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Antifa Everywhere - In These Times [1]
ANTIFA EVERYWHERE
AS TRUMP REVIVES THE WAR ON TERROR AGAINST DOMESTIC OPPOSITION, WHAT
DOES ANTIFASCISM MEAN?
On the night Zohran Mamdani won New York City's mayoral election, he
delivered a rousing victory speech that made explicit the connection
between his economic agenda and the national fight against
authoritarianism. Calling out President Donald Trump, Mamdani declared
[2], "If there is any way to terrify a despot, it is by dismantling the
very conditions that allowed him to accumulate power."
Several weeks later -- after that despot had threatened to besiege New
York City with immigration raids and strip its federal funding, should
Mamdani win [3]--the mayor-elect stood beside Trump during a surreal
White House press briefing. When a reporter pressed Mamdani on whether
he still considered the president a fascist, the jovial, clearly charmed
Trump interjected, "You can just say yes. … It's easier than explaining
it."
The response was disarmingly nonchalant, coming from the head of an
administration that has gone to great lengths to crush opposition to
fascism elsewhere.
In late September 2025, two weeks after the assassination of Turning
Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, the Trump administration released its
National Security Presidential Memorandum-7 [4] (NSPM-7). The memo
singled out "anti-fascism" as the "organizing rallying cry" for a
widespread and well-funded network set on overthrowing the United
States, propagating "anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and
anti-Christianity," and promoting "extremism on migration, race, and
gender."
Earlier that same week, Trump issued a new executive order,
"Designating Antifa as a Domestic Terrorist Organization."
As legal experts pointed out, no U.S. law exists that "provides for
[the] designation of a domestic terrorism organization [5]." But the
label can still serve to turn political opponents into pariahs. As
Thomas E. Brzozowski, who formerly worked on the issue of domestic
terrorism at the Department of Justice, observed [6], even if the Trump
administration's efforts to designate "antifa" as a terrorist
organization can't withstand legal review, "it can still do the work of
law in the streets, on bank compliance desks, and across social media
platforms," pressuring individuals and institutions into anticipatory
compliance.
The administration, which is particularly keen to publicize supposed
connections between antifa and progressive nonprofits, is certainly
trying to claim legal authority. The NSPM-7 memo, which suggests the
attorney general's office has the authority to designate domestic
terrorist organizations, also directs federal investigators to
prioritize certain charges, such as "providing material support to
terrorists." And in October and November 2025, DOJ prosecutors appear to
have followed these directives closely in the federal indictments of
nine individuals [7] allegedly responsible for the July 4 armed attack
on federal and local officers during a protest against Trump's
immigration policies at the Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado,
Texas.
The indictment refers to what it calls the "North Texas Antifa Cell
[8]" (in terms that replicate [5]those used in Trump's executive order)
as "a militant enterprise made up of networks of individuals and small
groups primarily ascribing to a revolutionary anarchist or autonomous
Marxist ideology." Similar to how anti-racketeering laws were used [9]
in 2023 to ensnare nonviolent Cop City protesters and their supporters,
the Prairieland indictment includes people who were not even present
during the Alvarado protest when the attack took place. Among them is
Daniel Sanchez Estrada [10], whose supposed crime is "transporting a
box containing numerous Antifa materials [7]" -- namely, anarchist
zines.
A recently leaked DOJ memo from Bondi sets out how to implement NSPM-7
in even broader and vaguer terms, directing the department to compile a
list of "domestic terrorist" groups based on their opposition to
Trump's agenda, as well as soliciting public tips on Left activism, in
what journalist Ken Klippenstein calls "a bounty system for anti-Trump
thought [11]."
But for all its intimidatory force, the domestic terrorist designation
is still too legally questionable to fulfill the administration's
repressive ambitions, which -- as detailed by Trump's deputy chief of
staff, Stephen Miller, on a late September 2025 podcast--include [12]
using all of the federal government's investigative and punitive tools
to "identify, disrupt, dismantle and destroy" the radical Left networks
that Miller blamed for Kirk's murder, to "make America safe again for
the American people."
Three weeks later, on October 8, the White House convened a "roundtable
[13] on Antifa." A bevy of far-right activists, including PizzaGate
conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec and right-wing social media influencer
Andy Ngo, spoke alongside government officials, including Trump, Miller,
Attorney General Pam Bondi and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem. Posobiec
tellingly claimed that antifa "has been around in various iterations
for almost a hundred years…going back to the Weimar Republic in
Germany" -- which is to say, when the Left and the workers' movement
organized against rising Nazism -- and Ngo suggested antifa's
"international arm" be designated a foreign terrorist organization.
Asked during the meeting whether he would push for such a designation,
Trump responded affirmatively, directing Secretary of State Marco Rubio,
"Let's get it done, Marco [14]."
Rubio followed through in November, announcing [15] the United States
had declared four European "antifa" groups, from Germany, Italy and
Greece, to be "Specially Designated Global Terrorists" to be added to
the government's list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations.
The four groups (only one of which describes itself as antifascist) have
participated in actions that could fall under some legal definitions of
terrorism: Germany's "Antifa Ost" allegedly attacked a 2023 Hungarian
neo-Nazi rally; the other three anarchist formations have carried out
violent actions against various political targets over the past decade,
including a nuclear engineering CEO and Greek riot police. But they are
also small, marginal entities that pose no threat to U.S. national
security -- let alone are "conspiring to undermine the foundations of
Western Civilization through their brutal attacks [16]," as Rubio's
announcement put it.
Behind the hyperbole lies a more concrete agenda: the administration's
efforts to define antifa as an international conspiracy, so that
American antifascist groups and activists can be declared part of a
"foreign terrorist organization." While Trump's threats to name
protesters as domestic terrorists are legally dubious, the FTO
designation carries enormous discretionary powers, especially when it
comes to allegations of material and financial support -- as
demonstrated by the federal terrorism prosecution of five Muslim
Americans raising donations for Palestine in the early 2000s case of the
Holy Land Five [17].
Taking the next step to designate such antifascist organizing as foreign
terrorism could unleash a limitless repressive arsenal, especially since
the antifa label does not refer to a formal organization but the loosest
of networks and identities, and the U.S. government is happy to apply
the label to the most diverse targets -- from Greek anarchists to
Americans blowing whistles at immigration raids.
As Brzozowski notes [18], such a designation could be used to justify
everything from denaturalizing naturalized citizens who participate in
protests or donate to activist groups, to private litigation against
antifascist activists, to invasive surveillance under the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act, to silencing academic speech and research
that could be associated with antifascism.
The chilling effect on political organizing is already becoming
apparent: In October 2025, the International Anti-Fascist Defence Fund
[19], which raises money for antifascists facing government repression,
shut down its U.S. fundraising infrastructure in response to Trump's
orders.
Trump opponents who think this wave of repression will not touch them
might want to think again. The ultimate targets of this grotesque Red
Scare revival -- in which antifa is implausibly cast as a terror network
rivaling ISIS [20] in menace and sophistication -- are not the
peripheral groups allegedly involved in acts of violence in Budapest or
Alvarado. It's the mass antifascist movement that has emerged in
response to the occupation of U.S. cities by federal agents, the
disappearance of immigrants (or those who look like them) and anyone who
comes to their aid.
In Chicago, and other cities now learning from Chicago, this everyday
antifascism includes various grassroots practices [21], from rapid
response networks and community patrols to whistle and car-horn alerts,
school escorts and buyouts that help food vendors remain out of harm's
way. But these popular protests have also found an echo in city
government, with Mayor Brandon Johnson urging the crowd at an October
"No Kings" rally, "Are you ready to fight fascism? Are you prepared to
destroy authoritarianism once and for all? [22]"
The defense of migrants against a violent and racist deportation machine
shows how genuine antifascism is built out of practices of solidarity;
it need not label itself antifa nor name fascism as its target. Much the
same could be said of the encampment movement against Israel's genocide
in Gaza, which reinvented for our dark moment the internationalism that
has always been a defining feature of antifascism [23].
But a popular antifascism that is actually capable of countering Trump's
repressive onslaught, with all its conspiracy theories and legal
threats, will also need to tap further into the material, economic bases
of the struggle against authoritarianism. As demonstrated by federal
anti-immigrant worksite raids [24], the Trump administration's efforts
to roll out a kind of border police state manifest as an assault on the
multiracial (and especially Latinx) working class.
Putting antifascist solidarity at the core of opposition to Trump and
his cronies can make explicit how the fight against the politics of
fear, hierarchy, privilege and domination is always grounded in an
alternative vision and practice of collective life -- one in which our
security and well-being is not based on the insecurity and deprivation
of others.
[25]
ALBERTO TOSCANO is the author of _Late Fascism: Race, Capitalism and the
Politics of Crisis [26]_ (Verso) and _Terms of Disorder: Keywords for an
Interregnum [27]_ (Seagull). He lives in Vancouver.
Links:
------
[1]
https://inthesetimes.com/article/antifa-everywhere-war-on-terror-cve-material-support-laws-hlf5-terrorism
[2]
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/nov/05/zohran-mamdani-victory-speech-transcript
[3] https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/mamdani-trump-9.6967833
[4]
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/countering-domestic-terrorism-and-organized-political-violence/
[5]
https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/what-s-up-with-the-terror-indictment-against-alleged-antifa-members
[6]
https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/you-can-t-designate--antifa--banks-and-platforms-will-act-like-you-did-anyway
[7]
https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndtx/pr/antifa-cell-members-indicted-prairieland-shooting
[8]
https://www.foxnews.com/us/antifa-members-indicted-texas-ice-facility-riot-attempted-murder-officer
[9]
https://inthesetimes.com/article/war-protest-standing-rock-cop-city-repression-criminalize-dissent-political-rights-first-amendment
[10]
https://theintercept.com/2025/12/04/antifa-zines-accidental-release-texas-ice-protest/
[11]
https://www.democracynow.org/2025/12/8/ken_klippenstein_fbi_domestic_terrorism_nspm7
[12]
https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20250915-white-house-vows-to-take-on-left-wing-terror-movement-after-kirk-killing
[13]
https://www.whitehouse.gov/videos/president-trump-participates-in-a-roundtable-on-antifa/
[14] https://www.rev.com/transcripts/antifa-roundtable
[15]
https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesperson/2025/11/designations-of-antifa-ost-and-three-other-violent-antifa-groups
[16] https://x.com/StateDept/status/1989034285819740531
[17]
https://www.aljazeera.com/video/al-jazeera-world/2016/10/5/the-holy-land-five
[18]
https://www.justsecurity.org/122643/antifa-threaten-civil-liberties/
[19]
https://theintercept.com/2025/11/15/antifa-terrorist-rubio-nazi-material-support/
[20] https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/trump-antifa-roundtable-9.6932606
[21]
https://fortune.com/2025/11/16/chicago-resists-ice-immigration-raids-orange-whistle-little-village/
[22] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPoqUrWnqI0
[23]
https://inthesetimes.com/article/fascism-debate-trump-democrats-gaza-campus-protest
[24]
https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/fact-sheet/understanding-ice-worksite-raids/
[25] https://inthesetimes.com/authors/alberto-toscano
[26] https://www.versobooks.com/products/2627-late-fascism
[27]
https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/T/bo196815165.html
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