European far right follows Trump in calling for antifa to be declared terrorists | The far right

Where Donald Trump leads, European nationalists and the far right follow. Following last month’s Truth Social post, when Trump announced that the US would designate antifa (the decentralized anti-fascist movement) as a “major terrorist organization”, his international allies took action.

On the same day, the Dutch parliament, where the largest party is Geert Wilders’ far-right PVV, passed a resolution noting the US decision and calling on the government to declare Antifa a terrorist organization in the Netherlands.

Later, Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán, often Trump’s inspiration, said his country would follow suit. Later, a far-right MP from the Flemish nationalist Vlaams Belang party in the European Parliament prepared a draft resolution with the same demand. Tom Vandendriessche announced last week that 79 MPs from 20 countries support the proposed text. In the video posted on

Experts characterize Antifa quite differently; instead he describes it as a loose identity movement with neither leaders nor membership structure. Although its origins are in Europe, it began to gain traction in the United States following the election of Trump in 2016.

“Antifa is not what I would call an identifiable group or organization [but] Maybe a movement,” Jessica White, acting director of terrorism and conflict research at the Royal United Services Institute, told the Guardian.

“Based on this lack of clear definition, I think trying to determine this is very challenging, if not counterproductive,” he added. He said security services would view such a characterization as “of minimal value” because “I’ve often found it much easier to reach a verdict and prosecute by focusing on actual acts of violence.”

He added: “I think there is probably a very justified sense of fear about how this could be used in a politically motivated way to target people who are seen as opposing a more right-wing political government.”

The Hungarian government claimed that Antifa, which it called a “left-wing terrorist organization”, was a threat to its citizens. Europol, the EU’s law enforcement agency, does not use the term “antifa” in its recent statement. Terrorism Situation and Trend report – a document cited in a far-right European Parliament resolution. Europol reports 21 attacks attributed to left-wing or anarchist violent extremism in 2024, based on data from 14 countries excluding Hungary. Almost all of the attacks in Italy and Greece targeted property.

Hungarian government spokesman Zoltán Kovács said antifa members were “brutally beating people” on the streets and some were brought to court, while “those who did not escape justice on behalf of the European parliament received their rights.”

This is a reference to Italian activist Ilaria Salis, who became a member of parliament in 2024 in an election that ended nearly 16 months of detention in Hungary, where she was accused of attacking people suspected of sympathizing with the far-right. Orbán’s political director, Balázs Orbán (no relation), described Salis as a “far-left antifa activist.”

This week, Salis narrowly avoided an attempt by the Hungarian government to lift his immunity after MPs voted by a one-vote majority not to accept Budapest’s request. Salis says he is innocent and will not receive a fair trial in Hungary, where legal experts have long concluded that the rule of law has been compromised.

He told the Guardian that Hungary’s use of the term “antifa” was a way of “stigmatising those who are in opposition, those who do not agree with the regime”. He added: “Of course I’m an anti-fascist if being anti-fascist means opposing his regime.”

Martin Schirdewan, co-chairman of the far-left group in the European parliament that unites Germany’s Die Linke, France Unbowed and Salis’s Greens and Left Alliance party, said criminalizing an anti-fascist group “simply plays the tune of the far right” and “restricts freedom of thought” and is also “ultimately an attack on democracy itself”.

Focusing on Antifa is another common cause that unites Trump and his European allies. Pawel Zerka, senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said Trump has been a major source of inspiration for the new right in Europe, which is eager to emulate his culture war in their own countries.

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

Embers, report It provides credibility, framing and coherence to Europe’s new right, from Orbán in Hungary to National Rally leader Marine Le Pen in France, as well as the critical infrastructure (conferences, media, funders and think tanks) that “support the formation of a Maga international.”

Zerka said the concept of antifa, which means “copy-paste from American political debates”, is another way to polarize European societies. “Just being able to claim that you have a dangerous political enemy gives you a powerful engine to mobilize your base and achieve a certain cohesion among domestic forces.”