The Trump administration is now reportedly preparing to formally designate four Antifa-affiliated groups in Europe as foreign terrorist organizations, in what officials describe as a major step toward dismantling a transnational web of left-wing extremism.
A senior State Department official reportedly stated that 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 department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations, alongside groups such as Al Qaeda and ISIS. The official described the move as “the first batch of designations” targeting the Antifa movement’s international offshoots.
Under U.S. law, the designation makes it a crime to provide material support—including money or resources—to the groups, bars their members from entering the United States, and allows victims of their attacks to pursue civil action in U.S. courts. “These organizations use force against those they identify as opponents of their Marxist and anarchist projects,” the State Department official said.
The decision follows years of growing concern about Antifa-linked violence across Europe. Authorities in Germany have tied Antifa Ost to a wave of brutal assaults in Budapest, Hungary, in February 2023, where nine people were attacked with hammers, batons, and pepper spray. Italy’s International Revolutionary Front, also known as the Informal Anarchist Federation, has conducted what the U.S. military’s Combating Terrorism Center described as “an intense campaign of violence,” including bombing attempts and the 2012 killing of a nuclear executive.
In Greece, Armed Proletarian Justice claimed responsibility for a failed bombing targeting a police building in Athens in 2023. Another Greek group, Revolutionary Class Self Defense, has claimed credit for multiple bombings against a railway company and government offices, acts that Reuters reported were carried out in supposed solidarity with Palestinians.
Republican Sen. Eric Schmitt of Missouri, who has pushed for tougher measures against Antifa-linked networks, said his office worked closely with Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s team to advance the effort. “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. “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.”
The move follows President Donald J. Trump’s earlier executive order in September that labeled Antifa a domestic terrorist organization and directed federal agencies to “investigate, disrupt, and dismantle any and all illegal operations” connected to the movement. Trump later urged the State Department to take the campaign global, telling Rubio in October, “Let’s get it done.”
State Department spokesperson Tommy Pigott described the decision as part of a broader mission to confront violent leftist extremism at home and abroad. “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,” Pigott said. “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.”
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