President Trump moved Monday to classify the left-wing, anti-fascist movement known loosely as antifa as a domestic terrorist organization, opening up a new front in his battle with political foes and raising legal and ethical questions about how the U.S. government can prosecute a movement.

Antifa activism and violence has spread during the Trump years. Since he took office in 2017, its targets have broadened as militant anti-fascist protesters — concealing their identities with masks, dressing head to toe in black — have sparred with police to block a right-wing provocateur speaking at UC Berkeley, confronted alt-right demonstrators with sticks, shields and chemical irritants in Charlottesville, Va., stormed a federal courthouse while protesting police brutality in Portland, Ore., and lobbed rocks at law enforcement as federal immigration agents ratcheted up raids in Los Angeles.

In announcing the move, Trump called antifa a “militarist, anarchist enterprise that explicitly calls for the overthrow of the United States Government, law enforcement authorities, and our system of law ... that (executes) a campaign of violence and terrorism nationwide to accomplish these goals.”

Critics warn he is utilizing right-wing activist Charlie Kirk’s recent killing to launch a sweeping government crackdown on his political opponents — and crush their constitutional rights to free speech and free assembly.

“I am very concerned that these actions are meant to punish disfavored dissent,” said Brian Levin, founder of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at Cal State San Bernardino.

Trump is fixating on left-wing violence even as data show U.S. extremists come from across the ideological spectrum: A 2024 federal report — recently purged from the Department of Justice website — stated that far-right extremists have killed more Americans than any other group and outpace “all other types of terrorism and domestic violent extremists.”

To Levin, the administration’s laser focus on antifa, a diffuse movement that does not rely on traditional hierarchies, risks threatening “the civil liberties, not of perpetrators of violence, but the far larger and more visible civil society network of peaceful supporters, messengers and funders.” Experts, say some of the groups are highly organized at a local level, but don’t have national or international coordination, as far as we know, or public leaders.

There is no evidence that Tyler Robinson, the 22-year-old suspect in Kirk’s murder, was affiliated with antifa or any other network. According to his mother, he had “started to lean more to the left, becoming more pro-gay and trans-rights oriented.” Officials have said that in a text thread with his partner, Robinson said he killed Kirk because he’d “had enough of his hatred.”

As Kirk’s shooting triggers furious debate on the perils of left vs. right political violence, there is little consensus among Americans on what extremism is, who is perpetrating it and when it is justified.

A significant swath of Americans, some experts note, tend to excuse or ignore violence on their side and not recognize it as terrorism if they sympathize with the cause.

“The biggest problem we face is that there’s no agreement on what terrorism is and it’s become completely subjective,” said Bruce Hoffman, senior fellow for counter-terrorism and homeland security at the Council on Foreign Relations.

“Luigi Mangione, for example, is he a terrorist?” Hoffman asked. “I would say yes. ... But look, there’s a sold-out musical about him!”

What is antifa?

The term “antifa” — short for anti-fascist — was coined in Germany nearly a century ago, as shorthand for the Communist Party-affiliated Antifaschistische Aktion (Anti-Fascist Action) group that mobilized against Hitler and was brutally crushed when he came to power.

According to Mark Bray, a professor of history at Rutgers University, the term was picked up across Europe in the 1980s and ‘90s and adopted by a broad swath of leftists, anarchists and anti-authoritarian socialists.

“Antifa is a kind of politics of pan radical left militant opposition to the far right,” said Bray, an ally of the movement and author of “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook.”

In uniting socialists, anarchists, communists and other leftists to organize against what they perceive as a common threat, Bray said, antifa is like feminism.

“There are feminist groups,” he noted, “but feminism itself is not a group.”

The first U.S. organization to adopt the name was Rose City Antifa, founded in Portland in 2007. Its goal, according to its website, is “to create a world without fascism” and “ensure that there are consequences for fascists who spread their hate and violence in our city.”

“We are unapologetic about the reality that fighting fascism at points requires physical militancy,” Rose City Antifa said in 2017 before facing off with far-right groups and police at a pro-Trump march.

Other groups across the U.S., such as NYC Antifa and Antifa Sacramento, are part of the same loose anti-fascist network, but many do not explicitly call themselves antifa. There is no central organization, no command, headquarters or formal membership list.

The movement has grown in response to the rise of Trump.

“Suddenly, anarchists and antifa, who have been demonized and sidelined by the wider Left, have been hearing from liberals and Leftists, ‘you’ve been right all along,’” the anarchist, antifascist journal It’s Going Down, said in 2016 after clashes broke out on a Texas campus as protesters tried to cancel an alt-right speaker.

Could Trump designate antifa a terrorist group?

Many national security experts agree that Trump would be cutting a radically new path if he designated antifa as a terrorism organization: The U.S. does not have a domestic terrorism law, and Trump does not have the authority to designate antifa a foreign terrorist organization without approval from Congress.

“While the FBI has confirmed that antifa and other extremists are subjects of ongoing domestic terrorism investigations, it declines to designate any organization a “domestic terrorist organization,” a 2020 congressional report said. “Doing so may infringe on First Amendment-protected free speech — belonging to an ideological group in and of itself is not a crime in the United States.”

Trump could try to go after antifa as an international organization, Hoffman said, pointing out that there are antifa cells active abroad. But it would be a stretch to designate antifa an international terrorist group because there’s no known international command, control or coordination.

“It’s not like al Qaeda or ISIS, where you have a command or an emir in charge giving orders,” Hoffman said. “It’s an ideological affinity. Nothing more.”

Is antifa engaged in domestic terrorism?

According to the FBI, terrorism is “the unlawful use of force or violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a Government or civilian population in furtherance of political or social objectives.”

For the Trump administration, the case is clear.

“Left-wing organizations have fueled violent riots, organized attacks against law enforcement officers, coordinated illegal doxing campaigns, arranged drop points for weapons and riot materials, and more,” a White House spokesperson said in a statement.

“These aren’t protests, these are crimes ... where they are throwing bricks at cars of ICE and border patrol,” Trump said last week of the violence committed during demonstrations in Los Angeles over his administration’s immigration crackdown.

“They should be put in jail. What they’re doing to this country is really subversive.”

Bray rejected the idea that antifa is in any way a terrorist organization. “If by terrorists we mean something akin to Al Qaeda or ISIS with murdering people and blowing up buildings, it just is not any of that.”

However, Bray has written, most if not all antifa members “wholeheartedly support militant self-defense against the police and the targeted destruction of police and capitalist property.”

Hoffman argued that any acts of violence committed in pursuit of political goals constituted terrorism.

“Terrorism doesn’t have to be lethal to be terrorism,” he said. “There’s no doubt if violence, or the threat of violence, is being used in pursuit of a political motive, it’s terrorism. You have to call it out.”

A 2022 study from the University of Maryland’s National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism said U.S. data showed “left-wing radicals were less likely to use violence than right-wing and Islamist radicals.”

While the consortium says antifa poses “a relatively small threat,” it also noted “a recent increase in violent activity by antifa extremists, anarchists and related far-left extremists” — a trend it links to the “concurrent increase in violent far-right activity.”

Should the U.S. enact a law on domestic terrorism?

In the 1990s, when President Clinton tried to enact sweeping domestic terrorism laws, Hoffman said, Republicans raised concerns about First Amendment violations.

“The bottom line is, back then, it was as politicized as it is now,” Hoffman said. “If there’s a meeting, basically one side of the room wants to designate antifa and Black Lives Matter, and the other side of the room wants to designate Atomwaffen (Division) or The Base.”

Ultimately, Hoffman said, the U.S. does need a clear and precise law on domestic terrorism. But now was not the best time, he argued, as emotions are running too high after the Kirk shooting.

“If you’re going to go to these lengths, to change the laws of the United States, you have to have very firm, clear evidence,” he said. “At a time when talk show hosts are being de-platformed, when people are fired from their jobs, this is not the ideal moment to embrace profound changes in how we regard terrorism.”

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