The US State Department has announced it will designate two Greece-based self-described anti-fascist organisations, Armed Proletarian Justice and Revolutionary Class Self Defence, as Foreign Terrorist Organisations.
This comes as part of a broader Trump administration campaign against what it describes as a global surge in leftist violence.
In a statement on Thursday, the department said the groups would be listed as “Specially Designated Global Terrorists … conspiring to undermine the foundations of Western Civilisation through their brutal attacks”.
They were included alongside Antifa Ost in Germany and the Italy-based International Revolutionary Front.
It is the first time “antifa” groups have been labelled foreign terrorist threats, enabling more aggressive law enforcement tools and potentially extending to US citizens considered supporters.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said such groups “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”.
The administration cited incidents involving homemade explosive devices, shootings and hammer attacks. Financial transactions with any of the organisations or their members would now be criminal acts in the United States.
National security specialists, however, questioned the decision, noting antifa lacks a defined leadership or membership.
Mary Bossi, emeritus professor of international security at Piraeus University in Athens, said it was “plain wrong” to equate anti-fascist activists in Greece with violent extremists.
She stressed that although Greece once experienced underground leftwing militancy, “it is highly exaggerated to say that the antifa movement in Greece employs terror tactics. They even run in elections and have never shown any sign of violence.”
Bossi added that terror groups distance themselves from antifa because “it talks too much”, and noted that online messaging from antifa activists across Europe lacks the violent rhetoric common in rightwing groups.
“It is so sad to see this extreme conservatism in the US,” she said.
“It seems to me that this is part of a [Trumpian] strategy to divide the world between the ‘good right’ and ‘bad left’. It makes no sense unless you see it in the light of blackening the name of anyone with centre-left or progressive views because these guys don’t advocate violence.”
Source: The Guardian.
