Antifa (United States)

Antifa () is a left-wing anti-fascist and anti-racist political movement. It is a highly decentralized array of autonomous groups in the United States. Antifa political activism includes nonviolent methods of direct action such as poster and flyer campaigns, mutual aid, speeches, protest marches, and community organizing. Some also use tactics involving digital activism, doxing, harassment, violence, and property damage. Supporters of the movement aim to combat far-right extremists, including neo-Nazis and white supremacists.

Individuals involved in the movement subscribe to a range of left-wing ideologies, and tend to hold anti-authoritarian, anti-capitalist, and anti-state views. A majority of individuals involved are anarchists, communists, and socialists, although some social democrats also participate in the antifa movement. The name antifa and the logo with two flags representing anarchism and communism are derived from the German antifa movement. Dartmouth College historian Mark Bray, author of Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook, credits Anti-Racist Action (ARA) as the precursor of modern antifa groups in the United States.

The American antifa movement grew after Donald Trump was elected president of the United States in 2016. Antifa activists' actions have since received support and criticism from various organizations and pundits. Some on the political left and some civil rights organizations criticize antifa's willingness to adopt violent tactics, which they describe as counterproductive and dangerous, arguing that these tactics embolden the political right and their allies. Both Democratic and Republican politicians have condemned violence from antifa. Many right-wing politicians and groups have characterized antifa as a domestic terrorist organization, or use antifa as a catch-all term, which they adopt for any left-leaning or liberal protest actions. According to some scholars, antifa is a legitimate response to the rise of the far right. Scholars tend to reject an equivalence between antifa and right-wing extremism. Some research suggests that most antifa action is nonviolent.

Various right-wing groups and individuals have made numerous efforts to discredit antifa. Some have been social media hoaxes, many false flag operations by alt-right and 4chan users posing as antifa backers on Twitter; some hoaxes have been picked up and portrayed as fact by right-leaning media and politicians. On September 22, 2025, Trump signed an executive order intended to designate antifa as a domestic terrorist organization, after repeated calls by Trump and William Barr to do so. Academics, legal experts, and others have argued such an action exceeds the authority of the presidency and violates the First Amendment. Several analyses, reports, and studies have concluded that antifa is not a major domestic terrorism risk.

Definition

The English word antifa is a loanword from the German Antifa, where it is a shortened form of the word antifaschistisch ("anti-fascist") and a nickname of Antifaschistische Aktion (1932–1933), a short-lived group which inspired the wider antifa movement in Germany. The German word Antifa first appeared in 1930. The long form antifaschistisch was borrowed from the original Italian anti-Fascisti ("anti-fascists"). Oxford Dictionaries placed antifa on its shortlist for word of the year in 2017 and stated the word "emerged from relative obscurity to become an established part of the English lexicon over the course of 2017." The pronunciation of the word in English is not settled as it may be stressed on either the first or the second syllable.

According to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) the term antifa "is often misapplied to include all counter-protesters". During the first Trump administration, the term antifa became "a conservative catch-all" term as Donald Trump, administration officials, Trump base supporters, and right-wing commentators applied the label to all sorts of left-leaning or liberal protest actions. Conservative writers such as L. Brent Bozell III associated the tactics of Black Lives Matter with those of antifa.

In 2020, Politico reported that "the term [antifa] is a potent one for conservatives" because "[i]t's the violent distillation of everything they fear could come to pass in an all-out culture war. And it's a quick way to brand part of the opposition." Alexander Reid Ross, who teaches at Portland State University, argues that the popularization of the term antifa was a reaction to the popularization of the term alt-right, "to the point where [antifa] simply describes people who are anti-fascist or people who are against racism and are willing to protest against it."

Movement structure and ideology

Antifa is not a unified organization but rather a movement without a hierarchical leadership structure, comprising multiple autonomous groups and individuals. The movement is loosely affiliated, and has no chain of command, with antifa groups instead sharing "resources and information about far-right activity across regional and national borders through loosely knit networks and informal relationships of trust and solidarity." According to Mark Bray, "members [of antifa groups] hide their political activities from law enforcement and the far right" and "concerns about infiltration and high expectations of commitment keep the sizes of groups rather small."

Bray adds that "[i]t's important to understand that antifa politics, and antifa's methods, are designed to stop white supremacists, fascists, and neo-Nazis as easily as possible." According to research by both Bray and scholar Stanislav Vysotsky, antifa methods are mostly nonviolent; analysis by the Anti-Defamation League has reached the same conclusion. According to Bray, "they function in some ways like private investigators; they track neo-Nazi organizing across multiple social-media platforms." In regard to doxing, Bray says that it is about "telling people that they have a Nazi living down the street, or telling employers that they're employing white supremacists", adding that "after Charlottesville, a lot of the repercussions that these khaki-wearing, tiki-torch white supremacists faced were their employers firing them and their families repudiating what they do."

Activists typically organize protests via social media and through websites. Some activists have built peer-to-peer networks, or use encrypted-texting services like Signal. In 2017, Chauncey Devega of Salon described antifa as an organizing strategy, not a group of people. According to a member of a New York City antifa group, their group's identification research on whether an individual or group is "fascist, Alt Right, White Nationalist, etc." is "based on which groups they are a part of and endorse". While noting that "Nazis, fascists, white nationalists, anti-Semites and Islamophobes" are specific overlapping categories, the main focus is "on groups and individuals which endorse, or work directly in alliance with, white supremacists and white separatists. We try to be very clear and precise with how we use these terms."

According to terrorism experts Colin Clarke and Michael Kenney in 2020, writing in War on the Rocks, direct actions such as anti-Trump protests, demonstrations against the alt-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos and the clash with neo-Nazis and white supremacists at the Unite the Right rally "reflects many Antifa supporters' belief that Trump is a fascist demagogue who threatens the existence of America's pluralistic, multi-racial democracy. This factor helps explain why such Antifa supporters are so quick to label the president's 'Make America Great Again' supporters as fascists — and why Trump is so quick to label Antifa as a terrorist organization."

The antifa movement grew after the 2016 United States presidential election. As of August 2017, approximately 200 groups existed, of varying sizes and levels of activity. It is particularly active in the Pacific Northwest, such as in Portland, Oregon. Individuals involved in the antifa movement tend to hold anti-authoritarian, anti-capitalist, anti-fascist, anti-racist, and anti-state views, subscribing to a varied range of left-wing ideologies. A majority of adherents are anarchists, communists, and other socialists who describe themselves as revolutionaries, although some social democrats and others on the American Left, among them environmentalists, LGBT and indigenous rights advocates, also adhere to the antifa movement.

According to professor of journalism and political science at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York, Peter Beinart in 2017, "antifa is heavily composed of anarchists" and "its activists place little faith in the state, which they consider complicit in fascism and racism." Antifa activists' ideologies, as well as their involvement in violent actions against far-right opponents and the police has led some scholars and news media to characterize the movement as far-left, as well as militant.