What can Antifa and the United States declare a terrorist group?

US President Donald Trump said his administration will find out who will finance the Antifa movement, following his comments earlier in the week he would designate antifa as a major terrorist organization, calling him “radical and sick, dangerous left”.

Antifa, abbreviation of anti-fascist, has been in the news for years. Since his first term, Trump has blamed him to poison political discourse and provoke violence.

In the wake of the murder of Charlie Kirk, Trump’s vice-president JD Vance (who was also a friend of Kirk), said that the “incredibly destructive movement of left extremism” had contributed to the assassination of Kirk.

What is Antifa?

The term refers to a global and loose collection of people who consider themselves to protect society against neonazis, other white and homophobic supremacists. They exhibit their opponents online, train in self-defense, organize counter-protection and try to prevent right messages from the propagation.

But Antifa is not a formal organization in the way political parties, businesses or interest groups are.

Anti -fascist movements have existed as long as fascism. They were born for the first time in the fascist Italy of Benito Mussolini in the 1920s and continued to grow up to and through the Second World War. But even after the defeat of Nazism, anti -fascists did not leave.

The forerunner of Antifa is an anti -racist action, according to Mark Bray, professor at the Dartmouth College of New Hampshire who wrote Antifa: the anti -fascist manual. The anti -racist action was also a decentralized group opposing the right -wing people and the ideas that emerged in the 1980s. Antifa was born from this.

In 2020, the director of the FBI era, Christopher Wray, said that Antifa is a real thing, and added that his agency had investigated “violent anarchist extremists” who identify with Antifa.

However, Wray also said that he was investigating violent acts, not ideas, characterizing antifa as an ideology, and not an organization with a hierarchical structure.

Antifa exist in Canada?

Yes, there are people who say that these are anti -fascist activists who are trying to prevent neonazis and white supremacists from spreading their ideas to others.

In 2020, CBC The fifth area Interviewed the antiFa activists. Most wanted their identity hiding, in part because they feared being attacked.

Look | The fifth area Speak to antifa activists of their activities and motivations:

Confront hatred: how antifa follows the extreme right

The fifth area takes you to the antifa world, people who say they follow the far right in Canada to protect the standards and values ​​of this country – whether we like it.

They described the management of online campaigns to make people fire to belong to white supremacist organizations. They also spoke of confronting far -right groups during demonstrations.

An antifa activist said The fifth area It is silent his opponents is the objective and that it is justifiable to use violence to achieve it. “Physically blocking someone, if that’s what it took? Of course. To make someone hit the face or throw a milk-shake on him? Of course.”

They said they were trying to protect society. But now, especially in the United States, anti-fas activists are accused of having threatened the security and rights of others.

The move to label antifa as terrorists in the United States

Trump’s criticisms against Antifa date back to the first part of his first mandate as president, in particular after the clashes between Anifa and the participants of a white supremacist walk in Charlottesville, in Virginia, in 2017.

One of the first attempts to officially stop Antifa came in 2019, when American Republican Senators Bill Cassidy and Ted Cruz introduced a resolution In the Senate to condemn his violent acts and to designate him a domestic terrorist organization. He was referred to a committee but did not go further. A similar resolution was introduced in the room by Marjorie Taylor Greene in 2023, which was also sent to a committee to study.

In 2020, Trump blamed antifa for violence after the death of George Floyd and repeated his desire to have him appointed a terrorist group.

Then the murder of Charlie Kirk earlier this month put the problem at the top of Trump’s agenda. This week at the oval office, he blamed the “radical left” for “enormous violence”, without offering proof. “The radical left has really caused a lot of problems for this country. I really think they hate our country.”

Trump yesterday declared in a social article of truth that he would designate antifa as a “great terrorist organization”.

Can he do that?

The US State Department has a list of foreign terrorist organizations. Dozens of groups, including the Islamic State and Al-Qaeda, are included on this list. The designation allows the Ministry of Justice to continue those who provide significant support to the entities on this list even if this support does not have violence.

But Trump’s promise led to a skyscraper, because no national equivalent on this list exists. Despite periodic calls to establish a law on domestic terrorism, there is no singular status.

We do not know how the administration would labeling what is actually a decentralized movement as a terrorist organization, and the White House did not immediately offer more details.

Beyond specific acts of violence, it is not clear what antifa laws would influence the Supreme Court in the United States discourse that threatens violence. In most cases, people can only be prosecuted if they constitute an imminent threat of violence or anarchy. Exactly where this line falls is still a question of debate in legal circles.

More broadly, the right to freedom of expression, even a hate speech, is protected in the United States, sometimes more than people think.

This week, Trump Prosecutor General Pam Bondi faced criticism from his own supporters for declaring that “hatred speech” could be prosecuted. Some responded with a quote from the Supreme Court judge, Samuel Alito, who wrote in a 2017 decision that “the most proud is boasting of our jurisprudence of freedom of expression is that we protect the freedom to express” the thought that we hate “.