ROX• TV | Trump signs order targeting Antifa

24 days ago
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President Donald Trump signed an order designating Antifa as a "domestic terrorist organisation" on Monday as part of efforts to crack down on the "radical left" in the wake of the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
Terrorist group designations - normally reserved for foreign organisations - allow the administration to ban members and seize funding, among other actions.
Trump's order directs all agencies and departments to "investigate, disrupt, and dismantle any and all illegal operations...conducted by Antifa" and its supporters.
Investigators have yet to establish a motive in Kirk's killing and there is no evidence to suggest the murder suspect was affiliated with Antifa.
Who is Antifa?
Antifa - short for anti-fascist - is a decentralised, leftist movement that opposes far-right, racist and fascist groups that has long been a top target of Trump and other Republicans.
It is a loose, leaderless affiliation that lacks a membership list or structure, which raises questions about how Trump will actually target the group.
In a post to his Truth Social platform, the president called the group a "sick, dangerous, radical left disaster" and pledged it would be "thoroughly investigated".
The word Antifa comes from the German word "antifaschistisch", a reference to a German anti-fascist group from the 1930s.
While Antifa's existence in the US dates back decades, it rose to prominence following Trump's first election victory in 2016 and the far-right rally in Charlottesville in 2017, where various anti-fascist groups started to come together.
Since then, activists identifying with Antifa have routinely clashed with right-wing groups, both in heated arguments online and also in physical altercations across the US.
The lack of a centralised organisation means that Antifa cells tend to form organically, both online and offline, and its activists include anarchists, communists and hardline socialists who broadly share anti-government, anti-capitalist, pro-LGBTQ, and pro-immigration views.
But Antifa is sometimes used as a catch-all term by conservative politicians and commentators to include other liberal and left-wing groups that they politically object to.

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