Trump Admin Targets Multiple ‘Antifa Cells’ As Foreign Terrorist Orgs

The Trump administration will designate four European Antifa-affiliated groups as foreign terrorist organizations in an effort to cripple violent networks around the world, a State Department official told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Antifa Ost in Germany, International Revolutionary Front in Italy, and the Greek groups Armed Proletarian Justice and Revolutionary Class Self Defense will be added to the State Department’s list alongside Al Qaeda and ISIS, the official said, calling it “the first batch of designations.” Foreign terrorist designations make it a crime to provide “material support” such as funding to the group, require immigration officials to keep its members out of the country and allow victims of the group’s attacks to sue for damages in U.S. court.

The four European groups “use force against those they identify as opponents of their Marxist and anarchist projects” in line with the leftist Antifa movement, the State Department official told the DCNF.

European authorities linked Antifa Ost to a string of attacks in Budapest, Hungary, in February 2023, that saw nine people assaulted with a hammer, batons, pepper spray and other items.

The International Revolutionary Front, also called the Informal Anarchist Federation, waged “an intense campaign of violence” in Italy through the years that included bombing attempts and the fatal shooting of a nuclear executive in 2012, according to the U.S. military’s Combating Terrorism Center.

Armed Proletarian Justice, meanwhile, claimed responsibility for a failed bombing against a police building in Athens, Greece, in 2023, the State Department said in its annual report on terrorism. Revolutionary Class Self Defense also took credit for multiple bombings in Greece targeting a railway company and government building, ostensibly to support Palestinians, Reuters reported.

Republican Missouri Sen. Eric Schmitt’s office met with State Secretary Marco Rubio’s team in recent weeks to advise sanctioning Antifa-aligned extremists, his office told the DCNF.

“I’m grateful to Secretary Rubio and the Trump Administration for working with me on this critical issue — holding these radical groups who enable, fund, and support political violence in the United States and across the world accountable,” Schmitt said in a statement. “Each of these groups are violent cells in this transnational operation. Designating them as [foreign terrorist organizations] is an important step to dismantling this subversive network of far-left extremism.”

President Donald Trump designated the broader Antifa movement as a “domestic terrorist organization” in a September executive order, directing officials to “investigate, disrupt, and dismantle any and all illegal operations” tied to it. Trump said in October that he also wanted to see a foreign terrorist designation, telling Rubio, “Let’s get it done.”

“The anarchists, Marxists, and violent extremists of Antifa have waged a terror campaign in the United States and across the Western world for decades, carrying out bombings, beatings, shootings, and riots in service of their extreme agenda,” State Department spokesperson Tommy Pigott told the DCNF. “The State Department is committed to identifying and dismantling these terror networks that conspire to ruthlessly suppress the will of the people and violently undermine the very foundations of the United States and Western Civilization.”