The U.S. Department of State designated four far-left European groups, which it said use “political violence and terroristic acts to undermine democratic institutions, constitutional rights and fundamental liberties.”
The groups are Antifa Ost (Germany); Informal Anarchist Federation International Revolutionary Front (Italy); and Armed Proletarian Justice and Revolutionary Class Self-Defense (both in Greece).
The latter Greek group reportedly said a bombing and attempted bombing, for which it took responsibility in April, were in solidarity with “the Palestinian people and their heroic resistance.”
The State Department’s move follows a recent roundtable at the White House where journalists spoke to President Donald Trump about U.S.-based antifa groups, and encouraged Trump to designate them as terrorist groups. Trump designated them as terror groups in September.
Jonathan Choe, a journalist and senior fellow at the Discovery Institute who spoke to the president at the roundtable about the antifa network, told JNS that “a lot of these local leaders have been jumping ship, and they’ve been leaving the country.”
“If you tie them to antifa terror groups, you can prosecute these people who’ve jumped to other countries,” he said. “If you can find them.”
These self-declared “anti-fascism” entities “subscribe 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,” per the State Department.
