09.26.25
'Antifa,' again
Yesterday, in case the Charlie Kirk frenzy might be dying, Trump took advantage of the shooting at an ICE detention facility to issue a new memo, “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence.” As usual, it highlights what real or alleged left-wing violence and leaves out far, far more prevalent right-wing violence. In fact, while there are many right-wing organizations, including the Oath Keepers, Proud Boys, and myriad smaller local formations, that are explicitly organized as militias, and whose members are armed and trained in preparation for the coming, excitedly anticipated civil war. There is no equivalent on the U.S. left.
The memo accuses the political left of doing not only what the right wants to do but what the Trump regime is doing right now: waging a “violent assault against democratic institutions, constitutional rights, and fundamental American liberties.” The gist:
A new law enforcement strategy that investigates all participants in these criminal and terroristic conspiracies — including the organized structures, networks, entities, organizations, funding sources, and predicate actions behind them — is required.
Much of the memo repeats Trump’s executive order “Designating Antifa as a Domestic Terrorist Organization,” issued 12 days after Charlie Kirk’s murder. That memo defines “antifa,” which is now the catch-all moniker for the left in general. (The bold-facing is mine.)
Antifa is a militarist, anarchist enterprise that explicitly calls for the overthrow of the United States Government, law enforcement authorities, and our system of law. It uses illegal means to organize and execute a campaign of violence and terrorism nationwide to accomplish these goals. This campaign involves coordinated efforts to obstruct enforcement of Federal laws through armed standoffs with law enforcement, organized riots, violent assaults on Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other law enforcement officers, and routine doxing of and other threats against political figures and activists. Antifa recruits, trains, and radicalizes young Americans to engage in this violence and suppression of political activity, then employs elaborate means and mechanisms to shield the identities of its operatives, conceal its funding sources and operations in an effort to frustrate law enforcement, and recruit additional members. Individuals associated with and acting on behalf of Antifa further coordinate with other organizations and entities for the purpose of spreading, fomenting, and advancing political violence and suppressing lawful political speech. This organized effort designed to achieve policy objectives by coercion and intimidation is domestic terrorism.
First, a few facts:
“Antifa”—shorthand for “anti-fascist”— is not an organization or an enterprise. It has no leaders, officers, dues, or by-laws. You might call it a movement, but even that sounds more organized than the scattered groupuscules that comprise it.
Organize, execute, coordinated efforts. Few of the (mostly) young, (mostly) white (mostly) men who identify with antifa possess the discipline to pull off anything like this.
Campaign of violence. Some self-styled anti-fascist anarchists have committed acts of violence, almost always aimed at property, not people. A lot have not. But a campaign implies organization. See above.
Elaborate means and mechanisms to shield [their] identities. Maybe, if you call black balaclavas and the occasional Guy Fawkes mask elaborate.
Conceal its funding sources. Funding?
Second, this executive order and the attack on “antifa” are not new.
Like much of what Trump II has achieved, this executive order and the crackdown it inaugurates are the fulfillment of plans botched or foiled during Trump I.
In 2019 Ted Cruz asked the FBI to declare this ragtag band a criminal enterprise and prosecute it under RICO laws. Such a designation, as Reason put it, would have made “anyone who adopts the label potentially liable for anything anyone else using the label does.”
At the time, F.B.I. Director Christopher Wray was uninterested, saying the agency “considers antifa more of an ideology than an organization,” and “the FBI doesn’t investigate ideology, we investigate violent criminal activity.”
With a few exceptions. Such as the majority of J. Edgar Hoover’s tenure, from 1924 to 1972, and probably before that too. The targets have been anarchists, socialists, communists, trade unionists, “Islamists,” feminists, pacifists and other antiwar activists, and Black anti-racist activists from the Civil Rights movement to Black Lives Matter—all dubbed subversives and terrorists. And now it’s “antifa.”
In the spring and summer of 2020, after the police murder of George Floyd and during Wray’s term (which lasted until 2025), thousands of peaceful protesters were arrested and charged with federal offenses far more serious than anything they were doing, even if it was unlawful.
“There is clearly some high degree of organization involved at some of these events and coordinated tactics that we are seeing,” Attorney General Bill Barr said at the time. “Some of it relates to antifa, some of it relates to groups that act very much like antifa.”
Trump lobbied to declare antifa a “terrorist organization.” He tweeted, as always absent evidence, that a 75-year-old Buffalo protester hospitalized after being knocked to the pavement by the police might be “an ANTIFA provocateur.”
In June, the New York Times combed through the police reports and investigated the circumstances. Its reporters concluded:
A review of the arrests of dozens of people on federal charges reveals no known effort by antifa to perpetrate a coordinated campaign of violence.
In fact the most serious charges were brought in Las Vegas against three members of the far-right “boogaloo” movement, who waded through the crowd in bulletproof vests, carrying rifles, trying to provoke fights between protesters and the police.
That was just the beginning. According to hundreds of documents obtained through a public records suit by the Brennan Center for Justice and Data for Black Lives, from 2020 to 2023 (under Wray, during Biden’s presidency) the DC Metropolitan Police and U.S. Capitol Police collaborated with the FBI and other federal agencies to conduct extensive social media surveillance of the growing movement for Black lives. They collected info about public events, their dates, times, places, and size, and individual organizers as well as organizations, including Black Lives Matter, Refuse Fascism, and Showing Up for Racial Justice.
The surveillance was unified under the banner of combating antifa, which memos claimed was inciting people to riot. Given the massive scale of the protests, there was remarkably little violence. And indeed, the snoops turned up no such incitement.
Trump’s new executive order makes that operation look like a Pink Panther film.
All relevant executive departments and agencies shall utilize all applicable authorities to investigate, disrupt, and dismantle any and all illegal operations — especially those involving terrorist actions — conducted by Antifa or any person claiming to act on behalf of Antifa, or for which Antifa or any person claiming to act on behalf of Antifa provided material support.
What will this activity look like? What will pique the FBI’s notice? Who will be tagged as an antifa terrorist? Will Kash Patel now connect James Comey (indicted yesterday) to antifa? Why not?
We might take a clue from the documents tagged by the FBI and DC police in the cache turned over to the Brennan Center. Among them was this social media:
The agent who presented this piece of fiery rhetoric added a caption. “FYSA” (for your situational awareness), it began.
This doesn’t mean she’s not out and about in the protests. Back in June she posted pictures of her older child sleeping in the back of the car during one of the protests.
They have already sent the military to Portland, for the NON-EXISTENT rioting and protesting that is happening. Wanna talk about wasteful government spending....