{"id":13996,"date":"2026-07-23T03:35:42","date_gmt":"2026-07-23T03:35:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/range\/the-antifa-terrorism-threat-the-trump-administration-describes-does-not-exist\/"},"modified":"2026-07-23T03:35:43","modified_gmt":"2026-07-23T03:35:43","slug":"the-antifa-terrorism-threat-the-trump-administration-describes-does-not-exist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/range\/the-antifa-terrorism-threat-the-trump-administration-describes-does-not-exist\/","title":{"rendered":"The antifa terrorism threat the Trump administration describes does not\u00a0exist"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The State Department on July 16, 2026, hosted what officials billed as a ministerial on\u00a0the resurgence of left-wing political terrorism.<\/p>\n

Secretary of State\u00a0Marco Rubio\u00a0invited\u00a0representatives from more than 60 countries to Washington to hear an argument that\u00a0many of them\u00a0appear not to believe: that a transnational far-left terrorist movement called antifa threatens the democratic world. At the event, allies were asked to mobilize against that enemy despite nations like the\u00a0Netherlands\u00a0and\u00a0Germany\u00a0politely noting to their host that they cannot find evidence of any such group.<\/p>\n

Some\u00a0intelligence analysts have\u00a0declined\u00a0to brief on antifa at interagency meetings because they do not regard it as a serious counterterrorism threat.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As a\u00a0terrorism scholar\u00a0who spent a decade running the State Department office that designates terrorist organizations, I understand their confusion. The threat the administration describes does not exist in the form the administration describes it.<\/p>\n

Antifa is not a group<\/h2>\n

As I and others have written before,\u00a0antifa is not a group. It is a movement and an ideology,\u00a0a loose commitment to opposing fascism. In its most organized form, it amounts to scattered local collectives like\u00a0Rose City Antifa\u00a0in Portland, Oregon.<\/p>\n

There is no membership roll, no command hierarchy, and no funding structure. There is no leader of antifa \u2013 the Trump administration\u00a0has not named one\u00a0\u2013 and there is\u00a0no record of deadly attacks\u00a0attributed to a U.S.-based organization called antifa.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Groups like the\u00a0Islamic State group and al-Qaida\u00a0have killed tens of thousands of people and have\u00a0a documented chain of command. Antifa does not. You cannot decapitate a movement with no head, and you cannot sanction an organization that does not exist.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As such, the Trump administration created one.<\/p>\n

The construction project began on Sept. 22, 2025, when President Donald Trump signed an\u00a0executive order\u00a0purporting to designate antifa as a domestic terrorist organization. The order describes antifa as \u201ca militarist, anarchist enterprise that explicitly calls for the overthrow of the United States Government.\u201d It directs every relevant agency to investigate and dismantle its operations.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Two problems are immediately apparent. First,\u00a0no legal authority exists\u00a0to designate domestic organizations as terrorist groups. It\u2019s a gap that Congress has deliberately preserved for First Amendment reasons.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Second, the order designates as an organization something the\u00a0FBI\u2019s past leadership has\u00a0described as an ideology. Trump\u2019s executive order asserts an antifa enterprise into existence and then declares war on it.<\/p>\n

Three days after the executive order, the White House implemented the order through\u00a0National Security Presidential Memorandum 7, which converts the fiction into machinery. The memorandum directs the Treasury Department to identify and disrupt financial networks that fund what it deems domestic terrorism. The memorandum instructs banks to file\u00a0suspicious-activity reports\u00a0with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, the U.S. government\u2019s financial intelligence unit.<\/p>\n

That means the government\u2019s financial surveillance apparatus, built to trace al-Qaida\u2019s money in the wake of the 9\/11 terrorist attacks, is being pointed at Americans that the administration considers left-wing.<\/p>\n

The memorandum likewise\u00a0directs\u00a0the FBI\u2019s Joint Terrorism Task Forces to coordinate a comprehensive national strategy to investigate, prosecute and disrupt entities and individuals. That harnesses a network of roughly 200 task forces comprising over 4,000 personnel from federal, state and local agencies.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The wording of National Security Presidential Memorandum 7\u00a0gives away the administration\u2019s true intent. It identifies the markers of this supposed terrorist movement as anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism and anti-Christianity. It criticizes the movement for its hostility toward those who hold traditional American views on family, religion and morality.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Those are not indicators of terrorism. They are political positions.<\/p>\n

State Department targets groups overseas<\/h2>\n

The foreign component of the campaign arrived in November 2025. That\u2019s when the State Department designated\u00a0four European groups\u00a0\u2013 one each from Germany and Italy and two from Greece \u2013 as Specially Designated Global Terrorists and\u00a0Foreign Terrorist Organizations\u00a0pursuant to the Immigration and Nationality Act.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The State Department-designated groups are real. And some of their members have committed genuine crimes, including\u00a0assaults and small-scale bombings.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But as\u00a0I have noted, the designations are very peculiar. These groups have committed vandalism and harmed people, but not one of the four has carried out an attack that led to any fatalities.\u00a0<\/p>\n

German leaders\u00a0have said the threat from one of the designated groups,\u00a0Antifa Ost, or Antifa East, had recently decreased significantly.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As the former head of the State Department\u2019s office that recommended to the secretary of state which groups to designate, I\u2019ve been involved in the designations of hundreds of individuals and organizations. The bar was never this low. That\u2019s because the Foreign Terrorist Organization list loses its meaning, and its deterrent power, when it includes groups whose body count is zero while genuinely lethal movements go unlisted.<\/p>\n

That brings us back to the State Department\u2019s ministerial. The sequence of events leading up to it matter:\u00a0<\/p>\n

Invent the organization by executive order; build the enforcement machinery by presidential memorandum; manufacture the foreign nexus through the State Department\u2019s Foreign Terrorist Organization designations; and then convene the world to ratify the story. Each step launders the previous one.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Behind it all, Trump administration officials\u00a0have discussed\u00a0using the foreign terrorism labels to justify going after Americans with links to the movement. That is the point of the exercise, and U.S allies\u00a0such as the Netherlands\u00a0have explained how antifa could not be designated as a terrorist group under their laws.<\/p>\n

Counterterrorism tools are among the most powerful instruments the U.S. government possesses. I don\u2019t believe that using them against an ideology, one defined by opposition to fascism, makes America safer. I believe it tells every ally the U.S. asks for help that the world\u2019s leading counterterrorism power can no longer tell the difference between a threat and an opponent.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Implications of the ministerial meeting<\/h2>\n

This is not just an issue of semantics and rhetoric \u2013 each action by the Trump administration against a strawman enemy creates risks. And the push to internationalize the antifa threat could have dire consequences at home.<\/p>\n

First, if the State Department leaves the July 16 meeting with pliable allies willing to brand antifa a terrorist organization, it will embolden the administration to point to a supposed global conspiracy of the far left.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That path leads to a State Department foreign terrorist designation. Such a designation means Americans could have their bank accounts frozen and quite possibly find themselves rounded up for providing material support to a movement rather than an organization. This would be more dangerous than Trump\u2019s earlier executive order.<\/p>\n

Second, it could chill freedom of speech and assembly. Once other governments treat antifa as a terrorist entity, the U.S. government gains cover to shut down protests under the guise of exposing global left-wing plotting.<\/p>\n

Third, it could justify the revival of projects like the\u00a0FBI\u2019s Counterintelligence Program, resurrecting the surveillance, infiltration and disruption of lawful political activity that the bureau was supposed to have abandoned after the\u00a0abuses of the 1970s.<\/p>\n

Fourth, as\u00a0one European counterterrorism scholar\u00a0recently warned, the summit lays bare a widening split between American and European counterterrorism priorities and the Trump administration\u2019s willingness to bend counterterrorism policy to partisan ends.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That divergence is the real hazard, far more than any phantom left-wing terrorism group, because European counterterrorism leans so heavily on U.S. intelligence. As such, transatlantic counterterrorism cooperation could be in for turbulent times.<\/p>\n

Whatever the outcome of the ministerial meeting, there is no version that will make Americans safer.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I believe one result is certain: Genuine threats \u2013 from groups with leaders, actual funding and malicious intent \u2013 will get less attention from the U.S. and any ally co-opted to take action against antifa.\n\n<\/svg><\/p>\n<\/div>\n