The U.S. government has designated four Antifa groups as both “Foreign Terrorist Organizations” and “Specially Designated Global Terrorists.”
Those groups are Antifa Ost, the Informal Anarchist Federation/International Revolutionary Front, Armed Proletarian Justice, and Revolutionary Class Self-Defense, the State Department said on Nov. 13 in a fact sheet.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that the department made those designations in line with President Donald Trump’s “historic commitment to uproot Antifa’s campaign of political violence.”
The move came after the Trump administration declared Antifa a domestic terrorist organization in September. The decision expands the government’s authority to investigate, prosecute, and seize assets.
Rubio said in a post on X, “The United States will continue using all available tools to protect our nation from these anti-American, anti-capitalist, and anti-Christian terrorist groups.”
The State Department, in a separate X post about the designation, wrote, “Anarchist militants have waged terror campaigns in the United States and Europe, conspiring to undermine the foundations of Western Civilization through their brutal attacks.”
That action comes three days after Antifa-aligned protesters used violent tactics against attendees of an event that the conservative group Turning Point USA organized at the University of California–Berkeley.
The president’s decision to name Antifa a “domestic terrorist organization” came 12 days after the Sept. 10 assassination of Turning Point’s cofounder, Charlie Kirk, as he spoke at a Utah college campus.
A 22-year-old man is accused of killing Kirk, and bullet casings from the weapon allegedly used in the murder were found engraved with anti-fascist messages. The president and others have blamed Kirk’s killing on leftist ideology, including that of Antifa-aligned extremists, for fomenting and normalizing violence against Kirk and other conservatives.
The term “Antifa” is short for “antifascist.” Anyone the group deems “fascist” deserves “no platform” to speak, and must be stopped by “any means necessary,” its adherents have stated.
Gabriel Nadales, a self-described ex-Antifa participant, wrote in his 2020 book, “Anyone who dares to criticize the group or its tactics can be labeled a fascist.” Rather than opposing a well-defined “fascism,” Antifa actually is driven by anti-American sentiment, Nadales wrote.
At an October roundtable discussion focusing on Antifa and extremist violence, Trump said he agreed with others’ suggestions to consider the Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) label for Antifa; he directed Rubio to “take care of it.”
The four new FTO designations take effect on Nov. 20, following their publication in the National Register.
International Connections
Although all four groups are based in foreign countries, Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) has pointed out that U.S.-based Antifa groups are tied to international ones.
The FTO designations came about a month after Schmitt wrote a letter urging the State Department “to identify the foreign networks, organizations, and financiers that enable and support Antifa operations across the West” and to declare them FTOs.
Antifa’s international structure includes “organized cells” in the United States, Canada, and the UK and across continental Europe, he said in his Nov. 13 reaction to the FTO designations.
“While seemingly decentralized, these cells often work in direct coordination with one another,” he wrote, “sharing tactics and strategies, planning violent activism, utilizing shared funding streams, and even collaborating on in-person ‘direct actions.’”
The term “direct action” is commonly used in Antifa circles to describe an array of tactics ranging from flyer distribution to violent “black bloc” confrontations, during which militant activists wear all-black clothing to make themselves more menacing and anonymous.
In a letter to Rubio last month, Schmitt said he “enthusiastically” agreed with applying the domestic terrorist label to Antifa.
“However, the Antifa network is international in nature, not a collection of independent domestic actors,” he wrote. “They are one node of a global system.”
Consequences of Designation
Designated FTOs are denied access to the U.S. financial system, the State Department said, cutting them off from “resources they need to carry out attacks.”
As a result of the FTO label, “all property and property interests of designated individuals or groups that are in the United States or that are in possession or control of a U.S. person are blocked,” the State Department said.
“U.S. persons are generally prohibited from conducting business with sanctioned persons,” it stated.
People who “knowingly” assist the groups also could be criminally charged, the department stated.
In its fact sheet, the State Department called all four of the newly designated groups “violent” and described each one.
Antifa Ost is a militant group based in Germany, and the nation of Hungary also recently designated it as a terrorist organization. That action came two years after the group was accused of “a series of attacks” in Budapest, the State Department said.
From 2018 to 2023, the group “conducted numerous attacks against individuals it perceives as ‘fascists’ or part of the ‘right-wing scene’ in Germany,” the State Department alleged.
The Informal Anarchist Federation/International Revolutionary Front is known as FAI/FRI based on its name in Italian. The group operates mainly in Italy and works with affiliates across Europe, South America, and Asia, according to the fact sheet.
Since 2003, FAI/FRI “has claimed responsibility for threats of violence, bombs, and letter bombs against political and economic institutions, including a courthouse and other ‘capitalist institutions,’” the State Department said.
Armed Proletarian Justice “is a Greek anarchist and ‘anti-capitalist’ group that has attempted and conducted improvised explosive device (IED) attacks against Greek government targets,” according to the fact sheet. The group reportedly “claimed responsibility” for a bomb planted near riot police headquarters in Goudi, Greece, on Dec. 18, 2023.
Another Greek group, Revolutionary Class Self-Defense, “links its actions to broader political and social issues and cites opposition to capitalist structures, ‘state repression,’ and solidarity with Palestine,” the State Department said.
That organization took credit for a pair of IED attacks against the Greek Ministry of Labor in 2024 and the Hellenic Train offices earlier this year.
Legal authority backing the designations arises from Executive Order 13224, coupled with Section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act, according to the State Department.
