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The Trump administration’s efforts to criminalise antifascism as a form of terrorism lurched forward last week when a federal jury in Texas found eight protesters guilty of domestic terrorism charges in connection with their alleged ideological association with antifascism, also known as “antifa.”
The case, which centred around a July 2025 demonstration at an ICE detention facility just outside of Fort Worth, Texas, was the first major test of the administration’s attempt to criminalise dissent through the use of a sweeping anti-terrorism statute.
During the incident, protesters gathered outside of the ICE facility to stage a demonstration in solidarity with the detainees inside. As is often the case in Texas (an open carry state), some of the protesters brought firearms to the demonstration, but most left their weapons in their cars and headed out for what they believed was a peaceful protest.
However, at least one person in the group was armed when police were called to the scene. While the details are still contested, it is believed that one person opened fire, striking a police officer with a bullet in the process. Prosecutors claimed the shooting was an attack plotted by antifa operatives, but ultimately only one person was convicted of the most serious charges, attempted murder.
Last week’s verdict was the first time in US history that anyone has been convicted on domestic terrorism charges in connection with antifa. It was also the first time that the US Government has explicitly accused individuals of a crime for being part of what prosecutors described as an “Antifa cell.”
However, these charges did not require the Government to link the defendants to a specific group or organisation. The Government maintains a list of foreign terrorist organisations, but there is no domestic equivalent because such organisations are considered protected under the First Amendment.
Despite this, in September, Trump designated antifa as a domestic terrorist organisation.
Legal experts say the case could set a new precedent in terms of the lengths the Government can go to stifle dissent, serving as a test of “how far they can go in criminalising constitutionally protected protests.”
But that’s not the only precedent being set. The Texas case also represents a watershed moment in modern information warfare, serving as a potent example of how the Government can use disinformation to manufacture an enemy out of its own citizens.
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A Decade of Disinformation
Antifascism has existed as a political movement in the US for decades, and even longer in Europe, but it only rose to prominence after Trump’s election in 2016. Not long after antifascism entered the stage, so did the disinformation targeting the movement.
Following the deadly extremist attack at the far-right Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, Trump and his allies started hyping the idea of a violent “alt-left” that they sought to portray as equally as violent as the right-wing extremists who had just murdered a protester. (The evidence is clear here: Violent extremism in America is overwhelmingly a right-wing phenomenon).
Over the next several years, this grew into an expansive domestic disinformation campaign involving elected officials, government agencies, think tanks, social media influencers, and the entirety of the right-wing media apparatus.
The disinformation campaign surrounding antifascism was (is, really) two-pronged. One major aim was to associate antifascism with chaos, violence, and anti-Americanism. Simultaneously, another aim was to expand and ultimately collapse the definitional boundaries of antifascism so that the term could be applied as a catch-all to describe essentially any liberal or left-wing activist movement.
This was achieved through years of coordinated messaging and media coverage portraying Democrats and liberal activists as “radical leftists” and positioning civil disobedience and property crimes on the same threat level as fatal extremist violence.
If a car was set on fire at a protest, Fox News would feature footage of the ensuing flames in prime time coverage for the next week, while right-wing social media accounts would circulate images (some real, some fake) and attempt to link the incident to a broader left-wing movement by falsely identifying the culprit as an immigrant, socialist, feminist, or trans person, and demanding that Democrats disavow them.
If a right-wing extremist committed an act of violence, these same actors would seize on the period of uncertainty immediately after the tragedy to spread rumours and baseless accusations about the perpetrator being “antifa,” thereby creating an automatic mental association between violence and antifa among the American public.
