DONALD Trump has declared Antifa as a terror organisation just a day after Charlie Kirk’s memorial, with the president vowing to crack down on the “sick” movement.
Trump signed an executive order on Monday that designated Antifa as a “domestic terrorist organisation” after he vowed to do so last week.
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The move comes just one day after the memorial service for the murdered conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
Trump described Antifa as a “sick, dangerous, radical left disaster”, and promised to go after its sources of funding.
According to the executive order, “Antifa is a militaristic, anarchist enterprise that explicitly calls for the overthrow of the United States government, law enforcement authorities and our system of law”.
The president first announced his plans to take action against left-wing groups he blamed for encouraging the violence that led to Charlie Kirk’s death on social media last week.
He said: “I am pleased to inform our many USA Patriots that I am designating Antifa, a sick, dangerous, radical left disaster, as a major terrorist organisation”.
“I will also be strongly recommending that those funding Antifa be thoroughly investigated in accordance with the highest legal standards and practices,” he continued.
In relation to Kirk’s murder, Trump said: “radical left-wing political violence” was “directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today, and it must stop now”.
Despite the president’s accusations of the left-wing political organisation, there has been no public evidence linking Kirk’s death to the group.
Antifa – short for anti-fascist – is a decentralised movement that has no clear hierarchical structure and no leader, according to a 2020 Congressional Research Service report.
Former FBI director Christopher Wray characterised the group as “a movement or an ideology”, not an organisation that could be formally designated in this way.
Antifa has also never been linked to any terrorist incident in the US.
This is not Trump’s first attempt at designating the movement as a domestic terrorist organisation.
He first tried to do so following George Floyd’s murder in 2020, at the peak of the protests.
Despite Trump’s claims and the executive order, extremist experts are questioning his authority to make such a designation.
While legal framework exists for foreign organisations like ISIS and Al-Qaeda, there is no framework for domestic groups – due to first amendment concerns about criminalising political ideology.
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Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism said the move was “ridiculous on its face”, and that the declaration has “no basis in law”.
“There is no domestic terrorist organisation list in the US,” she said.
“There is a mechanism to declare foreign organisations terrorist organisations … But none of that exists domestically and it doesn’t appear there would be a way to apply that designation to Antifa.”
Despite the group currently being protected by the first amendment right to free speech and therefore blocking Trump’s attempt to designate it as a terrorist organisation, the move could enable the administration to prioritise investigations of individuals claiming Antifa affiliation.
This could lead to increasing arrests using existing criminal statutes.
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