After anti-ICE protests & Kirk murder, Trump 2.0 may go after Antifa with more gusto

The first Trump Administration repeatedly sought to go after the amorphous far-left nationwide movement known as Antifa — even vowing to designate the militant group as a domestic terrorist organization — and now, in the wake of violent anti-ICE protests and the assassination of Charlie Kirk, the second Trump administration is signaling another attempted crackdown on Antifa.

President Donald Trump said from the Oval Office on Monday that he “100%” would now, in his second term, take the step to designate Antifa as a domestic terrorist group, if his Cabinet and the Justice Department were in agreement.

"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," Trump announced on Truth Social on Wednesday evening. "I will also be strongly recommending that those funding ANTIFA be thoroughly investigated in accordance with the highest legal standards and practices."

Trump’s frustration with Antifa and other extreme left activist groups comes after months of nationwide street movements opposing crackdowns on illegal immigration — including protests which often spiraled into violent riots in parts of Los Angeles and elsewhere. But the president’s frustration seemed to boil over following the murder of Kirk, the popular conservative influencer and Trump’s ally and friend, by an accused shooter whose ammunition included anti-fascist messaging.

The rifle casings belonging to suspected Kirk assassin Tyler Robinson were, according to law enforcement, engraved with antifascist and anti-Nazi phrases as well as apparent sexualized online memes and video game references. One bullet casing was inscribed with the phrase, “Hey fascist! Catch!” There is no public evidence that Robinson belonged to an Antifa outfit, although given the anarchistic nature of Antifa, it may be difficult to prove "membership."

The 31-year-old Kirk and Trump have both been compared to fascists and Nazis by figures on the left for years, and Hillary Clinton on Wednesday promoted a book by American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten titled "Why Fascists Fear Teachers," with the book taking aim at Trump.

Kirk deserved it for "spreading hate"

Utah prosecutors provided evidence during a press conference and in a court filing on Tuesday that Robinson’s family members said he leaned to the “left” politically, and that Robinson told his family and his roommate — a boyfriend who was allegedly seeking to transition from male to female — that Robinson had targeted Kirk because Kirk was “spreading hate.”

One regional Antifa group, CVAntifa, describes itself as “an antifascist collective” that is “fighting the fash in Corvallis, Oregon.” The group lamented this week that “on a national level, Kirk’s killing has done much to galvanize and unify America’s right-wing” and said Antifa needed to figure out ways to push back on that.

“Antifascists must work to find more creative ways to counter this political moment,” the Antifa cell wrote in a blog post on Tuesday. “One option may be working to drive wedges between different segments of the right. … One possibly useful wedge issue in this context is Israel.”

Kirk's murder comes after two attempted assassinations of Trump and years of the Biden administration pointing to the January 6 riot and claiming "rightwing" extremism or "domestic terrorism" as the main domestic threat facing the U.S., even as the actual threat-scape has been muddled by the politicization of intelligence and the rationalization of violence in formerly respectable left-leaning publications.

Trump: "They got away with murder"

Trump was asked on Monday about whether he planned on designating Antifa as a domestic terrorist organization.

“It’s something I would do, yeah… I would do that 100% — and others also, by the way, but Antifa is terrible,” Trump said. “There are other groups, yeah, there are other groups. We have some pretty radical groups, and they got away with murder. And also, I've been speaking to the attorney general about bringing RICO against some of the people that you've been reading about that have been putting up millions and millions of dollars for agitation. These aren’t protests — these are crimes, what they’re doing.”

Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller said on Monday that far-left groups were behind violent protests in the U.S., and said the key would be to uncover the financial backing for the groups.

“They have organized drop points for weapons and organized drop points for all the materials necessary to launch riots. You saw that during the Black Lives Matter riots too. It’s this whole network of organizations,” Miller said. “The key point the president has been making, somebody is paying for all of this. This is not happening for free. So under the president’s direction, the attorney general is going to find out who is paying for it and they will now be criminally liable for paying for violence.”

Patel: "Follow the money"

FBI Director Kash Patel said on Tuesday during a Senate hearing that “we follow the money” when investigating groups which may be involved in criminality.

“We work with our partners at the Treasury Department to trace where the money came from, how these individuals paid for the training they received or the platforms they were using, and also how these individuals collectively got together,” Patel said. 

“To trace all of those we are using — not just in Charlie’s investigation, but others — lawful process, and serving […] orders on any entity that is related in any way financially to any of these criminal acts of violence.”

Understanding the “black bloc” and Antifa

The loosely concatenated Antifa network claims to be the heir to anti-Nazi movements of the 1930s and 1940s. The German news outlet Deutsche Welle has pointed to the “Antifa” moniker’s Communist and Stalinist roots.

“The word antifa's true meaning has been complex in Germany ever since the Stalinist Communist Party of Germany (KPD) adopted the phrase and the distinctive two-flag logo for the 1932 election campaign. They had been pressing for cross-party ‘Antifaschistische Aktion’ (anti-fascist action) since the early 1920s,” the outlet said.

DW added that “The KPD portrayed themselves as the only truly ‘anti-fascist’ party in Weimar Germany's last free election, which Adolf Hitler's [Nazi Party] would not win outright but which nevertheless handed them the keys to power. The inability of the KPD, the Social Democrats, and other democratic forces to work together, despite securing more combined votes than the [Nazi Party], famously helped enable Hitler to take control of Germany.”

The non-profit Countering Extremism Project has assessed that Antifa’s “black bloc ideology is centered around anarchism and creating chaos.”

“According to U.S. officials, black bloc protesters tend to target businesses as representations of capitalism. Black bloc protesters often embed themselves in larger demonstrations to conceal their presence, which led to the label of black bloc as piggyback protesters,” the project said. “Protesters have used black bloc tactics in Europe since the 1980s, but the tactic gained national attention in the United States starting in 1999 during protests against the World Trade Organization in Seattle, Washington.”

The project added that Antifa-style black bloc groups are now more commonly known for having “fomented violence at protests of President Donald Trump’s 2017 inauguration and 2020 protests against police brutality.”

The State of New Jersey's Office of Homeland Security in 2017 classified Antifa under the category of “Counterterrorism” and “Domestic.” That office currently assesses that “Molotov cocktails, incendiary devices, and vandalism remain common attack methods. Extremists will likely congregate in nearby cities to coordinate with like-minded supporters, occupy a designated protest site, and stockpile various weapons.”

A decentralized call to arms

Historian Mark Bray wrote the book Antifa: The Anti-Fascism Handbook in 2017. Admiringly, Bray said Antifa used the "illiberal politics of social revolutionism applied to fighting the far right, not only literal fascists" and operated as a "pan-left radical politics uniting communists, socialists, anarchists, and various different radical leftists together for the shared purpose of combating the far right." 

Bray proudly described his book as “an unabashedly partisan call to arms that aims to equip a new generation of anti-fascists with the history and theory necessary to defeat the resurgent far-right.”

The Washington Examiner reported last month that “by design, antifa is a decentralized, left-wing movement of loosely knit ‘resistance’ networks operating primarily in Democratic strongholds” but that “in recent years, antifa’s forces have become highly organized and increasingly sophisticated, with organized crime cells cropping up across the country" and that "As Democrats and liberal media outlets downplay the threat of antifa militancy by portraying antifa as a right-wing bogeyman, this nationwide movement is growing in numbers and evolving into high-level criminal operations."

Rose City Antifa, just one of the regional member groups, is based in Portland, Oregon and claims that it “opposes fascist organizing through direct action, education, and through solidarity with leftist spaces, activists, and organizations.”

Kirk killer’s Antifa-style messaging: Inspired by or directed by?

Kirk’s alleged killer appeared to embrace Antifa-style messaging. The shell casing on one unspent round was inscribed with the phrase “Hey fascist! Catch!”

Another unspent shell casing was inscribed with “Oh bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao ciao ciao,” according to investigators. The song is commonly associated with anti-fascist themes.

An analysis by George Mason University’s Narrative Transformation Lab stated that “more than 80 years after WWII, there isn’t much evidence to show that the song was actually sung by partisans during this conflict” but that “the story of ‘Bella Ciao’ being rooted in mid-20th-century anti-fascist struggles is deeply meaningful.”

The university’s analysis added that “starting in the decades after WWII and the Italian Civil War, ‘Bella Ciao’ began spreading beyond Italy” and “it was taken up by anti-fascist movements across the world, especially leftist movements.”

According to prosecutors, Robinson allegedly messaged his boyfriend after the shooting: “remember how I was engraving bullets? The fuckin messages are mostly a big meme, if I see ‘notices bulge uwu’ on fox new [sic] I might have a stroke.”

Trump 1.0, the BLM protests, and Antifa

The latter part of the first Trump administration included a strong rhetorical focus on Antifa.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., introduced a non-binding resolution in 2019 which “unequivocally condemns the violent actions of Antifa groups as unacceptable acts for anyone in the United States” and “calls for the groups and organizations across the country who act under the banner of Antifa to be designated as domestic terrorist organizations.”

Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., sent a letter to then-Attorney General William Barr in 2019 arguing that “Antifa is a danger to the safety and wellbeing of the general public” and asking Barr to designate the group as a domestic terrorism organization.

Large and often-violent protests swept across the U.S. in the summer of 2020 following the death of George Floyd, accompanied by rioting, looting, arson, and violence, declared "mostly peaceful" by legacy media.

Barr declared in May 2020 that violence being “instigated and carried out” by “Antifa and other similar groups” in connection to nationwide rioting is “domestic terrorism and will be treated accordingly.”

Self-described Antifa member Michael Forest Reinoehl shot and killed right-wing Patriot Prayer supporter Aaron “Jay” Danielson on the streets of Portland in the summer of 2020 and then fled to the state of Washington, where U.S. Marshals found him. When the Antifa adherent attempted to escape and produced a firearm, he was killed by law enforcement.

Barr said in early September 2020 that “the tracking down of Reinoehl — a dangerous fugitive, admitted Antifa member, and suspected murderer — is a significant accomplishment in the ongoing effort to restore law and order to Portland and other cities.”

"False flag" conspiracy theories posited by the left

Democratic Gov. Tim Walz — the then-future Democratic vice presidential nominee — argued in late May 2020 that it might not be extreme leftwing groups like Antifa that were behind the violence, but rather that it was groups often tied to the right wing.

Walz said then that “my suspicions” are “yes” that it was white supremacists causing destruction in Minneapolis, and that “it gets worse than that” as he argued that it was also “drug cartels” who were behind the violence. Minnesota Public Safety Commissioner John Harrington also pointed to “cells of white supremacists” and also brought up “drug cartels” as a “secondary or tertiary concern.”

Trump himself tweeted late that month: “It’s ANTIFA and the Radical Left. Don’t lay the blame on others!”

“The violence spurred on by Antifa — such as hurling projectiles and incendiary devices at police, burning vehicles, and violently confronting police in defiance of local curfews — is dangerous to human life and to the fabric of our Nation,” Trump said at the time. “These violent acts undermine the rights of peaceful protesters and destroy the lives, liberty, and property of the people of this Nation, especially those most vulnerable.”

Trump’s directive continued: “The Secretary of State shall, in consultation with the Attorney General and the Secretary of Homeland Security, review information received from the Department of Justice and other authorities to assess whether to classify Antifa as a terrorist organization.”

Biden calls Antifa just an “idea” — while Wray denies that it is an “organization”

Joe Biden would falsely claim that Antifa was nothing more than an “idea” and would falsely claim that Wray had assessed that, even though the now-former bureau chief had never said such a thing.

During congressional testimony in mid-September 2020, Wray said the FBI viewed Antifa as an “ideology” or “movement” but declined to call it an organization, despite Barr’s assessment that it was a more formalized group. Wray added that "we have seen folks who subscribe or identify with the Antifa movement, who coalesce regionally into small groups or nodes and they are certainly organized at that level."

Trump tweeted the same month that “I look at them as a bunch of well-funded ANARCHISTS & THUGS who are protected because the Comey/Mueller-inspired FBI is simply unable, or unwilling, to find their funding source, and allows them to get away with “murder”.  LAW & ORDER!”

Wray changes his description of Antifa to a "movement"

Wray had ditched the “ideology” part of the language by April 2021, settling on telling Congress then that the FBI viewed Antifa as a “movement.”

“We consider Antifa to be more of a movement […] There are certainly local and regional nodes, individuals who self-identify with antifa, who commit violent attacks citing that as their motivation, and we have a number of predicated investigations into such individuals. Antifa is a real thing. It’s not a fiction, and it’s a concern.”

Wray said: “We have seen individual instances in small regional nodes of people coming together to train,” but “there’s not some big, national structure that is responsible for the violence — what we have seen is locally organized nodes.” When pressed on the organizing, the FBI chief said, “at the local level, in some cases the regional level, we have seen organized activity — people working together.”

Wray said his assessment of Antifa as a “movement” did not mean they are “any less dangerous or less threatening” and that “we have seen organized, tactical activity at the local and regional level; we’re investigating it very aggressively.”

Rep. Mike Turner, R-Ohio, who would go on to chair the House Intelligence Committee, criticized Wray’s continued insistence that Antifa was not an “organization.”

“FBI Director Wray’s testimony is disturbing and contradicts what the American people have seen with their own eyes — a violent and dangerous organization,” Turner said in 2021. “I call on the FBI to further investigate Antifa and report to Congress on their source of funding, training, and activities. With continued violence in Minneapolis, Seattle and Portland, downplaying this dangerous organization only puts American communities at further risk.”

Patel will now have the chance to provide his own assessment of Antifa — and his own plan on what to do about it.