The US designated certain foreign affiliates of the left-wing Antifa movement as global terrorists in a move that expanded a crackdown on the loose collective of anti-fascist organizations the administration of US President Donald Trump has accused of spreading violence.
The US Department of State on Thursday said it listed several groups affiliated with Antifa in Germany, Italy and Greece as Specially Designated Global Terrorists, accusing them of using “political violence and terroristic acts” to achieve their goals.
The most prominent of the European groups targeted is the International Revolutionary Front, also known as the Informal Anarchist Federation. It first made itself known in 2003, when it sent explosive packages to then-European Commission president Romano Prodi. The group has also claimed responsibility for letter bombs sent in 2011 to former Deutsche Bank chief Josef Ackermann at his Frankfurt offices, and to Italian newspaper offices and foreign embassies.
Photo: EPA
Armed Proletarian Justice is the name of the group that took responsibility for planting a bomb, which failed to explode, outside the Athens riot police building in December 2023.
Two months later, a network calling itself the Revolutionary Class Self-Defense claimed credit for a bomb that was detonated at Greece’s Department of Labor. It also took credit for an explosion earlier this year outside the offices of the country’s main train company.
The last network is known as Antifa Ost, whose members were convicted of being involved in hammer attacks on neo-Nazis or suspected neo-Nazis in eastern Germany. Prosecutors also filed new charges against members of the network for allegedly attacking people they claimed were neo-Nazis in Budapest.
The move followed earlier actions that similarly targeted US-based groups associated with Antifa, which is short for “antifascist,” and references a movement that lacked a centralized leadership or defined organizational structure.
“Groups affiliated with this movement ascribe to revolutionary anarchist or Marxist ideologies, including anti-Americanism, ‘anti-capitalism’ and anti-Christianity, using these to incite and justify violent assaults domestically and overseas,” US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said. “The United States will continue using all available tools to protect our national security and public safety, and will deny funding and resources to terrorists, including targeting other Antifa groups across the globe.”
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