At a bizarre gathering in the White House on Wednesday, President Donald Trump and many of his top aides assembled a group of far-right activists and influencers to discuss the alleged horrors of antifa and what the administration will do about it. And they are going big.
Attorney General Pam Bondi pledged that the government will be “breaking down the organization brick by brick” to “destroy the organization from top to bottom.” FBI Director Kash Patel explained that the administration is taking “a whole-of-government approach” to antifa, deploying resources from multiple agencies. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem wanted everyone to understand the “network of antifa is just as sophisticated as MS-13, as [Tren de Aragua], as ISIS, as Hezbollah, as Hamas, as all of them. They are just as dangerous.”
Here’s the reality: “Antifa” is not a network, or a collective, or a syndicate. It has no headquarters, it holds no assets, and it has no members. It publishes no pamphlets, records no podcasts and sells no branded merch. It has no policy agenda or plan for a national takeover.
It is the most extensive government propaganda campaign since the George W. Bush administration’s effort to win support for a war on Iraq.
It is essentially an idea, one that begins in a place all Americans should support, but unfortunately don’t: opposition to fascism. Then there are a tiny number of (mostly young) people who take antifa to a different place — people who like to go to public gatherings of far-right groups and get into street fights. If a video of someone punching a white nationalist comes up on your social media feed, the one doing the punching probably calls themself antifa.
Yet it seems that in the imaginations of the president and his supporters, there must be a vast conspiracy behind antifa, one that involves huge sums of money and an intricate bureaucracy managing its many tendrils. That’s why the White House confab was filled with talk of the usual liberal suspects: billionaire George Soros, the Tides Foundation, the Democratic Socialists of America — any or all of them simply must be funding people in hoodies. Only a billion-dollar organization could mount a complex political scheme like getting into a shoving match with a Proud Boy. The administration has to follow the money — which apparently the Treasury Department is doing right now.
We know antifa’s arsenal is fearsome; as the White House proclaimed in a news release this week, “For years, an antifa-led hellfire has turned Portland into a wasteland of firebombs, beatings, and brazen attacks on federal officers and property.” At Wednesday’s meeting, Trump painted an even bleaker picture: “I don’t know what could be worse than Portland. You don’t even have stores anymore.” All evidence indicates that, in fact, Portland remains a city with stores.
As easy as it is to mock the president and his staff, they are attempting something quite serious: to convince the public that war must be waged against this imaginary enemy. It is the most extensive government propaganda campaign since the George W. Bush administration’s effort to win support for a war on Iraq.
The difference between that propaganda campaign and this one is that back then there were some true facts propping up the lies. There really was a country called Iraq, which really was led by a man named Saddam Hussein. He didn’t have weapons of mass destruction, but he was a brutal despot.
Because this imagined antifa is a phantom, the term becomes infinitely flexible. In this case, there is no antifa organization and no leaders to fight. But the fact that Trump’s version of antifa is imaginary makes it no different from other boogeymen in the history of American conservatism. From communist infiltrators in the McCarthy era to QAnon today, the far right loves a cabal so secret that a lack of evidence becomes the best evidence of all. Just as important, because this imagined antifa is a phantom, the term becomes infinitely flexible. If you are accused of being a member of the Audubon Society, when in fact you want nothing to do with those bird-huggers, you can rebut the assertion by pointing to the organization’s records. But if you are accused of being part of an imaginary conspiracy, how can you prove it is a lie? Because antifa is everywhere and nowhere, anyone and everyone could be antifa. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez? Antifa. Jan. 6 rioters? Actually antifa. Your neighbor who plays his music too loud? Definitely antifa. For all the buffoonery on display, the Trump administration is doing something sinister. Shortly after Trump issued an executive order declaring antifa a domestic terror organization, the White House issued a “national security presidential memorandum” on “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence.” According to the memo, “common threads animating this violent conduct include anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity; support for the overthrow of the United States Government; extremism on migration, race, and gender; and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.” These remarkably broad terms make it quite clear that the administration sees the war on antifa, at least in part, as a way to designate its political opponents as adjuncts to terrorism, then target them for official harassment. In other words, the war on antifa can, quite easily, become the justification for further steps toward actual fascism. But if you say that, you’re probably antifa.
Paul Waldman is a journalist and author focused on politics and culture. 
