Antifa has long been a thorn in Trump's side, and after the murder of Charlie Kirk, he said he wanted to declare the organization a "terrorist". Can he do it and who are Antifa really?
The attack on the right-wing activist Charlie Kirk continues to cause strong unrest in the US. Since he was shot on the campus of a university in Ohio, Donald Trump and his followers have directed their anger at the "radical left", which they believe is responsible for his death. Now the American president has announced that he will classify the Antifa movement as a "major terrorist organization". On social networks, he described it as a "sick, dangerous, left-wing disaster" and added that those who finance Antifa should also be investigated.
Not an organization, but a coalition of various left-wing groups
Antifa is an abbreviation for "Antifascist Action" - a rather unstructured coalition of groups and individuals who fight against fascism, racism, anti-Semitism, nationalism, right-wing historical revisionism and other forms of right-wing ideologies.
Antifa is classified as a left-wing or far-left political group. The organization is active throughout the world - especially in Europe and North America. Its roots are in Germany from the 1920s/30s of the last century, when, during the politically turbulent times of the Weimar Republic, left-wing activists and groups opposed the growing power of National Socialism. In 1932, the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) defined it as a unifying movement against the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP). Antifa groups also emerged in other countries, for example in Italy against the fascist rule of Benito Mussolini or in Spain as a reaction against the dictatorship of Franco.
Until today, Antifa is more of a loose coalition of various small groups. Initially, "antifascism" was perceived as a communist battle slogan that also questioned capitalism - accordingly, the logo of the anti-fascist movement shows two flags: a red one, symbolizing socialism/communism, and a black one - anarchism.
Do Antifa members use violence?
As broad as the concept of "antifascism" is, the Antifa movement itself is as comprehensive. Numerous groups that belong to it oppose right-wing extremism and authoritarianism in a non-violent way. They research and publish information about right-wing networks, organize protests and demonstrations, or remove right-wing propaganda from the streets. At the same time, however, there are also paramilitary groups that tolerate the use of violence to achieve their goals or even use violence themselves in various forms. They call themselves "autonomous", "militant" or "independent" antifa groups and thus consciously distinguish themselves from the civil antifascism that is accepted by democratic countries.
Antifa defines itself as a heterogeneous coalition of various small groups without a rigid organizational structure. The question of whether and to what extent the use of violence in the fight against the right is considered a legitimate means is the subject of wide discussion within the movement, which has earned it a lot of criticism.
Antifa has long been a thorn in Trump's side
Antifa groups already exist in many countries of the Western world, including the United States. There, too, they are not subordinate to a single central organization. Since the 1980s, they have actively opposed the activities of American neo-Nazis, racist skinheads and the Ku Klux Klan. Today, the group "Anti-Racist Action", founded in 2007 in Portland, Oregon, which is active mainly in many cities in the Midwest, and "Refuse Fascism" - a group formed after Donald Trump was first elected president of the United States in 2016 and has been regularly organizing protests against fascism and authoritarianism since then.
From the very beginning, Antifa has been a thorn in Donald Trump's side. Several times during his first term, he announced that he wanted to classify the movement as a "terrorist organization". However, experts and authorities, such as the FBI or the Department of Homeland Security, believe that from a legal point of view, this intention of his is rather untenable.
Contrary to the Constitution?
As early as 2017, then-FBI Director Christopher Wray explained that classification as a terrorist organization was not possible, since it had no formal structure or hierarchy. The authorities monitor Antifa as a "potentially violent movement" and are conducting investigations into individual perpetrators. Overall, however, the movement is too heterogeneous to be defined as a single organization.
A second legal problem is that there is no formal mechanism by which domestic groups can be designated as "terrorist organizations". In US law, the classification of terrorist groups is the responsibility of the State Department, which so far has only a regime for classifying "foreign terrorist organizations". Crimes committed by individuals in the US may constitute terrorist acts, but the groups themselves are not officially designated as such.
Finally, the First Amendment to the US Constitution protects freedom of expression and assembly, as well as freedom of political opinion - even radical, critical of the system, or anti-state opinions are protected by the Constitution. Classification as terrorism could be seen as a violation of the First Amendment to the US Constitution.