President Donald Trump announced on Truth Social late Wednesday that he intends to designate “Antifa” as a “major terrorist organization.”
Antifa is not an actual organization but rather a decentralized ideological movement. The term, short for “anti-fascist,” serves as an umbrella description for various loosely affiliated local groups and individuals who oppose fascism, racism, and far-right extremist movements.
As FBI Director Christopher Wray testified to Congress in 2020, “We look at antifa as more of an ideology or a movement than an organization.”
The movement has no central leadership, no membership rolls, no official headquarters, and no hierarchical command structure. Instead, it consists of autonomous local cells and individual activists who may coordinate on an ad hoc basis for specific protests or counter-demonstrations. This decentralized structure is intentional, following what experts describe as a “leaderless resistance” model that makes the movement difficult to infiltrate or disrupt.
This is not the first time Trump has attempted this designation. In May 2020, amid nationwide protests following George Floyd’s death, Trump declared on social media that “the United States of America will be designating ANTIFA as a Terrorist Organization.” However, nothing came of that announcement because the legal framework simply doesn’t exist to make such a designation stick.
During his first term, Trump repeatedly blamed “ANTIFA and the Radical Left” for violence at protests and pledged that the federal government would designate antifa as a terrorist organization. Legal experts noted at the time that Trump lacked the authority to do so because federal law only allows for the designation of foreign organizations as terrorists, and antifa is a domestic movement rather than a specific organization.
The United States has no legal mechanism to designate domestic groups as terrorist organizations. The State Department maintains a list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs), which includes groups like ISIS and al-Qaeda, but there is no equivalent domestic list. This distinction exists partly due to broad First Amendment protections enjoyed by organizations operating within the United States.
Federal prosecutors already have extensive tools available to prosecute domestic terrorism without new designations.
The vague and expansive nature of the “antifa” label creates significant potential for abuse. Because antifa is not a specific organization but rather a broad ideological umbrella, the term has been used by Trump and other politicians as a blanket label for other liberal and left-leaning groups they oppose. This elasticity makes it an ideal tool for targeting virtually any left-leaning activist or organization.
Civil rights organizations have expressed deep concern about the potential for such designations to be weaponized against legitimate political dissent. A coalition of 157 civil rights organizations wrote to Congress in 2021 opposing new domestic terrorism charges or designated organization lists, warning that such authorities “could be used to expand racial profiling or be wielded to surveil and investigate communities of color and political opponents in the name of national security.”
Trump’s promise to investigate those who “fund” antifa further demonstrates the problematic nature of the designation. Since antifa is not a centralized organization, determining what constitutes “funding” becomes entirely subjective and could potentially encompass any donation to progressive causes or legal defense funds.
