Trump's Targeting of Antifa is the First Step Down a Dangerous Path
- CIFRS Executive Team
- 3 hours ago
- 6 min read
Designating an ill-defined, leaderless group of activists as domestic terrorists is the first step towards legally targeting political opponents and dissent of any kind.
Antifa: noun “a person or group actively opposing fascism. An anti-fascist movement”
- Merriam Webster
Antifa is short for anti-fascist. Despite what certain conservative media outlets and politicians claim, antifa is not (and cannot be) a single organized group – it is a political ideology that unites a number of leaderless, decentralized, and largely unaffiliated activist groups, individuals, and academic traditions that position themselves against fascism and the political workings of the far-right. As you can see from the definition, being antifa – or anti-fascist – can apply to anyone or any group that takes a stand against the core tenets of fascism, including dictatorship, extreme militaristic nationalism, contempt for and dismantling of electoral democracy, and violent retaliation against those who question or defy this autocratic power.
(A Brief) History of Antifa
The term antifa was originally coined as a shortened version of the German word “antifaschistisch”, a designation given to a coalition of parties in Germany in the 1930s which was formed to counter the rise of Nazism. Between the 1920s and 1940s, fascism gained traction in a number of countries, including Germany, Italy, Spain, Greece, Portugal, and Japan (to name only a few), with newly formed fascist parties leveraged populism (or “people-first politics”) to appeal to a war-weary working-class population that had lost faith in government institutions. The rise of these fascist movements was met in every country by corresponding anti-fascist protestors and groups, who pushed back against these parties’ censorship of free speech, weaponization of the police, political violence, and eventually the mass murder of targeted populations. During this time, liberals, socialists, communists, anarchists, and other concerned individuals formed united groups to fight against fascism, with a shared vision of defending democracy. In 1932 Germany, when the country’s election made the Nazi party the largest party in the Reichstag, left-leaning activists in Germany formed the Antifaschistische Aktion, or “antifa” for short, protesting the Nazi party’s anti-Semitism and homophobia. Many citizens and organizations in other countries sided with the anti-fascist fight against the Nazi regime – a fight that eventually led to a second World War that included the Canadian, American, European and Russian ally troops fighting the Nazis and liberating prisoners of their death camps in 1944 and 1945.
Modern Day Antifa
The term antifa came to the forefront of modern American media and politics around 2016, when Trump began singling out what he perceives to be a group of “radical left” agitators that he falsely claimed had convened to disrupt American institutions and threaten the public. The first Trump administration attempted to legally categorize antifa as a terrorist group in 2020, but didn’t follow through. The follow-through on this promise came in 2025 with the Executive Order “Designating Antifa as a Domestic Terrorist Organization” and the National Security Presidential Memorandum NSPM-7 “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence” (read our discussion on this here). Together, these orders designate antifa as a domestic terrorism organization, despite the fact that far-right extremism continues to be the predominant motivator of violence in the United States, and the greatest threat to public safety.
The problem with attempting to criminalize antifa in this way is that there is no clearly defined or bounded antifa organization. Individuals or groups who come out to protest Trump or show up to far-right rallies to clash with the extremist attendees are united only by their ideological opposition to the fascist policies of the Trump administration. Anti-fascist protestors are not a monolith, nor do they represent any specific political background. They are typically leftist activists who support socialist, communist, anarchist, or even just democratic policies, and often convene spontaneously to respond to a far-right gathering. Furthermore, they do not all agree on which tactics are appropriate to combat far-right extremism; while some antifa activists have allegedly used violence against far-right actors, the vast majority have not, and identifying group allegiance is made more difficult by the fact that anti-fascist protestors often cover their faces to protect themselves from police/state surveillance. This has led to a number of far right and white nationalist individuals and groups pretending to be anti-fascists online to call for violence in order to discredit the ideology – most notably during the 2020 protests sparked by the murder of George Floyd.
A Dangerous Path
As the Southern Poverty Law Center detailed in their analysis on the topic, designating antifa as a terrorist group grants federal law enforcement the power to “broadly target anyone involved in protests viewed unfavorably by the Trump administration, even retroactively.” The vague description of antifa by the White House as being comprised of “anti-American” terrorists who support “extremism on migration, race, and gender; and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality” is purposefully broad. Feasibly, those in the public eye who oppose Trump and his policies, who support immigrants, equal rights for women, queer and trans people, and don’t follow what the Trump administration sees as the “traditional” American model of family and morality can now be designated as a threat and could be stripped of their civil rights in the name of protecting American interests.
As we now face the repercussions of Trump’s unconstitutional Orders, there is a clear precedent being set for anyone who identifies as an anti-fascist: because there is no single way to identify an antifa member, anyone can label anyone as an antifa member, allowing the US government to surveil, persecute, and detain you.
What Does This Mean for Canada?
The targeting of anti-fascists is not just an American problem. In the past year, Canadian right-wing media sources* have been in overdrive publishing articles demonizing antifa and pushing our federal government to follow Trump’s lead in designating it a terrorist group. Some have even claimed that there are secret Canadian antifa networks that are operating within the country to “coordinate harassment campaigns” and “share dossiers on political targets.” This is part of a larger effort by these media sources to label colleague organizations like the Canadian Anti-Hate Network who monitor hate crimes and far-right extremism as activist groups that “assist” antifa.
Canada is not unaffected by cultural and political shifts in the United States, nor are we immune to direct pressure from the US government. As many media sources and politicians try to shift the Overton Window in a more conservative direction, it is certainly possible that our current administration will follow the beck and call of the Trump administration in order to ease the economic tension between our two countries. If this happens, and our government labels antifa a terrorist organization, any Canadian individual or organization that opposes fascism could be silenced, vilified and legally targeted – both in Canada and extra-nationally by the United States. As Canada is no closer than the US to defining what and who antifa is, this designation could be applied to a wide range of Canadian activists, researchers, academics, and everyday people that oppose authoritarianism.
So, what can we do?
Antifa will almost certainly become more of a buzzword and similarly used catch-all term in Canada. If and when you start to see this issue being brought to local government, and eventually our federal government, you can:
Call your provincial, territorial, and federal representatives and let them know you do not support the demonization and targeting of anti-fascism. You can find your representatives here: https://www.ourcommons.ca/members/en
Support and subscribe to organizations that protect political activism, free expression, democracy, and equality
Be vocal in your criticism of organizations and news outlets that purposefully define antifa as a singular group
Be careful and take good care of yourself, your friends, and your family members if they choose to participate in protests and rallies. Bring safety supplies like water, medicine, cash, and eye protection wear to avoid tear gas; know the escape routes out of the area; stay alert to anything that seems suspicious or dangerous; and avoid instigators that are engaging in violence.
As Timothy Snyder says in the first chapter of his book On Tyranny, “do not obey in advance.” Don’t concede your power, your voice, your rights or your obligations, and do not conform. The best thing we can do to counter powerful disinformation is to stand together in truth and protect each other. We at CIFRS will continue to push back on fascist policies, far-right extremism, authoritarianism and political violence, and we hope you will too.
Mariel Cooksey, Executive Director | On behalf of the CIFRS Executive Team
* In the interest of not platforming this disinformation, we have omitted references. These will be supplied to readers upon request.
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