{"id":207389,"date":"2025-10-12T08:08:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-12T08:08:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/207389\/"},"modified":"2025-10-12T08:08:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-12T08:08:08","slug":"european-far-right-follows-trump-in-calling-for-antifa-to-be-declared-terrorists-the-far-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/207389\/","title":{"rendered":"European far right follows Trump in calling for antifa to be declared terrorists | The far right"},"content":{"rendered":"

Where Donald Trump leads, Europe\u2019s nationalists and far right follow. After a Truth Social post last month, when Trump announced the US would designate antifa<\/a>, the decentralised anti-fascist movement, \u201ca major terrorist organisation\u201d<\/a>, his international allies swung into action.<\/p>\n

That same day, the Dutch parliament, where the largest party is Geert Wilders\u2019 far-right PVV, passed a resolution, noting the US decision and calling on the government to declare antifa a terrorist organisation in the Netherlands<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Then the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orb\u00e1n \u2013 more usually a source of inspiration for Trump<\/a> \u2013 said his country would follow suit. Next, in the European parliament, a far-right MEP from the Flemish nationalist Vlaams Belang party drafted a resolution with the same request. Tom Vandendriessche announced last week that 79 MEPs from 20 countries supported his proposed text. In a video posted on X with ominous music playing, he described antifa as \u201can international network that is supported, financed and protected by the system to fight the nationalist opposition with violence\u201d.<\/p>\n

Experts characterise antifa rather differently, instead describing it as a loose identity movement with neither leaders nor membership structure. While it has origins in Europe<\/a>, it gained attention in the US after Trump\u2019s election in 2016.<\/p>\n

\u201cAntifa is not what I would call an identifiable group or organisation [but] a movement, perhaps,\u201d Jessica White, acting director of terrorism and conflict studies at the Royal United Services Institute, told the Guardian.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn the basis of that lack of clear definition, I think it\u2019s very challenging, if not counterproductive, to try and designate it,\u201d she added. The security services, she said, would see \u201cthe least amount of value\u201d in such a designation, as \u201cusually what I\u2019ve seen is that it is much easier to reach a verdict and a prosecution based upon focusing on the actual acts of violence.\u201d<\/p>\n

She added: \u201cI think there\u2019s probably a very justified sense of fear around how it could be used in a politically motivated way to target people that are seen as opponents to a more rightwing political government.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Hungarian government has claimed that antifa, which it calls a \u201ca leftwing terrorist organisation\u201d, is a menace to its citizens. The EU\u2019s law enforcement agency Europol does not use the term \u201cantifa\u201d in its recent Terrorism Situation and Trend report<\/a> \u2013 a document cited in the far-right European parliament resolution. Europol reports 21 attacks attributed to leftwing or anarchist violent extremism in 2024, based on data from 14 countries, excluding Hungary. Nearly all the attacks, which took place in Italy and Greece, targeted property.<\/p>\n

Hungarian government spokesperson Zolt\u00e1n Kov\u00e1cs has said antifa members have \u201cbrutally beaten people\u201d in the street, and while some were brought before the courts, \u201cthose who did not flee justice for the European parliament have received their due.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is a reference to Ilaria Salis, an Italian activist who became an MEP in 2024, an election that brought an end to nearly 16 months of detention in Hungary<\/a>, where she was accused of assaulting people suspected of far-right sympathies. Orb\u00e1n\u2019s political director, Bal\u00e1zs Orb\u00e1n (no relation), has described Salis as a \u201cfar-left antifa activist\u201d.<\/p>\n

This week, Salis narrowly survived an attempt by the Hungarian government to remove her immunity, after MEPs voted by a majority of one<\/a> not to grant Budapest\u2019s request. Salis says she is innocent and will not get a fair trial in Hungary, where legal experts have long concluded that the rule of law is compromised<\/a>.<\/p>\n

She told the Guardian that Hungary\u2019s use of the term \u201cantifa\u201d was a way of \u201cstigmatising whoever dissents, whoever doesn\u2019t agree with the regime\u201d. She added: \u201cIf being anti-fascist means dissenting with his regime, of course I am an anti-fascist.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Martin Schirdewan, co-leader of the far-left group in the European parliament, which unites Germany\u2019s Die Linke, France Unbowed, as well as Salis\u2019s Greens and the Left Alliance party, said criminalising an anti-fascist group \u201csimply plays the tune of the far right\u201d and was \u201crestricting freedom of opinion\u201d as well as being \u201cultimately an attack on democracy itself\u201d.<\/p>\n

The focus on antifa is one more common cause uniting Trump and his European allies. Pawel Zerka, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said Trump served as an important inspiration for the new right in Europe, who were willing to emulate his culture war in their own countries.<\/p>\n

In a recent report, Zerka argued that Trump and the US Maga movement are waging a culture war on Europe<\/a> by aggressively promoting ideological allies on the continent and seeking to humiliate European leaders on the world stage.<\/p>\n

Trump, the report<\/a> argues, provides credibility, framing and coherence to Europe\u2019s new right, from Orb\u00e1n in Hungary to National Rally leader Marine Le Pen in France, as well as critical infrastructure \u2013 conferences, media, funders and thinktanks \u2013 that \u201csupports the formation of a Maga internationale\u201d.<\/p>\n

The notion of antifa, \u201ca copy-paste from the American political debate\u201d, was another way of polarising European societies, Zerka said. \u201cThe mere fact that you can claim there is a dangerous political adversary \u2026 gives you a powerful engine to also mobilise your base and seek a certain cohesion among domestic forces.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Where Donald Trump leads, Europe\u2019s nationalists and far right follow. After a Truth Social post last month, when…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":207390,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-207389","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207389","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=207389"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207389\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/207390"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=207389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=207389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=207389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}