The Trump administration is not playing around when it comes to left wing violence. In an announcement on Thursday Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that four European-based ANTIFA groups will be designated as terrorist organizations. The new designations by Rubio comes two months after Trump signed an executive order labeling ANTIFA as a domestic terrorist organization.
The foreign designations come after the Trump administration in September designated antifa as a domestic terrorist organization. “United States will continue using all available tools to protect our nation from these anti-American, anti-capitalist, and anti-Christian terrorist groups,” Rubio said in a statement. The administration singled out the German-based Antifa Ost, the Italian-based International Revolutionary Front (FAI/FRI), and two groups in Greece, the Armed Proletarian Justice and the Revolutionary Class Self Defense, as groups now designated as foreign terrorist organizations.
The designations are slated to go into effect Nov. 20. In a fact sheet, the State Department laid out its evidence against the groups. It described Antifa Ost as conducting between 2018 and 2023 “numerous attacks against individuals it perceives as ‘fascists’ or part of the ‘right-wing scene’ in Germany” and accused it of having conducted a series of attacks in Budapest in mid-February 2023. The State Department noted that Hungary declared Antifa Ost to be a terrorist organization in September. President Trump met with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán at the White House last week.
“The Department of State is designating four Antifa groups as Foreign Terrorist Organizations and Specially Designated Global Terrorists. The United States will continue using all available tools to protect our nation from these anti-American, anti-capitalist, and anti-Christian terrorist groups,” Rubio said. Members of ANTIFA, a foreign terrorist group so designed under the law, are lawfully subject to drone strikes, via the Memo from the Office of Legal Counsel, obtained during the Obama administration.
The designation of Antifa Ost and other violent Antifa groups supports President Trump’s National Security Presidential Memorandum-7, an initiative to disrupt self-described “anti-fascism” networks, entities, and organizations that use political violence and terroristic acts to undermine democratic institutions, constitutional rights, and fundamental liberties. Groups affiliated with this movement ascribe to revolutionary anarchist or Marxist ideologies, including anti-Americanism, “anti-capitalism,” and anti-Christianity, using these to incite and justify violent assaults domestically and overseas.
The United States will continue using all available tools to protect our national security and public safety and will deny funding and resources to terrorists, including targeting other Antifa groups across the globe.