The US President Donald Trump says he will declare ANTIFA a terrorist organisation after he said the ‘radical-left’ were behind the violent protests gripping US cities.
Over the last few days both Trump and the Attorney General William Barr accused the ‘group’ of organising the looting and rioting across the country in response to the police killing of George Floyd.
What this means is that ‘Antifa’ would be placed alongside groups such as ISIS, Al-Qaeda, the neo-nazi Aryan Nations and Hezbollah.
The United States of America will be designating ANTIFA as a Terrorist Organization.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 31, 2020
However, the designation has serious problems. Firstly being that ‘ANTIFA’, short for anti-fascist, doesn’t exist as an organised group and simply means those that oppose fascism, including those that do it peacefully. Therefore claiming someone was a member of ANTIFA could include anyone that simply vocally opposes fascism. General Barr has said he would use the joint terrorism taskforce to investigate:
“The violent radical agitators who have hijacked peaceful protest and are engaged in violations of federal law.”
He went on to say:
“The violence instigated and carried out by Antifa and other similar groups in connection with the rioting is domestic terrorism and will be treated accordingly”.
Whether this could mean imprisonment for antifascists or on what grounds they could be arrested is unclear. However, there has been a clear attempt by Republican Mayors and the president to attempt to lay the blame of the trouble on left-wing protestors as oppose to those simply on those angry about the police killing of an unarmed black man by crushing his neck.
ANTIFA originated in Germany in the 1920s and fought Adolf Hitler’s Nazi party on the streets of Germany before the Nazis eventually took power and imprisoned or killed off any antifascist opposition. It will be interesting to see how such anti-terror legislation against peaceful antifascists could possibly comply with the US constitution, which protects freedom of speech and freedom of assembly.
Many will come to believe that Trump is not only attempting to silence opposition, but to also deflect attention away from the catastrophic response to coronavirus which has led the US to have over 100,000 deaths, the highest in the world, and his inability to maintain law and order ahead of the November presidential elections.
COMMENTS