Who are the "Antifa" that Trump wants to call a "terrorist organization"?

"The United States of America will call the Antifa a terrorist organization." On Sunday May 31, Donald Trump spoke again on Twitter about the protests that have rocked the United States since the death of George Floyd.

The American president uses the term "Antifa" (for antifascists) to indicate the supposed leaders of these demonstrations organized all over the country and some of which have been interspersed with violence, notably in Minneapolis, New York and Washington.

In the United States, the "Antifa" denote individuals or groups active as well against racism, as homophobia or the fight against unbridled capitalism, like the Black lives matter or Occupy Wall Street movements.

Anti-fascism across the Atlantic has no figurehead, no hierarchy, no established structure. The New York Times also stresses that the anti-fascist movement is part of a "constellation of militant movements which have come together in recent years to oppose the far right". 

"It is wrong to say that most of the people (...) who caused these degradations identify themselves as Antifa or antifascists. There is no evidence of this," said Mark Bray, author of the book "The antifascism ", quoted by AFP. For him, "it is a maneuver of the right to delegitimize this protest movement".

Trump's pivot to blaming “Antifa” represents a tacit acknowledgment of the underlying legitimacy of the grievances + tactics of the protests. If burning down malls + police stations on their own were sufficient to delegitimize the protests there wouldnt be a need to blame “Antifa pic.twitter.com/WbzjnWhc6J

"Most people who demonstrate don't break anything, but the proportion of those who participate or like it seems higher than usual," said Mark Bray.

This movement has nevertheless grown since the election of Donald Trump in November 2016 and even more following the demonstration of white supremacists organized in 2017 in Charlottesville (Virginia), underlines the Anti-defamation league (ADL). , an American NGO fighting against anti-Semitism and defending human rights.

On social networks, only a few groups claim to be anti-fascist. This is the case of New York Antifascist, Always Antifascist or ANTIFA Philadelphia. "We are watching and dealing with fascism, racism and oppression of all kinds in #Philadelphia and around the world," the group wrote on Twitter to describe its work.

For Denis Lacorne, research director at Ceri at Sciences-Po, and author of "Les frontières de la tolerance" (Gallimard), contacted by France 24, Donald Trump's reference to "Antifa" is nothing but 'a "diversion business". "Trump operates on blame. He blames the other side: the Democrats and those he claims to be the Antifa."

The researcher highlights the existence of anti-fascists in the United States but insists that they constitute only a "very informal, dispersed movement, without national organization". "Their role is to counter the supremacist right in the United States or to make counter-demonstrations to counter the demonstrations of the extreme right, as in 2017 in Charlottesville. It is rarer that they go in demonstrations to attack the police ", details Denis Lacorne.

Impossible to qualify

If the term antifa used by Donald Trump does not in any way designate a specific organization, his wish to have it placed on the list of terrorist organizations is simply impossible.

Only the American secretary of state can indeed qualify an organization as "terrorist", provided that it is a foreign structure. "Only the United States Secretary of State can designate a terrorist organization - and this is the designation of a foreign organization, not a national one," Bruce Hoffman, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a specialist in terrorism, points out on Twitter. .

Only the US Secretary of State can designate a terrorist organization— & it is a foreign, not a domestic designation. antifa is also a dubious candidate since it is not an organization & has no identifiable leaders, C2 structure, or finances to target. https://t.co/1igeBlj2OL

The notion of "domestic terrorism" is regularly debated, especially in crimes committed by white supremacists or supporters of racist or homophobic groups. However, in practice, the qualifier "terrorist" is never used by the judges examining these cases.

For example, Dylann Roof, a white supremacist who killed nine black worshipers from a church in Charleston (South Virginia) in 2015, was charged with racist crimes ("hate crime").

For Denis Lacorne, the words of Donald Trump will probably not give rise to any political measure. But they will have served him, at least temporarily, as a display.

"Trump was not able to make a sympathetic speech after the death of George Floyd. He only works on the counterattack but it is not very good for him. He thought he would have a easy re-election thanks to the good health of the American economy and full employment but everything was ruined by the coronavirus and its management, "analyzes the researcher.

"The problem is that now he is surrounded only by people who are real blessings-yes-yes. No one is able to control him, unlike the beginning of his mandate," he added. he.

Protesters suspected of coming from elsewhere

The Minister of Justice, William Barr, did not formally rule on the designation of the "Antifa" as a terrorist organization but did not contradict the presidential thesis. "The violence fueled and carried out by the Antifa and other similar groups is national terrorism and will be treated as such," he said in the wake of Donald Trump's statement.

He also said in a statement that the FBI was responsible for identifying the organizers of the disorder.

Like Donald Trump, several elected officials, including Democratic Mayor of Atlanta Keisha Lance Bottoms, denounced the presence of demonstrators from other cities for the sole purpose of fighting it out.

Melvin Carter, the mayor of Saint Paul, which borders Minneapolis, said Saturday that 80% of those arrested during the protests did not live in Minnesota, before retracting later in the day.

According to several American journalists, who consulted police files, the proportion is, in reality, the opposite.

With AFP

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