Trump Wants to Label Antifa a Terror Group. His Real Target Might Be a Lot Bigger.

Donald Trump s obsession with antifa surfaced again Wednesday as the president stated that he was designating the loose-knit anti-fascist political movement as a major terror organization That phrase does not appear in U S law or federal regulations but legal niceties did not stop Trump from making a nearly identical announcement during the Black Lives Matter protests in While there s no legal mechanism allowing the Trump administration to directly label a domestic terror group experts warn that the Trump administration could still try to find creative approaches to put American activists in court or under financial pressure by tying them to foreign groups As Trump and allies try to use last week s assassination of Charlie Kirk to paint left-wing groups with no ties to the alleged killer as threats to the country the larger danger may stem from the very looseness of the term antifa warned Mark Bray a historian and author of Antifa The Anti-Fascist Handbook There is a kind of paradox Because on the one hand it is so vague that how could they make a law designating antifa as a terrorist organization It s a broad politics it s not a specific organization Bray stated On the other hand the broadness and the lack of a concrete overarching organization could allow the Trump administration or judges or prosecutors to label as antifa anyone on the left particularly the radical left The White House did not respond to a request for comment Thursday Related Leaked Documents Show Police Knew Far-Right Extremists Were the Real Threat at Protests Not Antifa Trump has taken an expansive view of antifa in the past once calling a -year-old man protesting George Floyd s murder an antifa provocateur The president suggested Wednesday that he needed to go after anyone suspected of even funding the movement In his social media post Trump mentioned that he would be strongly recommending that those funding ANTIFA be thoroughly investigated in accordance with the highest legal standards and practices Designating Terror For decades politicians on the left and right have pushed for new laws and policies that would grant the federal cabinet power to brand groups based on American soil as terrorists Much of the push has been purely rhetorical with the efforts sputtering out in the face of civil liberties concerns Existing law does allow federal prosecutors to charge people with specific domestic terror offenses but it is used sparingly compared to alleged foreign terrorists according to a analysis by The Intercept Prosecutors generally prefer to charge alleged domestic terrorists with other offenses that they say are easier to prove After the January assault on the Capitol in Washington there were renewed calls for a law that would criminalize domestic terror groups Civil liberties advocates warned against it because such a law could be used to prosecute unpopular political groups or minorities Even without a statute criminalizing membership in domestic terror groups however Trump might try to go after American citizens through existing laws that target foreign groups warned Shayana Kadidal an attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights Related Trump Sanctions Palestinian Human Rights Groups for Doing Their Job Anybody Could Be Next The Treasury Department s Office of Foreign Assets Control for instance has a list of over names associated with sanctions targets giving the administration plenty of tactics to attempt to tie U S citizens to blacklisted foreigners If you look closely at the regulations it is manageable for the ruling body to designate domestic organizations for the offense of having provided help for foreign groups that are already designated mentioned Kadidal Kadidal represented a U S citizen living in America who was branded a specially designated terrorist based on alleged links to Hamas in the s That client was effectively prevented from opening a bank account or spending money on routine expenses The Treasury Department dropped the designation weeks after he filed a lawsuit in Civil liberties advocates also warn that in the U S Supreme Court opened the door to charging U S citizens with the crime of material encouragement for foreign terrorist groups for speech acts alone The court uncovered that merely providing advice to or coordinating in press releases with foreign groups could constitute material help something the Trump administration could exploit There are several very narrow pathways they can try to go down Kadidal stated to create trouble if they want to Chilling Effect One of the more immediate dangers of Trump s rhetorical gesture may be the chilling effect Kadidal noted The average protester may find it hard to piece through the legal questions around terror designations and decide to stay home Trump and his allies have signaled in the week since Kirk s assassination that they are preparing a broad legal attack on the institutions of the left As criticisms of Kirk s far-right- politics proliferated online Attorney General Pam Bondi mentioned she would prosecute hate speech before backtracking in the face of pushback from the right Related If Protesting Tesla Is Domestic Terrorism Then What Demonstration Against Musk Isn t Like Bondi s remarks critics fear the administration may overreach dramatically in Trump s purported pursuit of antifa His attempt to label the political movement as a terrorist threat could be leveraged against a swath of the left much larger than black-clad protesters on the streets In the past he has casually lumped the movement in with far more hierarchical center-left organizations Trump and likeminded people view what they consider to be the left as a many-headed hydra and it has all sorts of heads It has the George Soros head it has the antifa head it has the Black Lives Matter head disclosed Bray the historian who studies antifa It s all for them the same monster that they essentially try to label as the Democratic Party Even though of class most of people who are part of antifa groups have a lot of criticism of the Democratic Party to put it mildly The post Trump Wants to Label Antifa a Terror Group His Real Target Might Be a Lot Bigger appeared first on The Intercept