is German, two are Greek and the fourth is Italian.
But the other two conclusions are more complicated. Rubio must demonstrate that the groups engage in terrorism and that their activities threaten Americans or U.S. national security interests.
The State Department has accused these groups, with some evidence, of planning violent attacks in Europe, including bombings and street fights. But nothing in the department’s announcement suggests that any of these groups pose a threat to Americans, particularly given this law’s historical application to groups like al-Qaeda or the Islamic State. There are no allegations of deaths and, more importantly, no assertion that any US or American interest was harmed. According to the announcement, the groups appear to be local extremists, willing to carry out small-scale acts of violence in their home countries.
Classified or non-public information may support the decision. But since none of this was in the government’s announcement, I asked the State Department this simple question: What threat to U.S. national security interests or to American citizens warranted these burdensome designations?
Spokesperson Tommy Pigott responded:
“Antifa anarchists, Marxists and violent extremists have waged a campaign of terror in the United States and the Western world for decades, carrying out bombings, beatings, shootings and riots in service of their extremist agenda,” Pigott told TPM. “The State Department is committed to identifying and dismantling these terrorist networks that conspire to ruthlessly suppress the will of the people and violently overthrow the very foundations of the United States and Western civilization. »
If you manage to wade through the mud, you will still have find no claims that these groups have harmed Americans or the country’s national interests. In other words, except for one thing: their supposed connection with “Antifa” and other left-wing movements. The Trump administration has for years described “Antifa” as a vast domestic enemy. After the assassination of Trump-aligned activist Charlie Kirk in September, the administration stepped up its rhetoric.
The group, according to Pigott, represents both an ideological and violent threat, fueling a desire to “suppress the will of the people and violently overthrow” the foundations of the United States and the West.
For the administration, the appellations fill a void.
Looking for Antifa
In late September, Trump took two executive actions. One of them reportedly designated Antifa as a domestic terrorist organization. Legal experts have rejected the order as “void” since there is no law under which any group, real or not, could become a domestic terrorist organization. The other, Presidential National Security Memorandum-7, sparked more concern among civil liberties advocates because of what it directed law enforcement to do: examine groups that support “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity,” saying they are potential sources of political violence.
NSPM-7 did not create a new law that would allow Americans to be investigated as members of “Antifa” — a catch-all term that encompasses large swaths of people who describe themselves as opposed to fascism — for potential terrorism violations. Still, federal prosecutors have charged a group of people who staged a July attack on an ICE facility in Texas with alleged membership in a criminal enterprise that, in a second indictment filed months after the attack, they dubbed “Antifa cell.”
Now, the administration appears to be attempting to add a new tool to its “Antifa” targeting toolbox. By designating foreign groups, the government opens the door to using counterterrorism authorities to investigate whether Americans are providing “material support” to what Pigott described as a vast and violent conspiracy that spans Europe and the United States. (To emphasize: there is no indication that this is based in reality; in Europe and the United States, “Antifa” is a broad description of a scattered, disorganized collection of groups and style of protest.)
Jason Blazakis, former director of the Office of Counterterrorism Financing and Designations in the State Department’s Office of Counterterrorism, called the move “problematic.”
He warned that these designations could allow for more aggressive tactics by law enforcement, including efforts to infiltrate domestic groups while searching for suspected ties to foreign entities.
“It depends on how you could criminalize ideology,” Blazakis told TPM. “It’s this deterrent effect that this is going to have as part of a process of trying to diminish legitimate political opposition.”
This could be a new line of attack against a progressive nonprofit sector that is, to some extent, already crippled, several executives told TPM recently, as it prepares to resist federal investigations.
Weimar Redux
The idea of designating Antifa as a foreign terrorist organization first surfaced publicly in October, during the administration’s “Antifa Roundtable.” The event brought together senior administration officials and right-wing activist-influencers like Andy Ngo and Jack Posobiec. Both men spent years rejecting violent left-wing extremists as part of an organized domestic conspiracy capable of undermining the foundations of the American government.
During the roundtable, both urged Trump to designate Antifa a foreign terrorist group; in Posobiec, Trump said yes.
“Let’s do this, Marco,” Trump told Rubio during the meeting. “We’ll take care of it.”
Cabinet officials, like Rubio, have since sought to demonstrate their anti-Antifa bona fides to Trump and the MAGA base. Last month, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced that his department was compiling lists of nonprofit organizations, comparing Charlie Kirk’s death to a “national 9/11.”
Posobiec celebrated the designations on his podcast last week as a continuation of a fight that began in Weimar, Germany.
“Antifa was created in Germany, in the Weimar Republic, and that has always been Antifa’s home base,” he said, recalling something he said to Trump during the meeting. “And so, we’re now seeing direct action from the Trump administration on this. »
Posobiec exaggerated the move, saying the administration itself had designated Antifa a foreign terrorist group.
What Rubio did last week fell short. Of the four designated groups, only one – Germany’s Antifa Ost – has an explicit connection to the movement. Even they call themselves “hammerbande,” a reference to the weapons they have used in attacks on people they call neo-Nazis. In September, the Hungarian government of Viktor Orbán labeled it a terrorist organization.
New powers
The vagueness of what Antifa is and how far the government will go in its pursuit helps the Trump administration use one of its favorite tools: intimidation.
The four groups named by Rubio are fringe actors who, according to state evidence, neither planned nor executed anything approaching the type of large-scale, 9/11-like attacks that gave rise to the system of designating the groups as foreign terrorist organizations.
But their presence on the list suggests the government is already looking into Antifa movements and their ties to the United States, Blazakis said. Private companies like banks and social media companies, which traditionally pay attention to foreign terrorist designations, are also being alerted, he added.
“It’s potentially very dangerous because anti-fascism is a way of thinking and an ideology,” Blazakis said.
One of the people who suffered the consequences was Mark Bray, a professor at Rutgers and author of a book called “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook.”
After Kirk’s death, the Rutgers chapter of Turning Point USA called him “a prominent leader of the Antifa movement on campus.” Bray received more and more death threats and decided it was time for his family to leave for their safety. He fled to Spain in October.
Even abroad, he remains in the crosshairs of the far right. Posobiec called for Bray to be prosecuted under Antifa designations during his podcast last week.
“You know what I would like to see? I really want to see this Spanish Antifa group designated, because I find it really interesting that Dr. Antifa fled directly to Spain,” Posobiec mused. “Remember when he left Rutgers? He fled straight to Spain and immediately started working with Spanish Antifa. It’s almost like he was providing material support to a terrorist organization. Let’s put that thought to rest.”
Bray told TPM that he wasn’t surprised to see what Posobiec said, but he doubted that Posobiec or the State Department understood the basic questions about the movement. He called the designations “lazy,” telling TPM: “I have a very low estimate of their knowledge on the subject, based on what they have said and written. »
He argued that the problem was not so much with European Antifa groups or Antifa in the United States, but rather with the intimidation of opposition in the United States.
“I don’t even think they really care about the real Antifa groups in the United States,” he said. “It’s a bogeyman, and a sort of guilt-by-association framework for a sort of bogeyman repression.”
This is a critical omission. Under the Immigration and Nationality Act, the secretary of state can only designate a group a foreign terrorist organization — a powerful tool that blocks access to the U.S. financial system and makes it a crime to provide support — if three criteria are met.
First, the group must be foreign. It’s simple: of the four “violent Antifa” groups designated by Rubio, one is German, two are Greek and the fourth is Italian.
But the other two conclusions are more complicated. Rubio must demonstrate that the groups engage in terrorism and that their activities threaten Americans or U.S. national security interests.
The State Department has accused these groups, with some evidence, of planning violent attacks in Europe, including bombings and street fights. But nothing in the department’s announcement suggests that any of these groups pose a threat to Americans, particularly given this law’s historical application to groups like al-Qaeda or the Islamic State. There are no allegations of deaths and, more importantly, no assertion that any US or American interest was harmed. According to the announcement, the groups appear to be local extremists, willing to carry out small-scale acts of violence in their home countries.
Classified or non-public information may support the decision. But since none of this was in the government’s announcement, I asked the State Department this simple question: What threat to U.S. national security interests or to American citizens warranted these burdensome designations?
Spokesperson Tommy Pigott responded:
“Antifa anarchists, Marxists and violent extremists have waged a campaign of terror in the United States and the Western world for decades, carrying out bombings, beatings, shootings and riots in service of their extremist agenda,” Pigott told TPM. “The State Department is committed to identifying and dismantling these terrorist networks that conspire to ruthlessly suppress the will of the people and violently overthrow the very foundations of the United States and Western civilization. »
If you manage to wade through the mud, you will still have find no claims that these groups have harmed Americans or the country’s national interests. In other words, except for one thing: their supposed connection with “Antifa” and other left-wing movements. The Trump administration has for years described “Antifa” as a vast domestic enemy. After the assassination of Trump-aligned activist Charlie Kirk in September, the administration stepped up its rhetoric.
The group, according to Pigott, represents both an ideological and violent threat, fueling a desire to “suppress the will of the people and violently overthrow” the foundations of the United States and the West.
For the administration, the appellations fill a void.
Looking for Antifa
In late September, Trump took two executive actions. One of them reportedly designated Antifa as a domestic terrorist organization. Legal experts have rejected the order as “void” since there is no law under which any group, real or not, could become a domestic terrorist organization. The other, Presidential National Security Memorandum-7, sparked more concern among civil liberties advocates because of what it directed law enforcement to do: examine groups that support “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity,” saying they are potential sources of political violence.
NSPM-7 did not create a new law that would allow Americans to be investigated as members of “Antifa” — a catch-all term that encompasses large swaths of people who describe themselves as opposed to fascism — for potential terrorism violations. Still, federal prosecutors have charged a group of people who staged a July attack on an ICE facility in Texas with alleged membership in a criminal enterprise that, in a second indictment filed months after the attack, they dubbed “Antifa cell.”
Now, the administration appears to be attempting to add a new tool to its “Antifa” targeting toolbox. By designating foreign groups, the government opens the door to using counterterrorism authorities to investigate whether Americans are providing “material support” to what Pigott described as a vast and violent conspiracy that spans Europe and the United States. (To emphasize: there is no indication that this is based in reality; in Europe and the United States, “Antifa” is a broad description of a scattered, disorganized collection of groups and style of protest.)
Jason Blazakis, former director of the Office of Counterterrorism Financing and Designations in the State Department’s Office of Counterterrorism, called the move “problematic.”
He warned that these designations could allow for more aggressive tactics by law enforcement, including efforts to infiltrate domestic groups while searching for suspected ties to foreign entities.
“It depends on how you could criminalize ideology,” Blazakis told TPM. “It’s this deterrent effect that this is going to have as part of a process of trying to diminish legitimate political opposition.”
This could be a new line of attack against a progressive nonprofit sector that is, to some extent, already crippled, several executives told TPM recently, as it prepares to resist federal investigations.
Weimar Redux
The idea of designating Antifa as a foreign terrorist organization first surfaced publicly in October, during the administration’s “Antifa Roundtable.” The event brought together senior administration officials and right-wing activist-influencers like Andy Ngo and Jack Posobiec. Both men spent years rejecting violent left-wing extremists as part of an organized domestic conspiracy capable of undermining the foundations of the American government.
During the roundtable, both urged Trump to designate Antifa a foreign terrorist group; in Posobiec, Trump said yes.
“Let’s do this, Marco,” Trump told Rubio during the meeting. “We’ll take care of it.”
Cabinet officials, like Rubio, have since sought to demonstrate their anti-Antifa bona fides to Trump and the MAGA base. Last month, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced that his department was compiling lists of nonprofit organizations, comparing Charlie Kirk’s death to a “national 9/11.”
Posobiec celebrated the designations on his podcast last week as a continuation of a fight that began in Weimar, Germany.
“Antifa was created in Germany, in the Weimar Republic, and that has always been Antifa’s home base,” he said, recalling something he said to Trump during the meeting. “And so, we’re now seeing direct action from the Trump administration on this. »
Posobiec exaggerated the move, saying the administration itself had designated Antifa a foreign terrorist group.
What Rubio did last week fell short. Of the four designated groups, only one – Germany’s Antifa Ost – has an explicit connection to the movement. Even they call themselves “hammerbande,” a reference to the weapons they have used in attacks on people they call neo-Nazis. In September, the Hungarian government of Viktor Orbán labeled it a terrorist organization.
New powers
The vagueness of what Antifa is and how far the government will go in its pursuit helps the Trump administration use one of its favorite tools: intimidation.
The four groups named by Rubio are fringe actors who, according to state evidence, neither planned nor executed anything approaching the type of large-scale, 9/11-like attacks that gave rise to the system of designating the groups as foreign terrorist organizations.
But their presence on the list suggests the government is already looking into Antifa movements and their ties to the United States, Blazakis said. Private companies like banks and social media companies, which traditionally pay attention to foreign terrorist designations, are also being alerted, he added.
“It’s potentially very dangerous because anti-fascism is a way of thinking and an ideology,” Blazakis said.
One of the people who suffered the consequences was Mark Bray, a professor at Rutgers and author of a book called “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook.”
After Kirk’s death, the Rutgers chapter of Turning Point USA called him “a prominent leader of the Antifa movement on campus.” Bray received more and more death threats and decided it was time for his family to leave for their safety. He fled to Spain in October.
Even abroad, he remains in the crosshairs of the far right. Posobiec called for Bray to be prosecuted under Antifa designations during his podcast last week.
“You know what I would like to see? I really want to see this Spanish Antifa group designated, because I find it really interesting that Dr. Antifa fled directly to Spain,” Posobiec mused. “Remember when he left Rutgers? He fled straight to Spain and immediately started working with Spanish Antifa. It’s almost like he was providing material support to a terrorist organization. Let’s put that thought to rest.”
Bray told TPM that he wasn’t surprised to see what Posobiec said, but he doubted that Posobiec or the State Department understood the basic questions about the movement. He called the designations “lazy,” telling TPM: “I have a very low estimate of their knowledge on the subject, based on what they have said and written. »
He argued that the problem was not so much with European Antifa groups or Antifa in the United States, but rather with the intimidation of opposition in the United States.
“I don’t even think they really care about the real Antifa groups in the United States,” he said. “It’s a bogeyman, and a sort of guilt-by-association framework for a sort of bogeyman repression.”
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