The homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, on Wednesday compared antifa to MS-13, Hamas, Hezbollah and the Islamic State, calling the loosely affiliated network of antifascist street activists “just as dangerous” as designated terrorist organizations during a White House roundtable discussion.
“They are just as sophisticated as MS-13, as TDA [Tren de Aragua], as Isis, as Hezbollah, as Hamas, as all of them, they are just as dangerous,” Noem said. “They have an agenda to destroy us, just like the other terrorists we’ve dealt with for many, many years.”
The roundtable featured rightwing social media journalists such as Andy Ngo, Nick Sortor, Katie Daviscourt and others who cover leftwing protests.
Some of the groups Noem cited – Hamas, Hezbollah and Isis – are formally designated terrorist organizations that control territory, operate military wings, maintain command structures and have carried out mass casualty attacks including bombings, kidnappings and assassinations.
Extremism experts have long described antifa, by contrast, as having no centralized leadership, formal membership or organizational structure, and it has generally been described by federal law enforcement as a decentralized movement of activists who engage in protest activity, some of which has included property destruction and street violence.
The roundtable comes after Donald Trump signed an executive order in September designating antifa as a “domestic terrorist organization”.
Days before the announcement, Joe Biggs, a Proud Boys leader who was convicted and then pardoned for his role on January 6, posted on X: “Who’s ready to go ANTIFA hunting? Because I know a few guys.”
During Wednesday’s roundtable, the attorney general, Pam Bondi, sat beside Trump and repeated his condemnations of antifa. “This is not activism, it’s anarchy,” she said. “We can’t and we will not let masked terrorists burn our buildings, attack our law enforcement and intimidate our communities.”
Trump also listed examples of attacks against federal agents which he has attributed to antifa, and suggested that the man charged with shooting Charlie Kirk was a “a far-left extremist”. Law enforcement officials have not established a link between Tyler Robinson and any specific group.
“The epidemic of leftwing violence and antifa-inspired terror has been escalating for nearly a decade,” Trump said.
All of the witnesses who spoke during the roundtable were conservative influencers or partisan rightwing journalists, who all claimed that antifa was a terror organization without presenting any evidence.
