US President Donald Trump announced he will classify Antifa as a “major terrorist organisation”.
The financiers of the US-based left-wing extremists are also to be targeted. He said he will be “strongly recommending that those funding antifa be thoroughly investigated in accordance with the highest legal standards and practices”.
Trump today described the group as “A SICK, DANGEROUS, RADICAL LEFT DISASTER” in a post on his Truth Social account and repeated by the White House.
He had already said a few days ago that he would “100 per cent consider” the designation.
🚨 "I am pleased to inform our many U.S.A. Patriots that I am designating ANTIFA, A SICK, DANGEROUS, RADICAL LEFT DISASTER, AS A MAJOR TERRORIST ORGANIZATION…" – President Donald J. Trump pic.twitter.com/irLHCkrX1n
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) September 18, 2025
Trump told reporters that members of Antifa were “professional agitators”, trying to sabotage his policies against illegal migration.
“Antifa is terrible,” Trump said. “These aren’t protests, these are crimes that they’re doing. They’re throwing bricks at cars of the ICE and Border Patrol … They’re professional agitators. … They should be put in jail. What they’re doing to this country is really subversive.”
He said the US was faced with a group of “radical-left lunatics”.
Trump’s targeting of the left-wing extremist organisation comes in the wake of the murder of Conservative activist Charlie Kirk, who was shot in the neck on September 10, with the main suspect being a radicalised youngster who has since been charged with his murder.
The suspected shooter allegedly had engraved bullet casings stating: “Hey fascist! Catch!” and the Italian communist song, “Bella ciao bella ciao ciao.”
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller already promised to crush the “domestic terrorist movement” he said was behind the killing of Kirk.
Antifa works a decentralised way and, has roots in interwar Europe. It was heavily influenced, funded and directed by the Soviet Union through the KPD party. The KPD was banned as extremist in West Germany in 1956 by the Federal Constitutional Court.
The Soviet Union used the concept of “anti-fascism” as an ideological tool, often labelling capitalist societies and anti-Soviet activities as “fascist.”
Antifaschistische Aktion was not only directed against the Nazis but also against the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), which the KPD, under Soviet influence, considered “social fascists” and a prime enemy.
The Bolsheviks used Antifa as a tool to spread the Communist revolution outside Russia.
Their modus operandi often employs militant tactics through autonomous groups.
This approach serves several strategic purposes, especially in protecting the movement from repercussions by governments or law enforcement, as it made it difficult for authorities to target or dismantle the movement as a whole, since there was no single entity to ban or prosecute.
In contemporary Europe, these activities frequently involve “Black Bloc” formations — masked protesters in black attire to obscure their identities — who engage in co-ordinated violence, property destruction and clashes with police or political groups.
These tactics are intended to deny “fascists” public space, disrupt their organising and signal zero tolerance for their ideology.
In May in Brussels, Antifa targeted the Hungarian organisation MCC, a conservative intellectual think tank, by trying to block their events and intimidating visitors.
Black Bloc groups often appear during international summits, causing riots and smashing storefronts, setting cars and barricades alight and hurling petrol bombs and catapults at police.
A famous chapter of the group exists in Germany, the Hammer Gang, which conducted at least six hammer and baton attacks on perceived neo-Nazis, leaving victims comatose or near-dead.
Tactics included gloves to avoid leaving DNA traces, chlorine-cleaned weapons and ambush, with training sessions drawing Antifa members from Berlin and elsewhere.
German-Italian Antifa militants from the Hammer Gang, seeking right-wing rally clashes, instead assaulted nine random civilians (based what they said was their victims’ “Nazi-like” clothing) with hammers, batons, and pepper spray across five Budapest sites in 2023.
Attackers included jailed left-wing extremist Lina Engel associates such as “Tobias E”, who was jailed for three years and MEP Ilaria Salis of the Left Party, who received parliamentary immunity despite the charges against her.
In the US, a particularly violent chapter that was recently founded is Trantifa, a transgender-focused offshoot or “arm” within the broader Antifa movement. It shares its anti-fascist, anarchist and far-left ideologies while emphasising militant activism around gender issues.
Members have been connected with mass shootings in the past couple of years but this has only be reported by Conservative media.
