President Donald Trump’s designation of four Antifa groups as foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs) may threaten the global propaganda networks that publicly back them, experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Posting such content to further the organizations’ goals in the future could spark terrorism charges if the Department of Justice (DOJ) were to push the limits of federal law, counterterrorism experts said. (RELATED: Trump Admin Targets Multiple Antifa Groups As Foreign Terrorist Orgs)
The groups, all of which are linked to violent attacks, are:
– Antifa Ost (Germany)
– International Revolutionary Front (Italy)
– Armed Proletarian Justice (Greece)
– Revolutionary Class Self Defense (Greece)
The foreign terror designations make it a crime to provide…
— Hudson Crozier 🇺🇸 (@Hudson_Crozier) November 13, 2025
Legislation passed in 1994 and expanded in 1996 allows for up to 20 years in prison for “whoever knowingly provides material support or resources to a foreign terrorist organization, or attempts or conspires to do so.” The kinds of “support or resources” that have led to convictions include plotting attacks, conspiring to send money to terrorists and posting Al Qaeda recruitment videos on the internet.
Five people pleaded guilty on Nov. 19 to providing material support to domestic Antifa terrorists charged in a July 4 shooting ambush at a Texas immigration facility, marking the first Antifa-related terrorism convictions in U.S. history, CBS 42 reported.
Fringe leftist sites often publish anonymous posts taking credit for crimes in the U.S. or elsewhere, sometimes called a “communique” or “claim of responsibility,” using a familiar playbook that leaves out incriminating information.
“If you look at the statutes for material support, propaganda, such as publishing communiques would definitely fall under the letter of the law,” said Kyle Shideler, a counterterrorism analyst at the Center for Security Policy who has repeatedly testified to Congress about Antifa.
“Historically the DOJ has been [reluctant] to make a material support case just on propaganda services provided, but under the law … it would qualify,” Shideler told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
The DOJ and Department of Homeland Security did not respond to the DCNF’s requests for comment. The FBI declined to comment.
Anonymous pro-Antifa websites are also dangerous because they fulfill a “command and control function” for the global, decentralized movement, Shideler told the DCNF.
“These websites help the various Antifa groups coordinate on specific targets (for example naming specific corporate or national interests or specific individuals) and by issuing calls to act on behalf of specific causes (in solidarity with jailed comrades for example),” he said.
Communicating Terror
“Soli Antifa Ost,” a website dedicated to backing the German Antifa Ost group, hosts content from 2023 bragging about property destruction committed to support convicted Antifa Ost criminals. Authorities have linked the group, nicknamed “Hammerbande,” to a series of attacks against so-called Nazis in Germany and Hungary in 2018 and 2023, often involving assaults with hammers.
The website directs readers to donate to a bank account associated with Rote Hilfe e.V., or “Red Aid,” a leftist association that ostensibly funds legal defense and other services for so-called political prisoners around the world.
A violation of the law would be especially clear in cases when “the communique included a call to action, and doesn’t have any speech value other than a call for criminal activity,” Shideler said.
Anarchist blog forum “Act for Freedom Now” posted an article in April from Revolutionary Class Self Defense boasting that it had bombed the Greek Ministry of Labor and Hellenic Train offices in February 2024 and April 2025, respectively. The post railed against capitalism and U.S. support for Israel, telling readers that “when faced with the danger of tyranny: ‘Chains or arms.’ Let us resolutely choose the latter!”
Act for Freedom Now also published a 2022 communique from International Revolutionary Front, also called Informal Anarchist Federation, announcing that it mailed a bomb to the CEO of an Italian defense manufacturing company. Authorities intercepted the device, EuroWeekly News reported.
Lastly, Armed Proletarian Justice made its way into the online propaganda space, with the far-left “Abolition Media” publishing its “responsibility claim” in December 2023 for planting a bomb near a Greek police unit’s headquarters. “This police state relies on the power of guns, and anyone who wants to fight it must hold themselves to the same standard … We have a responsibility to fight for them,” the post reads. “With a gun in our hands and the vision of a new world in our hearts.”
Abolition Media got the FBI’s attention over a June 2024 communique that showed a firebombed police car at the University of California, Berkeley, which the bureau linked to left-wing terrorist Casey Goonan, the DCNF previously reported. Abolition Media and Act for Freedom Now both operate using a blogging platform from the Autistici/Inventati (A/I) Collective, an Italian organization that designs web services for leftists to hide personal data from law enforcement. (RELATED: Shadowy Foreign Tech Group Keeps Police Off Antifa’s Trail)
A post from the terrorist group Armed Proletarian Justice claims responsibility for a bomb plot in Greece on “Abolition Media” on Dec. 24, 2023. (Image credit: Screenshot/Abolition Media)
Act for Freedom Now, Abolition Media, Soli Antifa Ost and Red Aid did not respond to the DCNF’s requests for comment.
‘First Amendment Scrutiny’
While “material support” charges related to the foreign Antifa groups are likely on the horizon, they may not pass muster in court, George Washington University law lecturer Jeffrey Breinholt told the DCNF.
“I don’t see any fair application of the material support statute to Antifa as conjured by Trump,” Breinholt said, calling the four designations “goofy.” Breinholt worked on counterterrorism for 25 years in the DOJ, including investigations of terrorism financing under the Bush administration.
Though terrorist propaganda can be unlawful, the Trump administration would risk crossing the line into punishing free speech, Breinholt told the DCNF. He noted a 2010 ruling by Supreme Court Chief Justice John Robert warning that future uses of the material support charge may not “survive First Amendment scrutiny.”
“And at that point, the whole statute would be jeopardized because it’s gone too far if the court decides somebody was … prosecuted on the basis of prohibited First Amendment activity,” Breinholt told the DCNF.
“It’s going to ruin ‘material support’ for everybody,” he said.
A State Department official previously told the DCNF that the four European groups are only “the first round” of foreign terrorist designations.
“The anarchists, Marxists, and violent extremists of Antifa have waged a terror campaign in the United States and across the Western world for decades, carrying out bombings, beatings, shootings, and riots in service of their extreme agenda,” a State Department spokesperson said when the sanctions were rolled out. “The State Department is committed to identifying and dismantling these terror networks that conspire to ruthlessly suppress the will of the people and violently undermine the very foundations of the United States and Western Civilization.”
All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.
