Predictably, though still confusingly, President Trump has declared Antifa as a "major terrorist organization," even though it isn't an organization, it's an umbrella term for a decentralized anti-fascist movement, and there have been few if any people who would publicly profess to belonging to it.

We haven't heard too much about Antifa since Trump's first term, and the street-fighting between MAGA idiots and black-clad hordes has thankfully not been so common around the Bay so far in his second term as it was in 2017. Still, Fox News, radio shows that the elderly and conspiratorially focused listened to, and websites like OAN are still obsessed with the idea that the "radical left" has a secretive army of goons bent on violence. And so, of course, Trump has latched on and went on Truth Social from the toilet last night to declare Antifa a "SICK, DANGEROUS, RADICAL LEFT DISASTER," and "A MAJOR TERRORIST ORGANIZATION."

Trump also said that he would be recommending that "those funding ANTIFA be thoroughly investigated," even though this is also a fantasy, and no one really "funds" the activities of decentralized groups and individuals who show up as counter-protesters when MAGA idiots think they need to mobilize.

Incidentally, as George Floyd protests were ramping up in late May 2020, Trump made the exact same announcement, back when he still used Twitter.


The sheer lack of so-called Antifa activity around the Bay since Trump took office for the second time may be a tacit indication of the degree to which Trump, and his fascist-leaning allies, have won, for the moment. Also, it could just be that the young protesters who tended to be part of the black-clad antifa groups of past years have grown out of such activities, and those who have come along to replace them are more concerned with immigration raids and genocide in Gaza right now.

The movement took shape in multiple ways over years, but the most recent iterations were a radical response to the radical street actions of pro-Trump activists, who seemed to enjoy coming to places like Berkeley with shields and sticks to "poke the bear" of a liberal enclave, and gloat over the fact that their man won the first time. Groups protesting the killing of George Floyd, by contrast, were just that, though some of the local protests took on the tense and vandalism-prone tendencies of "black bloc" protests of the last 20 years in the Bay Area.

As several anonymous, self-described Antifa activists told NBC Bay Area back in 2017, "You cannot rationally debate fascism. If someone cannot be rationally debated, you have no other choice but to use a show of force against him." And, one said, "We don’t think fascism deserves free speech. You give a platform to fascism, they will kill you. We want to shut that down before we get killed."

The White House has not offered any clarification about how they might go about seeking terrorism charges against, or launching an investigation of, Antifa, just like they didn't after Trump's 2020 tweet.

As the Associated Press notes today, Trump's previous FBI Director Christopher Wray testified before Congress in 2020 that "antifa is an ideology, not an organization," and it would therefore be difficult to designate it as a terror group given the lack of any hierarchy.

And even if Antifa were more of a group you could define, Trump would have an uphill legal fight defining it as a terrorist organization. And prosecuting anyone for joining a protest movement would, similarly, not get very far.

"Under the First Amendment, no one can be punished for joining a group or giving money to a group," says Professor David Schanzer, director of the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security at Duke University, speaking today to the BBC.

Nevertheless, as Reuters reports, the White House is preparing an executive order to address political violence and hate speech.

Meanwhile, a group of Congressional Democrats say they will be putting forward a bill to protect those whose speech is targeted by the government.

Previously: Nancy Pelosi Calls For Violent Antifa To Be Arrested

Top image: A man with his face covered peeks out from behind a banner as a group pf hundreds wearing all black descend on MLK Jr. Park on August 27, 2017 in Berkeley, California. The park became a center of left-wing protest when hundreds of people opposed to President Trump and hundreds more aligned with Antifa descended on it after a planned right-wing rally was cancelled. (Photo by Elijah Nouvelage/Getty Images)