Trump Designates Anti-Fascist Antifa Movement as a Terrorist Organization
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The Trump administration has designated Antifa as a terrorist organization, sparking controversy and debate about the definition of terrorism and the implications for free speech, with many commenters questioning the legitimacy of Antifa as a cohesive organization and the legality of designating a domestic group as terrorists.
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And with the neutering of lower courts to impose nationwide injunctions, they’ll get pretty far before we get a final judicial ruling, likely on the shadow docket.
That is correct.
Just to clarify for anyone skimming: ABC faced pressure from FCC chair Brendan Carr after he said their broadcasting license was at risk from Kimmel's statements on Tyler Robinson, the alleged Kirk assassin.
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/09/17/charlie-kirk-jimmy-kimmel-ab...
> “Mr. Kimmel’s comments about the death of Mr. Kirk are offensive and insensitive at a critical time in our national political discourse, and we do not believe they reflect the spectrum of opinions, views, or values of the local communities in which we are located,” said Andrew Alford, President of Nexstar’s broadcasting division. “Continuing to give Mr. Kimmel a broadcast platform in the communities we serve is simply not in the public interest at the current time, and we have made the difficult decision to preempt his show in an effort to let cooler heads prevail as we move toward the resumption of respectful, constructive dialogue.”
This decision and their public statement about it, coupled with social media pressure, led ABC to making a decision afterwards about the show.
As for Carr - he is staunchly in support of first amendment rights. Politico wrote about this yesterday since he split from the rest of the GOP on broader censorship (https://www.politico.com/news/2025/09/16/fcc-brendan-carr-so...). He also can’t take unilateral action - the commissioners would have to vote. But the FCC has a lot of content rules for the mediums they regulate, which have thus far held up in courts (although I find it questionable). In that sense, what he was suggesting may be legal (unfortunately).
Right, because he said this on a conservative podcast:
"easy way or the hard way" sounds pretty staunchly against the first amendment to me and more like a fascist thug."“This is a very, very serious issue right now for Disney. We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Carr said. “These companies can find ways to take action on Kimmel, or there is going to be additional work for the FCC ahead."
It's still censorship even if the FCC has regulatory ability. Censorship is a type of action.
If the FCC bans porn before 10pm that's still censorship. You can argue whether it's justified or not
I get that you support the remarks he made yesterday, but I would like to know what you think of the remarks he made today.
FCC v. Pacifica Foundation
You don't know the true meaning of "fascist", so why do you misapply the word? Why don't you look the word up in a dictionary so you can reserve it to use it properly and find another word to use here?
"fascist" this! "fascist" that!
I hear all day in the news and none of the fools speaking has a clue what the word means. Nor do they seem to have a vocabulary large enough to house the appropriate words. Probably b/c they were demonstrating instead of studying in university class.
Try "bad" (that's what you mean!) instead of hiding behind a smokescreen of cryptic, archaic or important-sounding (to an idiot audience) wordings. But then fools like you always had no meaning. indeed:
"a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." - William Shakespeare
Can you provide evidence for this? Right wing truisms are not sufficient.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/zuckerberg-says-the-wh...
Edit: can’t reply to comment below me but that quote is referring to the instances where the company pushed back. It’s not saying they didn’t comply at all - they absolutely did on many instances, and Zuckerberg admitted guilt over it. See later quote:
> “I also think we made some choices that, with the benefit of hindsight and new information, we wouldn’t make today,” he said, without elaborating. “We’re ready to push back if something like this happens again.”
I want to thank Nexstar for doing the right thing.
Local broadcasters have an obligation to serve the public interest. While this may be an unprecedented decision, it is important for broadcasters to push back on Disney programming that they determine falls short of community values.
I hope that other broadcasters follow Nexstar’s lead.
Amusingly, one of the replies quotes Carr in 2019 saying 'The FCC does not have a mandate to police speech in the name of the 'public interest.''
https://x.com/AdamKinzinger/status/1968485214511878199
0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIFuvI2ruS8
https://x.com/WeAreSinclair/status/1968474667049525634
The United States is a fascist dictatorship. It's not turning into one, it has already happened.
Those red flags were (literally and figuratively) raised on January 6, 2021. After the events of that date, everyone had all the information and warnings to know what kind of person Trump is (wannabe dictator willing to use violence to achieve his ends) and what kind of movement MAGA is. We all had the opportunity to vote after that date, and people still chose Trump / MAGA. Now we see blatant authoritarianism, illiberal government actions, and rising political violence.
It's not surprising that the same guy who tried to violently overthrow the government would also try to overthrow the Constitution. What's happening today was predicted by people paying attention. The constitution is literally not operative right now, as there's no one to enforce it -- not the DOJ, not the FBI not the Congress, not the courts, not the press, not corporations, not the army, and certainly not the President.
If, for example, I call you out for being a fascist (or even falsely accuse you of such) then I must be anti fascist and therefore a terrorist, an enemy of the state, someone that can be seized from the streets and cast into a black hole somewhere.
The particulars don't matter, be it Red Scare (and under the bed), Yellow Peril, Anti-Fa, et al. the playbook is familiar.
I’m not sure how you haven’t heard of them since “before COVID”. They were far more active post COVID and George Floyd. You can find lots written about their activities online, and lots of videos as well.
Andy Ngo has done a great job documenting this. I’m sure someone is going to respond to my comment with character attacks on Andy Ngo but his journalism is solid. He wrote a book about Antifa (https://www.centerstreet.com/titles/andy-ngo/unmasked/978154...) and also has a lot of content on his website (https://www.ngocomment.com/)
https://www.reddit.com/r/BreadTube/comments/10cxkk2/getting_...
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/journalist-andy-ngo-...
> There is an alternate universe out there in which we never have to ponder, let alone read, “Unmasked,” provocateur Andy Ngo’s supremely dishonest new book on the left-wing anti-fascist movement known as antifa.
[. . . ]
> The right is always reminding us that ”facts don’t care about your feelings,” so let us set out some facts. Ngo writes that the “numbers and influence” of right-wing extremists “are grossly exaggerated by biased media,” while antifa poses “just as much, if not more, of a threat to the future of American liberal democracy.” He frequently references [2020’s] anti-racism protests, conveniently eliding the point that 93% were peaceful, according to a study from Princeton. A brief published by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, hardly a lefty outfit, found that antifa had a “minor” role in what violence did occur, most of which was driven by local, autonomous actors, and that the organization’s threat was “relatively small.”
> January 6th administered the coup de grâce to Ngo’s already teetering thesis. It should not have taken this long, however. Trump’s own Department of Homeland Security warned last October that “white supremacist extremists” would remain the “most persistent and lethal threat” to the American homeland.
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/books/story/2021-...
My suggestion - if you’re genuinely curious about this topic, go watch videos of antifa in cities like Portland or Seattle and decide with your own eyes what you want to believe.
Sounds like ICE
A week or two ago I browsed Eric S. Raymond's Twitter/X, and he keeps banging about it as some organisation that ruins everything. He also still keeps banging on about BLM in a similar fashion. Curious people. (also: don't do this; it's not good for your blood pressure – the guy is literally calling for segregation of "low IQ savages" now; he's gone full KKK).
They didn't take the Jordan Neely verdict very well either. Someone joked right after the verdict on Twitter that we should brace for more riots. Whoever runs the account said that sounded like a good idea.
https://www.dailywire.com/news/socialist-rifle-association-l...
You know how the war on terror gives the federal government, the military industrial complex, the prison industrial complex, etc., a ton of power and tax payer money, for pretty much no effort or return on investment because you can't wage war with an ethereal idea? Do you know how it gives the government power to jail people it perceived as its enemies, sometimes without due process?
This is the same thing. Trump is looking for justification, manufactured consent, pretense, etc., to use this power against his political enemies who might happen to not be Muslim.
He's also trying to act strong in a time of weakness, while Putin laughs at Trump and does incursions in Poland, Trump knows he can't lash out at him, so he takes it out on his own constituents.
And now you see: that is the point.
There is "organization" but it's certainly not -an- organization. Anybody that says there is doesn't know what they are talking about.
So people who disagree with you and attempt to provide counter arguments are stupid?
Nobody is stopping you from providing a counter arguement, if you actually had one.
Unfortunately for us all, a lot of folks who are actually fairly smart have some pretty heinous and poorly informed ideas about the world. One of the reasons why I find this form so interesting to observe is that just because someone can do okay understanding linear algebra or analyzing static systems or configuring load balancers doesn't mean that they have one bit of understanding or useful intuition about morals, ethics, history, or politics.
[edit]
Ironically, I think I generally agree with you that there is no organization, but I believe that person to whom you are responding doesn't know what they are talking about.
We may as well go ahead and get the People's Front of Judea banned as a terrorist organisation.
However, I agree with you in a sense, in that movements with names are inherently vulnerable to cooptation and suppression.
Reuters OP: "It was not clear what legal weight Trump's proclamation carried... legal experts said such a step lacked a basis in law"
See also:
https://www.voanews.com/a/usa_why-domestic-terrorism-not-spe... ("Why Domestic Terrorism Is Not Specifically Designated a Crime in US")
> "While U.S. law makes it a crime to provide “material support” to a foreign terrorist organization, there is no comparable law that makes domestic terrorism a federal crime, even though individual acts committed by domestic terrorists may be illegal."
If you break laws and conduct terrorism then yeah, breaking the law is illegal. Because breaking the law is illegal. Does not change anything I wrote or make what I wrote 'technically correct'. The United States military now extrajudicially just executes people the President designates to die claiming they are 'drug terrorists'. There is no US mechanism for him to flag American organizations in this manner (currently). Probably again, the worst kind of correct thing for me to say.
[flagged]
On the wrong side of history..
But if there is an "Antifa", and it's made up of US citizens, under what law are they terrorists? Again, I may be misinformed, but I had understood "terrorist" as a legal designation was for non-US-citizens.
The little actual info I know on "antifa" is they were just small groups who share some ideology and protest ... and most of those people aren't active doing much at all, let alone anything objectionable.
As far as the right wing media stories they tell, that is a fairy tale that does not exist.
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