SHADOWBOXINGThe Antifa Terrorism Threat the Trump Administration Describes Does Not Exist
A September 2025 Trump’s executive order asserted an antifa enterprise into existence where none exists — and then declared war on it. After the organization was invented by the executive order, an enforcement machinery was built by presidential memorandum, and a foreign connection was manufactured by the State Department. Each step launders the previous one. The threat the administration describes does not exist in the form the administration describes it. One result is certain: Genuine threats from real terrorist groups — with real leaders, actual funding, and malicious intent — will get less attention from the U.S. and any ally co-opted to focus on antifa.
The State Department on July 16, 2026, hosted what officials billed as a ministerial on the resurgence of left-wing political terrorism.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio invited representatives from more than 60 countries to Washington to hear an argument that many of them appear not to believe: that a transnational far-left terrorist movement called antifa threatens the democratic world. At the event, allies were asked to mobilize against that enemy despite nations like the Netherlands and Germany politely noting to their host that they cannot find evidence of any such group.
Some intelligence analysts have declined to brief on antifa at interagency meetings because they do not regard it as a serious counterterrorism threat.
As a terrorism scholar who spent a decade running the State Department office that designates terrorist organizations, I understand their confusion. The threat the administration describes does not exist in the form the administration describes it.
Antifa Is Not a Group
As I and others have written before, antifa is not a group. It is a movement and an ideology, a loose commitment to opposing fascism. In its most organized form, it amounts to scattered local collectives like Rose City Antifa in Portland, Oregon.
There is no membership roll, no command hierarchy and no funding structure. There is no leader of antifa – the Trump administration has not named one – and there is no record of deadly attacks attributed to a U.S.-based organization called antifa.
Groups like the Islamic State group and al-Qaida have killed tens of thousands of people and have a documented chain of command. Antifa does not. You cannot decapitate a movement with no head, and you cannot sanction an organization that does not exist.
As such, the Trump administration created one.
Trump Administration Targets Antifa
The construction project began on Sept. 22, 2025, when President Donald Trump signed an executive order purporting to designate antifa as a domestic terrorist organization. The order describes antifa as “a militarist, anarchist enterprise that explicitly calls for the overthrow of the United States Government.” It directs every relevant agency to investigate and dismantle its operations.
Two problems are immediately apparent. First, no legal authority exists to designate domestic organizations as terrorist groups. It’s a gap that Congress has deliberately preserved for First Amendment reasons.
Second, the order designates as an organization something the FBI’s past leadership has described as an ideology. Trump’s executive order asserts an antifa enterprise into existence and then declares war on it.
Three days after the executive order, the White House implemented the order
