According to CNN news reports, the White House said on September 22 local time that U.S. President Trump signed an order to formally classify the country's left-wing radical "Anti-Fascist Movement" (ANTIFA) as a "domestic terrorist organization", while U.S. law only allows the classification of foreign organizations as terrorist organizations.

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It is that ANTIFA is not a unified organization, but a loose network of some leftist and anarchist groups, mainly opposed to white supremacism and far-right activities, whose members have been active in multiple protests in recent years. Trump has repeatedly called for the listing of ANTIFA as a terrorist organization, and he promised to take action against the leftist groups after the assassination of U.S. conservative activist Charlie Cook this month.

According to Politico, a political news website, the United States has never listed an entity located in its territory as a "terrorist organization" before, and the 219 terrorist organizations currently identified by the US State Department are all foreign entities.

Rep. Benny Thompson, D-Mississippi, a ranking member of the House Homeland Security Committee, said in a statement that this order is unprecedented. "It's wrong to designate ANTIFA-a group without a clear organizational structure or leadership-as a domestic terrorist organization. It doesn't mean anything except to provide the Trump administration with an excuse to crack down on dissent, investigate any individual or group they don't like, punish their enemies, and possibly even label any American they want as a terrorist."

What is Antifa?

The word ANTIFA is derived from the German "antifaschistisch", an abbreviation for "anti-fascist" or "anti-fascist", and its predecessor was an anti-fascist organization in Germany in the 1930s. In modern times, the ANTIFA movement has been associated with radical forms of protest, sometimes even evolving into illegal or violent activities, such as smashing shop windows or setting fire to police cars.

Critics of the organization point out that the difference between ANTIFA and the mainstream leftist group is that some members resort to violence to their goals ¨C even though they claim that these behaviors are self-defense. Activists wear black clothes and wear masks. Web videos show some members carrying sticks, shields, stones and pepper spray at rallies.

US radical leftist ¡°Anti-Fascist Movement¡± Classified as ¡°National Terrorist Organization¡±

In the United States, ANTIFA boasts of being an anti-racist camp, and most of its protests are aimed at opposing white supremacy. As a decentralized movement, ANTIFA has no national leader and consists of "independent, radical, like-minded groups and individuals," according to a 2020 analysis by the U.S. Congressional Research Service.

Members of the organization include anarchists, communists and radical socialists, who generally hold anti-government, anti-capitalist, LGBTQ and immigrant positions. According to conservative politicians and commentators in the United States, ANTIFA is also sometimes used to refer to other liberal and leftist groups opposed to conservatives.

The BBC that ANTIFA¡¯s existence in the United States dates back decades, but it was only gaining widespread attention after Trump¡¯s first election in 2016 and the 2017 Charlottesville Rally of the Far Right. Since then, activists who claim to belong to ANTIFA have frequently clashed with right-wing groups, which appeared in both intense debates on the Internet and reflected as physical clashes of online protests.

In 2017, about 100 masked and hand-drawn antifa activists attacked right-wing protesters in California, leading to multiple arrests. During the 2020 Freud riots in the United States, 48-year-old Michael Renoir, who claimed to be a member of Antifa, shot a supporter of the far-right group Patriot Prayer in the Portland area and was later shot by police.

In fact, this is not the first time Trump has targeted ANTIFA. As early as the Floyd incident triggered a wave of anti-racial discrimination protests across the United States, Trump also tried to list ANTIFA as a "terrorist organization" but failed.

Although authorities say Tyler Robinson, who is accused of shooting Kirk this month, has "left-wing thoughts", there is no evidence to prove that Robinson has a direct connection with ANTIFA.

Cook was speaking before he was shot.

The legal effect is questionable

Politico that Trump¡¯s order would require authorities to ¡°investigate, interfere and ban¡± individuals and groups associated with ANTIFA, including ¡°those who fund such operations.¡±

However, ANTIFA has no targeted leaders, no public membership lists, no freezable bank accounts, nor centralized organizational structures. The federal law enforcement agency has previously described ANTIFA as an ideology rather than a unified organization, and the government has not specifically specified the specific individuals or groups to be targeted.

The New York Times commented that as far as wording is concerned, this executive order is "exactly the same" as Trump's previous order against foreign criminal organizations such as Latin American drug cartels and gangs, but its effectiveness is not equal.

Under U.S. law, the federal government has the right to classify overseas groups as ¡°foreign terrorist organizations,¡± an identity that allows the United States to freeze its assets and provide material support to relevant entities is also identified as ¡°criminal acts¡±.

Luke Baumgartner, a researcher at George Washington University's Extremism Programme, told the BBC: "As far as I know, there is no legal mechanism to formally establish any group as a domestic terrorist organisation."

Legal experts have pointed out that the freedom of speech granted by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution could challenge Trump¡¯s executive order. Mary McAdams, who served as a senior Justice Department official during Trump¡¯s first term, told Peninsula TV that Trump¡¯s attempt to designate an anti-fascist group would ¡°create major concerns about the First Amendment.¡±

"The First Amendment protects the right to association, which includes the right of individuals to form groups, and prohibits the government from interfering with the operation of these groups unless it violates the law. The president's designation of such groups as'terrorist organizations' does not change these basic constitutional rights," analyzed David Schanzer, director of the Center for Triangular Studies on Terrorism and Homeland Security at Duke University.