from the it’s-all-just-nonsense dept
When Homeland Safety Secretary Kristi Noem in contrast antifa to the transnational prison group MS-13, Hamas and the Islamic State group in October 2025, she equated a nonhierarchical, loosely organized motion of antifascist activists with among the world’s most violent and arranged militant teams.
“Antifa is simply as harmful,” she stated.
It’s a sweeping declare that ignores essential distinctions in ideology, group and scope. Evaluating these teams is like evaluating apples and bricks: They could each be organizations, however that’s the place the resemblance stops.
Noem’s assertion echoed the logic of a September 2025 Trump administration government order that designated antifa as a “home terrorist group.” The order directs all related federal businesses to research and dismantle any operations, together with the funding sources, linked to antifa.
However there isn’t a credible proof from the FBI or the Division of Homeland Safety that helps such a comparability. Impartial terrorism consultants don’t see the similarities both.
Information exhibits that the motion might be confrontational and sometimes violent. However antifa is neither a terrorist community nor a serious supply of organized deadly violence.
Antifa, as understood by students and regulation enforcement, is not a company in any formal sense. It lacks membership rolls and management hierarchies. It doesn’t have centralized funding.
As a scholar of social actions, I do know that antifa is a decentralized motion animated by opposition to fascism and far-right extremism. It’s an assortment of small teams that mobilize round particular protests or native points. And its techniques vary from peaceable counterdemonstrations to mutual support initiatives.
For instance, in Portland, Oregon, native antifa activists organized counterdemonstrations in opposition to far-right rallies in 2019.
Antifa teams lively in Houston throughout Hurricane Harvey in 2017 coordinated meals, provides and rescue assist for affected residents.
No proof of terrorism
The FBI and DHS have categorized sure anarchist or anti-fascist teams beneath the broad class of “home violent extremists.” However neither company nor the State Division has ever beforehand designated antifa as a terrorist group.
The info on political violence reinforces this level.
A 2022 report by the Counter Extremism Undertaking discovered that the overwhelming majority of lethal home terrorist incidents in the USA in recent times had been linked to right-wing extremists. These teams embrace white supremacists and anti-government militias that promote racist or authoritarian ideologies. They reject democratic authority and infrequently search to provoke social chaos or civil battle to attain their objectives.
Left-wing or anarchist-affiliated violence, together with acts attributed to antifa-aligned individuals, accounts for less than a small fraction of home extremist incidents and virtually not one of the fatalities. Equally, in 2021, the George Washington College Program on Extremism discovered that anarchist or anti-fascist assaults are usually localized, spontaneous and missing coordination.
Against this, the organizations Noem invoked – Hamas, the Islamic State group and MS-13 – share structural and operational traits that antifa lacks.
They function throughout borders and are hierarchically organized. They’re additionally able to sustained navy or paramilitary operations. They possess coaching pipelines, funding networks, propaganda infrastructure and territorial management. They usually have orchestrated mass casualties such because the 2015 Paris assaults and the 2016 Brussels bombings.
In brief, they’re navy or prison organizations with strategic intent. Noem’s declare that antifa is “simply as harmful” as these teams is just not solely empirically indefensible however rhetorically reckless.
Turning dissent into ‘terrorism’
So why make such a declare?
Noem’s assertion matches squarely inside the Trump administration’s broader political technique that has sought to inflate the perceived risk of left-wing activism.
Casting antifa as a home terrorist equal of the Islamic State nation or Hamas serves a number of capabilities.
It stokes worry amongst conservative audiences by linking road protests and progressive dissent to world terror networks. It additionally supplies political cowl for expanded home surveillance and harsher policing of protests.
Moreover, it discredits protest actions vital of the best. In a polarized media atmosphere, such rhetoric performs a symbolic goal. It divides the ethical universe into heroes and enemies, order and chaos, patriots and radicals.
Noem’s comparability displays a broader sample in populist politics, the place complicated social actions are decreased to easy, threatening caricatures. In recent times, some Republican leaders have used antifa as a shorthand for all types of left-wing unrest or criticism of authority.
Antifa’s decentralized construction makes it a handy goal for blame. That’s as a result of it lacks clear boundaries, management and accountability. So any act by somebody figuring out with antifa might be framed as representing the entire motion, whether or not or not it does. And by linking antifa to terrorist teams, Noem, the highest anti-terror official within the nation, turns a political speaking level right into a declare that seems to hold the load of nationwide safety experience.
The issue with this type of rhetoric is not only that it’s inaccurate. Equating protest actions with terrorist organizations blurs vital distinctions that enable democratic societies to tolerate dissent. It additionally dangers misdirecting consideration and assets away from extra severe threats — together with organized, ideologically pushed teams that stay the first supply of home terrorism within the U.S.
As I see it, Noem’s declare reveals much less about antifa and extra in regards to the political makes use of of worry.
By invoking the language of terrorism to explain an anti-fascist motion, she faucets right into a potent emotional present in American politics: the need for clear enemies, easy explanations and ethical certainty in instances of division.
However efficient homeland safety is determined by proof, not ideology. To equate street-level confrontation with organized terror is just not solely mistaken — it undermines the credibility of the very establishments charged with defending the general public.
Artwork Jipson is Affiliate Professor of Sociology at College of Dayton. This text is republished from The Dialog beneath a Artistic Commons license. Learn the authentic article.
Filed Below: antifa, dhs, hamas, isis, kristi noem, ms-13, terrorism
