WeeklyWorker

27.11.2025
Less an organisation, more a movement

An attack on us all

Marco Rubio and the US state department have designated four European anti-fascist groups as terrorist. The designation came into effect on November 20. Toby Abse sees the thin end of a wedge targeting the whole of the left

Recently the US state department has brought in a ban on four European far-left organisations: the German Antifa Ost, Italy’s International Revolutionary Front, and the Greek groups, Armed Revolutionary Justice and Revolutionary Class Self-Defence.

This ban is an extension overseas of the domestic crackdown on Antifa, which, as most readers will know, is merely an extremely loose network of American groupings opposed to fascism, or far-right movements or individuals they regard as ‘fascist’. Since the American Antifa is not a centralised organisation, or even an organisation in any real sense, this crackdown, which started in the wake of the killing of Charlie Kirk (not by a committed Antifa supporter, but by an isolated and mentally unstable individual with no connection to any political group), is just the start of a witch-hunt against the whole American left, which Trump and his supporters want to brand as ‘terrorists’.

Terrorist definition

However, three of the banned European groups would actually fit most people’s definition of terrorism, which is one of the reasons that the Trump administration decided on a ban - to tar the American Antifa with guilt by association. The German Antifa Ost is the only one of these groupings that has any real ideological affinity with the American Antifa, and it is not a terrorist group, but one which has used ‘squadism’ against people it regards as fascists or Nazis, and is therefore broadly similar to the now defunct British group known as Anti-Fascist Action.

US secretary of state Marco Rubio has called all these groups ‘Specially Designated Global Terrorists’ - which is clearly hyperbole, since they are not remotely equivalent in scale to global organisations such as Isis or al Qaeda. Rubio has also said: “Groups affiliated with this movement ascribe [sic] to revolutionary anarchist or Marxist ideologies, including anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism and anti-Christianity, using these to incite and justify violent assault domestically and overseas.”

The two Greek groups are accused of planting bombs in Greece - an accusation which probably has some factual basis - but, since my knowledge of the Greek left is confined to Pasok, Syriza and the Communist Party of Greece (KKE), I do not intend to discuss them here beyond saying that I assume they are anarchists (unlike the longest lasting Greek terrorist group, which arose out of opposition to ‘the Colonels’, but survived until relatively recent times, primarily targeting Americans and describing itself as “Marxist-Leninist”1),

The US ban on all four organisations has been welcomed by the German far-right AfD, whose members are the main targets of Antifa Ost, which, as its name implies, largely confined its attacks to east German states such as Saxony and Thuringia. Antifa Ost is also known by its enemies as the ‘Hammerbande’, because one of its best-known actions involved using hammers against far-right activists. Given chancellor Friedrich Merz’s ambiguous attitude to the AfD, which he seems to regard as a serious political rival, but a potential junior partner in a future coalition, it is difficult to gauge whether the AfD’s support for a German ban on Antifa Ost will encourage him to ape the Americans or not. The German authorities may well just take a hard line against Antifa Ost supporters caught attacking far-right activists, rather than ban the group as such.

Ilaria Salis

There is an Italian connection with Antifa Ost’s actions against Hungarian, German and other far-right supporters in Budapest in February 2023. There was, and is, an annual neo-Nazi event in Budapest in February, to commemorate the last stand of the SS and their Hungarian Arrow Cross collaborators against the advancing Red Army.

In 2023, a group of Italians participated alongside Antifa Ost in an attack on these assorted neo-Nazis. This led to the arrest of Ilaria Salis, an Italian far-left activist, who was accused of punching some Hungarian neo-Nazis. Since all those involved in this attack were disguised, it is unclear whether there would have been enough evidence to convict her in a non-Hungarian court. It is also worth pointing out that the neo-Nazis’ injuries were minimal, such that they recovered within a week. Salis was imprisoned whilst awaiting trial, and for 15 months kept in a filthy cell without access to defence lawyers or interpreters, who might have been able to explain what the Hungarian prosecutors were saying. Moreover, she was humiliated at every court appearance by being dragged along on a lead like a dog with her feet clamped together in irons.

The prosecution was seeking a 24-year sentence, which was obviously totally disproportionate, even if she had done what was being alleged. Giorgia Meloni’s Italian government took next to no interest in her case, despite continued appeals from her father, who does not share her politics. The only reason she is not still in the Hungarian prison is that Italy’s Alleanza Verdi Sinistra (AVS - Green Left Alliance) asked her to stand as the candidate on their list for the European parliament in the June 2024 elections.

Given the publicity that her case had attracted in Italy, AVS was able without much difficulty to get enough votes to secure her release, polling a higher percentage than they had got in the September 2022 general election (and a higher one than they had got in most recent opinion polls), which suggests that some people voted AVS to free Salis rather than to endorse the AVS programme. She subsequently gave her allegiance to the Left group in the European parliament, unlike the majority of ‘independents’ elected on the AVS list, who plumped for the Greens.

Recently, the Hungarian government has sought to get the European parliament to lift her parliamentary immunity and return her to a Hungarian jail. In the secret ballot of MEPs on the issue, she escaped being sent back to Hungary by just one vote. The official line of the European People’s Party (EPP - the mainstream centre-right, who used to be called Christian Democrats), like that of all three far-right groupings in the parliament (Meloni’s European Conservatives and Reformists, Hungarian premier Viktor Orbán’s Patriots for Europe and the AfD’s Europe of Sovereign Nations) was to send her back, but fortunately secrecy gave some EPP MEPs the chance to rebel and side with the left, the greens, the social democrats and Renew Europe (liberals/Macronists) in protecting her from Orbán’s vengeance.2 As far as we can know, all her Italian rightwing opponents (FdI, Lega, Forza Italia) would have been very happy to see her in chains again.

Anarchist bans

Italy’s International Revolutionary Front is essentially another, more impressive, name for the Informal Anarchist Federation (FAI). It needs to be stressed that this FAI is not the same as the Italian Anarchist Federation, which is also known as FAI. The latter has existed since 1945, and is the heir of the classical anarchist movement associated with late 19th/early 20th century figures like Erico Malatesta. The vast majority of the adherents of the older FAI have no connection with the new one and, whilst they oppose the state and the whole existing order, they seek to overthrow them by general strikes and other forms of mass action, not planting bombs.

As for the FAI/Informal Anarchist Federation, it has existed for more than 20 years. They sent a parcel bomb to Romano Prodi when he was head of the European Commission in 2003 - it exploded in his hands, but he was uninjured. In 2010, they sent letter bombs to the Swiss and Chilean embassies. In 2011, they sent a letter bomb to Deutsche Bank chief Joseph Ackermann at his Frankfurt office, and they also targeted Italian newspapers and foreign embassies. In the past, they remained a relatively obscure terrorist group, never gaining the fame of the Brigate Rosse or even Prima Linea.

In more recent times, the FAI/Informal Anarchist Federation’s de facto leader, Alfredo Cospito, has been at the centre of national attention in Italy. Firstly, he was convicted of the 2014 knee-capping of Roberto Adinofli, the CEO of Ansaldo Nucleare, a firm involved with civilian nuclear power. More recently (June 7 2025), he was convicted of attempting to blow up a Carabinieri training school and sentenced to 25 years. Whilst this attempted act of terror failed due to the technical incompetence of Cospito and his accomplices, if it had succeeded it would have killed dozens of young police recruits - something which would have unleashed massive state repression, not just against anarchists but against the far left as a whole.

The length of Cospito’s sentence, and the fact that he was subject to a legal provision called 41B - usually used against Mafia chiefs, which prevents them from communicating with fellow convicts and with anybody outside their prison - aroused anger among his sympathisers. The form of ‘solidarity’ they gave him was to burn dozens of buses and Post Office vans in depots and car parks in Rome. The main sufferers from such actions were obviously the poorer sections of the working class, not the government or the bosses.

I think it is unlikely that the Italian state will see any need to ban the FAI, as opposed to keeping Cospito inside for the foreseeable future. Italian legislation has always included many ‘joint enterprise’ charges, such as ‘subversive association’, membership of a ‘banda armata’ (armed gang), ‘association to commit criminal acts’ and so on, which could all easily be used against the FAI without banning it outright.

The Meloni government brought in a tough security decree in May 2025, which created some new offences and increased the penalties on existing ones.3 It has encouraged riot police to use extreme violence against student protests, particularly if they are relatively small and concern Palestine, and it now plans to bring in restrictions on public transport strikes.4

But this general repressive drift is said to be unconnected with Marco Rubio’s bans. Meloni is Donald Trump’s favourite western European leader. However, if she goes too far in public campaigning against Antifa, that might actually be counterproductive, since Italy’s 1948 constitution is explicitly anti-fascist.5

  1. Greek anarchists have sometimes engaged in actions in solidarity with the Italian Informal Anarchist Federation, but I have no idea whether these anarchists are involved with the particular Greek groups.↩︎

  2. Whether they did so out of genuine humanitarianism or because of a dislike of Orbán’s pro-Moscow line on Ukraine hardly matters.↩︎

  3. Its most important clauses imposed drastic penalties on anybody blocking a road - something designed to deter picketing during strikes.↩︎

  4. Potential strikers would have to give a week’s notice of their intention to participate in the strike, and their notice would be irrevocable, even if they subsequently changed their minds. As comrades will grasp, this is designed to create blacklists of activists and deter anybody from exercising the right to strike, granted by the Italian constitution of 1948.↩︎

  5. When the online magazine, fanpage.it, ran a serious investigation into FdI’s youth organisation last year, it uncovered leading members’ frequent use of fascist slogans, fascist salutes, anti-Semitic remarks and so forth. The magazine’s editor was subjected to systematic interceptions, using Israeli spyware known as Paragon, which only the Italian secret service has access to. Of course, both the secret service and Meloni’s government denied all knowledge of these activities, but it was obviously a sign that such serious anti-fascist journalism will not be tolerated.↩︎