By Kiyomi Wu-Inouye
WASHINGTON — Donald Trump has cast antifa as a top public enemy, using the anti-fascist movement as a political target while accusing those who oppose him of being “terrorists.”
Anti-fascist movements such as antifa emerged in response to oppression created and enforced by figures such as Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler. Mark Bray, author of Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook, “traces antifa’s contemporary roots to the efforts in the United States and Canada of activists of Anti-Racist Action, or ARA, who pursued Klansmen, neo-Nazis, and other assorted white supremacists from the late 1980s into the 2000s,” The New Republic reported.
In recent years, “antifa activity gained increasing notice among media outlets in the lead-up to the election of President Donald Trump in 2016,” according to EBSCO. In June 2020, protests erupted alongside the Black Lives Matter movement and following the killing of George Floyd. Antifa was heavily associated with the protests and blamed for aggressive tactics.
The White House has labeled “Antifa as a terrorist threat” without evidence. Officials claimed that “Antifa is a militarist, anarchist enterprise that explicitly calls for the overthrow of the United States Government, law enforcement authorities, and our system of law.”
It should be highlighted, however, that “the majority of Antifa protesters engaged in non-violent tactics.”
On July 4, 2025, a group of 11 protesters held a “noise demonstration” in Alvarado outside the Prairieland Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center. Protesters used spray paint and set off fireworks, but no violence was reported. When Alvarado police officer Thomas Gross arrived at the protest, he drew his gun. Benjamin Song, who was participating in the protest, nonfatally shot Gross.
Nineteen people were arrested, including at least eight who were not present at the protest. Daniel Sanchez Estrada, one of those arrested despite not being present, was charged with transporting “a box that contained numerous antifa materials,” according to The New Republic. Estrada was transporting “anarchist zines, all unrelated to antifa.”
During the Jan. 6, 2021, Trump-led insurrection, “Trump adviser Jason Miller had texted a suggestion that Trump should tweet that ‘Bad apples, likely ANTIFA or other crazed leftists’ had ‘infiltrated’ the alleged ‘peaceful protest’ by Trump supporters,” according to The New Republic. Fox News personalities such as Laura Ingraham and Tucker Carlson promoted similar claims about the insurrection.
Rep. Matt Gaetz, a Florida Republican, blamed antifa on the House floor, claiming that “some of the people who breached the Capitol today were not Trump supporters. They were masquerading as Trump supporters and, in fact, were members were members of the violent terrorist group antifa,” says MIT Technology Review.
On September 10 2025, Charlie Kirk was assassinated at Utah Valley University. Trump blamed the assassination “without any supporting evidence, on ‘Radical Left Terrorists’,” states the New Republic.
On September 25, 2025, Trump issued National Security Presidential Memorandum 7. In this memorandum, “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence,” Trump attempts to assert that there has been a “pattern of violent and terroristic activities under the umbrella of self-described ‘anti-facism,’ He not only states that these “patterns” are an anti-facist lie, but that the “lie” has “become the organizing rallying cry used by domestic terrorists to wage a violent assault against democratic institutions, constitutional rights, and fundamental American liberties.” Trump labels the acts as “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity; support for the overthrow of the United States Government” and lists Kirk’s assassination as an example.
Karen Greenberg, the author of Subtle Tools, Rogue Justice, and The Least Worst Place, told the New Republic, “What the administration is doing is essentially decreeing a domestic terrorism statute replete with the willy-nilly targeting of individuals and groups for political reasons, as in the cases of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, who were immediately labeled ‘domestic terrorists’ absent any references to fact.”
Regarding Good and Pretti, Oklahoma Senator Markwayne Mullin insists, “if they’re investigating anything, they need to be investigating the paid protestors, and who’s paying them to obstruct federal officers from doing their job.”
Trump has taken a movement to persecute those who loudly do not support him or his actions—going after, without hesitation or regret, Americans.
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