Trump’s push to brand anti-fascism as terrorism may be enough to encourage a global revival of resistance.
U.S. PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP is making noises again about designating ‘ANTIFA’ (anti-fascism) as a terrorist organisation.
The last time he made those noises was in June 2020. America was crumbling from his criminally sloppy and inhumane response to the COVID pandemic ripping his population apart, and Minneapolis Police Station had been set on fire after one of its officers murdered George Floyd, leading to nationwide protests and riots.
We learned back then that whenever Trump is presiding over a trainwreck, he jangles the keys for his MAGA base and waylays the rest of us by pointing fingers at bogeymen.
But Trump in 2020 wasn’t a patch on 2025.
Now, plainclothes ICE agents are in the streets ripping "Mexican-looking" U.S. citizens off the streets at random and sending them to offshore concentration camps. There’s an army of vigilante impersonators who look just like them, roaming around committing crime. Random citizens are being designated as gang members for criticising Trump. School shootings barely make the news. Billionaire technocrats are lapdogs now, making numbers up on camera to please him and gain his favour. Crime is now legal in America. The U.S. economy is tanking. And Trump doesn’t want anyone to talk about his best paedophile friend.
So he’s making lots of new noises about ‘ANTIFA’ again.
In 2020, I posted the following to my socials about his last round of ‘ANTIFA’ threats:
As we always say, antifa is anti-fascism and a series of tactics, not really an organisation — and definitely not a cartoon illustration of a masked thug at a rally holding a Molotov. Let me list some other anti-fascist tactics I've seen done over the years to real effect. They can be as anti-fascist as black bloc as part of a broader coordinated effort.
They include (but aren't limited to):
- Research
- Cataloguing
- Medic work
- Education
- Repairing fences
- Phone calls
- Writing
- Playing in a band
- Feeding people
- Donating
- Child minding
- Repairing potholes
- Hosting events
- Meetings
- Repairing a door
- Comedy
- Catfishing
The only thing uniting well-known tactics like black bloc and physical resistance with the above list is their part in a broader effort to frustrate and set back fascists. Anti-fascism is all of those tactics.
I'm sure that any ridiculous designation like this would fall apart upon legal challenge.
Of course, in 2025, I have no such confidence about the power of legal challenges to set back any move like this, no matter how stupid it might be. Trump II has all but bulldozed America’s legal frameworks while, as I said, more or less making crime legal. No legal roadblock or international human right really exists in that nation now, which he can’t fire, gut and threaten his way around.
I believe we’re seeing the logical endpoint of allowing the counter-terrorism apparatus to dictate how the public and the government respond to activism and the political fringe.
Of course, the illiberal appetite to demolish our right to protest and respond to fascists is on firmer ground than it was several years ago. We’ve just spent two years allowing anti-democratic Zionist lobbyists and their political lapdogs to tear the law and our civil rights apart to stop the groundswell of global pro-Palestinian protest.
In Australia, we introduced anti-doxxing laws (interfering with a key tool of anti-fascist researchers) and anti-assembly laws based on the hysterical reportage of Zionist liars and sham crimes concocted by overseas organised criminals.
In the UK, a non-violent pro-Palestine activist group is now designated as a "terrorist group".
So it can happen with Trump’s hated ‘ANTIFA’ bogeyman. But he will not stop anti-fascism with rash, railroaded and authoritarian terrorist designations.
Anti-fascism from my position, often of reporting back from the local political fringe, can appear preoccupied with "grassroots" fascist activism, such as Australia’s thriving neo-Nazi active clubs.
But anti-fascism is fundamentally a strategy, and it is fundamentally about fascist power, whether from above or below. It began as a natural response to fascist movements and governments. It grew and flourished in the shadows, as pragmatic coalitions of activists with different ideologies and ideas set their differences aside and focused on the strategies and tactics at their disposal to stop fascists in power in their states. Those circumstances are most relevant in the U.S. today.
We have had much of our anti-fascist activist toolset robbed from us by illiberal laws introduced by governments across the West, left and right, under the guise of "counter-terrorism". But, worldwide, anti-fascists will endeavour to assist our comrades in the U.S. in their struggle by aiding in conducting the activity and reportage that they can’t. We will work with them. We will support them.
Donald Trump will deliver a shot in the arm to anti-fascist strategy worldwide by recontextualising it and revitalising it for the modern era.
Tom Tanuki is an IA columnist, writer, satirist and anti-fascist activist whose weekly videos commenting on the Australian political fringe appear on YouTube. You can follow him on Twitter/X @tom_tanuki.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia License
