'Nearly every word' was a lie: How Trump’s new threat could target whomever he pleases

Christopher Mathias tells MSNBC that President Donald Trump will have a hard time following up on the war he’s declared on Antifa, but he could aim his crusade against others.

Trump signed an executive order proclaiming that “All relevant executive departments and agencies shall utilize all applicable authorities to investigate, disrupt, and dismantle any and all illegal operations — especially those involving terrorist actions — conducted by Antifa or any person claiming to act on behalf of Antifa ….”

Trump coupled his executive order with a social media post “designating Antifa, A SICK, DANGEROUS, RADICAL LEFT DISASTER, AS A MAJOR TERRORIST ORGANIZATION.”

“I will also be strongly recommending that those funding ANTIFA be thoroughly investigated in accordance with the highest legal standards and practices,” Trump added. “Thank you for your attention to this matter!”

“Nearly every word in the president’s post was a lie,” said Mathias, who covers the far-right movement. “Antifa isn’t an organization. There is no legal statute with which to declare antifa a ‘major terrorist organization.’ Nor does antifa have a network of rich, shadowy benefactors who can be unmasked. (What little money antifa’s practitioners do have typically comes from their own pockets.)”

Antifa, which is short or “anti-fascist,” refers to an underground subculture of leftists dedicated to combating the far right, said Mathias. It's roots go as far back as the U.S. Jewish anti-Nazi movement in the 1930s. It has no official leaders or spokespeople to go on cable news to refute Trump. Still, Trump and other MAGA figures have exploited antifa as a bogeyman, and they’ve threatened to officially designate anti-fascists as terrorists, despite a 2020 report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies tying the far right to hundreds of murders over the previous 25 years, “while anti-fascists were tied to zero murders in the same time frame.”

Trump’s threats proved empty for his first term, but now they feel more “menacing,” and not just for antifa. Since antifa is not a real organization, said Mathias, the fear is Trump may begin an “unchecked campaign of persecution, a state crackdown … [on] the American left writ large."

“The past few anti-antifa panics have shown that MAGA has an expansive definition of who constitutes antifa, with everyone even a little left of center liable to be labeled that way,” said Mathias. “Equating antifa with a ‘major terrorist organization,’ as Trump has, then becomes an excuse for the right to target whomever it pleases, with both state persecution and vigilante violence.”

Read the MSNBC report at this link.