Foreign Terror Designation Could Boost US Efforts To Dismantle Antifa

Authored by Darlene McCormick Sanchez via The Epoch Times,

With the Trump administration intensifying investigations into the overseas operations and financial networks of far-left extremist group Antifa, debate has sharpened over whether the group should be designated a foreign terrorist organization.

President Donald Trump designated Antifa as a domestic terrorist organization in a Sept. 22 executive order, 12 days after conservative influencer Charlie Kirk was slain at an event at Utah Valley University. The alleged gunman left behind bullet casings with writing on them, including an unspent one that read, “Hey, fascist! Catch!”

The shooting drew fresh attention to the so-called anti-fascist movement and Antifa.

​During an Oct. 8 roundtable discussion with journalists who spoke about being assaulted by members of Antifa, Trump reacted favorably when a reporter asked whether it would be appropriate to designate the organization as a foreign terror group, similar to Mexican drug cartels and transnational gangs.

​“Let’s get it done,” Trump said.

White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller called it a “very valid step” because of Antifa’s foreign ties.

​Designating a group as a foreign terrorist organization equips the federal government with greater authority to conduct international investigations, seize assets, and pursue criminal charges, providing more options beyond domestic measures.

​Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) said he believes that a foreign terrorist designation for Antifa is necessary, and he recently wrote to Secretary of State Marco Rubio about Antifa’s overseas activities.

​“They have an international network of safe houses. Antifa is not an idea, it’s an organization,” Schmitt told The Epoch Times.

“I think if we’re serious about taking on political violence ... they’re the tip of the spear, so I think it’s absolutely necessary.”

Rubio’s office did not immediately respond to The Epoch Times’ request for comment, citing the ongoing government shutdown.

Antifa ‘Myth’

Critics argue that Trump’s actions against Antifa represent government overreach, as well as sparking a larger debate about using terror designations to address domestic dissent.

Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), ranking member of the Committee on Homeland Security, called it a mistake to name Antifa as a domestic terrorist group. Thompson said in a Sept. 22 statement that doing so “serves no purpose other than an excuse for the Trump administration to stifle dissent.”

Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) speaks during a hearing with the heads of the FBI, Homeland Security, and the National Counterterrorism Center, in Washington on Nov. 15, 2023. Thompson said labeling Antifa a domestic terrorist group was a mistake and

​Some Democrats have downplayed Antifa’s involvement in riots and damage to property, suggesting that Antifa does not exist. In 2020, Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) commented on rioting involving Antifa in Portland, Oregon.

​“That’s a myth that’s being spread only in Washington D.C.,” Nadler said in response to a reporter who asked whether the lawmaker disavows the violence by Antifa.

​Former FBI Director Christopher Wray, who served under both Trump and President Joe Biden, described Antifa as an “ideology or a movement,” not a centralized organization, during a 2020 congressional hearing.

Rutgers University ​assistant teaching professor Mark Bray, author of “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook,” wrote in his book that even as times have changed, Antifa’s commitment “to stamp out fascism by any means necessary” remains intact and connects the movement to its earliest origins.

Antifa originated under the Soviet Union and functioned as the violent wing of Germany’s Communist Party to target political rivals. The group labeled its enemies as “fascists.”

“Only mass antifascism, legal or not, can save us,” Bray wrote on the Bluesky social media platform on Oct. 4.

Antifa members often wear “black bloc,” or all black clothing and masks, to remain anonymous and avoid prosecution for crimes such as vandalism and assault, he said.

Antifa protesters carrying communist flags march past the Holocaust Memorial while demonstrating against gatherings of neo-Nazis nearby in the city center in Berlin on March 20, 2021. Sean Gallup/Getty Images

Overseas Operation

In his Oct. 9 letter to Rubio, Schmitt pointed out that Antifa is “not a collection of independent domestic actors” but an international network.

​“I write to you today to urge you to designate the foreign networks, organizations, and financiers that enable and support Antifa operations as Foreign Terrorist Organizations,” Schmitt wrote.

​His letter states that Antifa cells appear decentralized but coordinate and share tactics and funding streams.

​“The political violence that Antifa-linked terrorists perpetrate on American streets is inextricably tied to this broader international system,” he wrote.

In Canada, a court confirmed ties between Antifa and the ​Canadian Anti-Hate Network group, according to Schmitt’s letter.

The “Stop Cop City” riots in Atlanta in 2023 also involved international coordination, according to Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr. He told Fox News that some of the militants arrested—who allegedly threw Molotov cocktails, fireworks, and rocks at police—were from France and Canada.

​“This is a national, an international group of people that are organized to come to our state to undermine a public safety training center,” Carr said.

Protesters march during an anti-fascism demonstration in Barcelona on Oct. 12, 2017. Jorge Guerrero/AFP via Getty Images

​Ammon Blair, intelligence consultant and senior fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation’s Secure and Sovereign Texas Initiative, said Trump needs to designate Antifa a foreign terrorist organization in order to dismantle it.

​Such a designation allows intelligence agencies to gather information abroad, because those agencies cannot target U.S. citizens domestically, he said. It would also allow the government to cut off funding and material support for terrorism.

Blair said Antifa members and communist groups are agitating for ​“a color revolution” to destabilize Western countries. Color revolutions use grassroots mobilization, protests, and civil disobedience to topple governments.

“They think the oppression itself is our constitutional republic,” he told The Epoch Times.

Internationally, militant anti-fascists have been involved in arson, bombings, and assassinations in Latin America and Europe, according to a 2021 report from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies titled “Behind the Black Bloc: An Overview of Militant Anarchism and Anti-Fascism.”

​Some European countries, such as Hungary and the Netherlands, supported Trump’s move to designate Antifa as a domestic terrorist group.

​Tom Vandendriessche, a Belgian politician and member of the European Parliament, has been an outspoken critic of Antifa in Europe and wants a terrorist designation there as well.

​“We must designate Antifa as a terrorist organization, expose its financiers, and dismantle its support networks. [Seventy-nine] Members of the European Parliament support my resolution,” he wrote in an X post this month.

Antifa members gather to demonstrate following the announcement of the results of the first round of the presidential election, in Nantes, France, on April 23, 2017. Jean-sebastien Evrard/AFP via Getty Images

Follow the Money

​Blair said funding to Antifa is funneled through nongovernmental organizations and crowdfunding sites, which are harder to track.

​“It’s a clever way to mask donations,” he said.

​One international funding organization called the International Anti-Fascist Defence Fund (IAFD), a spinoff of Antifa International Collective, stated that it seeks to make funding “accessible to all anti-fascists around the world.”

​​“Over the last 12 months, we’ve intervened nine times to assist 52 anti-fascists in Finland, France, Germany, the UK, and the US,” the group’s annual report reads.

​In a September blog post, the group reported making a donation to “community activists” involved in what officials described as an officer ambush outside a Texas Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in July.

An Alvarado Police Department officer was shot in the neck during the incident but survived.

Ten people were charged with the attempted murder of a police officer. Two alleged members of a Texas Antifa cell were charged with providing material support to terrorists. It marked the first terrorism-related charges brought against people allegedly linked to the network.

IAFD made a $5,050 donation to the GiveSendGo account for protesters at the Texas ICE facility, which has raised more than $45,000 as of Oct. 28.

Antifa members and counter protesters gather during a No-To-Marxism rally in Berkeley, Calif., on Aug. 27, 2017. Amy Osborne/AFP via Getty Images

​Another active funding group with alleged Antifa ties is Germany’s Red Aid, which ​German domestic intelligence calls an extremist legal aid group. The group supports people who fight “fascism” and oppose what they consider government oppression.

​The group, rooted in the German Communist Party, which was banned by the Nazis in 1933, claims 9,500 members, including anti-fascists. In 2017, Red Aid reported paying more than $441,000 in support for left-wing activists.

Blair contended that governments that ignore ideological threats risk allowing movements such as Antifa to gain momentum.

“Governments almost always act too late against revolutionary movements and insurgencies,” he said.

Tyler Durden Thu, 10/30/2025 - 06:30

7 Powerful Strategies From The Great Philosophers For A Better Life

Authored by Jonathan Millimore via The Epoch Times,

Fifteen years ago, I lost a job.

The timing was bad. My wife and I had just purchased our first home, and we were expecting our first child.

As editor of a small publication, I had refused to spike a story we were set to publish (it involved questionable political dealings of a prominent politician). Spiking the story would have been easy, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. It felt wrong. So I prepared a resignation letter, hoping it wouldn’t come to that. (It did.)

Losing one’s job is rarely a satisfying occasion. But for me, it was. For one, the move turned out to be very good for me professionally. More importantly, I had stood for something. This made me proud—after the sting wore off.

1. Do the Right Thing

Though I didn’t realize it at the time, the episode was pivotal in my character development. The great Roman thinker Cicero believed that doing the right thing in the face of consequences is an essential part of virtue.

“He who sacrifices his duty to expediency is like one who cuts down the ship’s mast to escape a storm,” Cicero (106–43 B.C.) wrote in “On Duties.” “He is saved for the moment, but shipwrecked forever.”

The moral is simple: On important things, stand firm on principle, even if it costs you.

Here are six more strategies from great philosophers that can help you build a better life.

2. Rule Your Inner Life, Not Other People

Plato (428–347 B.C.) once said that the “first and greatest victory is to conquer yourself.” The Greek philosopher said it was the most “shameful and vile” of things to allow your inner desires to rule you.

Epictetus, writing 500 years later, urged people to focus energy inward. He believed happiness comes from moderating desires and choosing pleasures that are not enslaving. He wisely saw this as a path to freedom, both inward and outward. After all, a person who commands himself cannot be easily commanded by others.

Many people today focus their energy on trying to fix the world while neglecting their own inner life. This is folly. Conquer yourself first. Just remember, it’s not as easy as it sounds.

C.S. Lewis wrote in “Mere Christianity”: “No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good.”

A woman meditates in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Nov. 7, 2023. Oleksii Pidsosonnyi/The Epoch Times

3. Value Work and Take Pleasure In It

Many postmodern thinkers see work as degrading, coercive, and alienating.

That’s not just a bleak view of work—it’s a false one. Many of us have experienced not just the material fruits of work (a paycheck) but the less tangible fulfillment it offers. As a young man, I worked as a waiter, a roofer, and a garbage collector—jobs some call demeaning or “exploitative.” I don’t want to romanticize those jobs—they were hard—but I gained more than money from each of them. Work, with the proper mindset, is one of the surest paths to self-improvement. It is also part of human nature, when done freely.

“It is the natural desire of every man to better his condition when he is secure of enjoying the fruits of his own labour,” philosopher Adam Smith observed in “The Wealth of Nations.”

Smith saw the dignity and independence that work offers. Creating value builds both character and community, and it is one of the truest expressions of human liberty.

A waiter works at a restaurant in Tijuana, Mexico, on July 5, 2024. Guillermo Arias/AFP via Getty Images

4. Pursue Your Own Happiness

Oscar Wilde once observed, “Unselfishness is letting other people’s lives alone, not interfering with them.”

The quote puts the individual in his proper place and reminds us of something important: You are the one in charge of your life. Not the tribe. Not the state. In a free society, individuals decide what they want and value. This is not “selfishness.” It’s a social good. The philosopher John Stuart Mill observed that society flourishes when people are free to choose their own actions and pursue their own dreams.

“In proportion to the development of his individuality, each person becomes more valuable to himself, and is therefore capable of being more valuable to others,” Mill wrote in “On Liberty.”

Choosing one’s own path—“the pursuit of happiness,” in Thomas Jefferson’s immortal words—is central to human dignity and flourishing. Don’t let anyone choose yours, but choose wisely and accept the responsibility that comes with that freedom.

5. Cultivate Virtue as a Habit (Especially Humility)

Aristotle believed that virtue was not something rulers could impose. In fact, virtue requires choice. He also said virtue is demonstrated and developed by our actions.

“We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts,” the philosopher wrote in “Nicomachean Ethics.”

There’s a lot of confusion over virtue today. Many would have you think that your beliefs make you a virtuous person. Nonsense. Virtue is attained. We become virtuous not through belief but through practice. So dedicate yourself to the four cardinal virtues—prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance—and don’t forget to include humility, which Saint Augustine called “the foundation of all the other virtues.”

6. Face Death to Live Fully

The Roman philosopher Seneca (4 B.C.–A.D. 65) once said that the tragedy of life isn’t that it’s short, “but that we waste much of it. … So we must prepare for death every day.”

The words might sound macabre, but this is good advice. It’s easy to forget, but death is part of life. We don’t just lose loved ones along our way; we, too, will depart this earth. Writing in the journal First Things, filmmaker Caylan Ford said facing this reality comes with benefits.

“Awareness of death humbles us in our vanity, our hubris, and our contempt for others, and it dispels any illusions that we are in control of our fates,” she wrote.

Like many Greek thinkers, Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius believed it was irrational to fear death, which was the most natural of all things. Plato, meanwhile, tells us that Socrates went to his grave cheerfully despite his unjust death sentence.

“I think that a man who has truly spent his life in philosophy is probably right to be of good cheer in the face of death,” Socrates says in Plato’s “Phaedo.”

By facing death and accepting mortality, you learn how to live more fully—and more wisely.

Budimir Jevtic/Shutterstock

7. Wake Up Right

My pastor says the first thing he does in the morning is get on his knees and pray. It’s a habit I’ve tried to adopt, but with little success. I share the anecdote for a reason: Everyone has heard the idiom about “getting up on the wrong side of the bed.” It turns out that how (and when) we get out of bed matters.

It’s a cliché, but getting up early is important. There are clear benefits to rising early, including lower risk of depression. But how we get up matters almost as much as when. Marcus Aurelius thought it was so important that he prepared himself daily.

“When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people I deal with today will be meddling ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly. They are like this because they can’t tell good from evil,” he wrote in “Meditations.”

Humans need sleep, but having the discipline to rise each morning and devote yourself—in mind and spirit—is important. As a father of three, I can attest that being present in the morning with one’s children—making them breakfast, getting them dressed, having them prepared for their day—is essential for a functioning family.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.

Tyler Durden Thu, 10/30/2025 - 05:45

EU's Former Border Chief Said Commissioner Pressured Him To Embrace Open Borders

Via Remix News,

Former Frontex chief and National Rally MEP Fabrice Leggeri has spoken about how the European Union elite exerted immense pressure on him when he tried to defend EU borders against mass migration, including a key commissioner who claimed it was his job to “welcome migrants.”

The Frontex Fundamental Rights Office has gradually expanded significantly.

In 2020 and 2021, Leggeri became the target of political attacks from the European Commission, led by Commissioner Ylva Johansson of the socialist Swedish Workers’ Party.

“When I looked through her CV before our first meeting, I thought: ‘She’s probably impossible to work with.’ But she was a commissioner and had real influence,” said the Frenchman. “[…] At our first meeting, I explained to her what we were doing – developing a European border and coast guard, with uniforms and weapons, and why we were experiencing some delays. She interrupted me and said: ‘You don’t need weapons and uniforms.’ Because, as she said, the role of the border guard is to welcome migrants,” Leggeri reported. 

He also said that Johansson threatened him twice, telling him: “Like it or not, your job is to welcome migrants.”

Leggeri was subjected to pressure for attempting to fulfill Frontex’s mandate – supporting member states in managing the EU’s external borders and combating cross-border crime, including illegal migration. 

The MEP, now a member of the Patriots for Europe group, shared the details with Ewa Zajączkowska-Hernik, a member of the Confederation’s European Parliament, according to the Do Rzezcy news portal.

Leggeri explained that initially, the European Commission showed some support for Frontex’s actions, but at the same time, it was increasingly pressured by the proliferation of pro-immigration NGOs. 

Their “activists,” calling themselves “defenders of fundamental rights,” gradually attempted to “advise” and “consult” Frontex against counteracting the influx of illegal migrants. They recommended, for example, busing illegal immigrants from the Belarusian-Lithuanian border to Lithuania and Poland. 

Therefore, Leggeri advised the Polish authorities against using Frontex’s assistance.

“It was October 2019. That’s when I felt real pressure, political hostility towards the very idea of ​​border management. Previously, the idea was to create a kind of European border guard to support national border services. But from the moment Johansson arrived, various organized actions began against me and Frontex itself,” Leggeri said. He added that George Soros’ Open Society Foundation and some left-wing media outlets were involved.

As he explained, Johansson and Soros’ operatives worked to take over Frontex from within and reinforce left-wing NGO activists who would ensure the entry of illegal migrants into European countries. The idea was to create a command structure parallel to that of the member states, in order to paralyze border defenses against illegal aliens. This selected staff, so-called “fundamental rights controllers” and “independent officers,” went into the field, including to Lithuania, and began intimidating member states’ border guards by claiming that the orders issued by their superiors were allegedly illegal.

Read more here...

Tyler Durden Thu, 10/30/2025 - 05:00

Where The World Eats The Most (And Least) Meat

Which countries eat the most meat?

As Statista's Katharina Buchholz details below, according to UN Food and Agriculture Organization data reported by website World Population Review, the United States, Argentina and Australia are in the top of the global meat-eating league with more than 110 kg consumed per capita in 2022.

You will find more infographics at Statista

Countries which top 100 kg of meat consumed per person and year also include Mongolia, Spain and Israel.

While wealthier countries tend to eat more meat, the status of meat in local cuisine also plays a major role in consumption patterns.

The least meat in the world is eaten in Africa as well as in South Asia - due to meat being unaffordable for many in the regions, cultural factors or a mix of both.

While India posted no data for 2022, it was also among those consuming the least meat in previous years, together with Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Bangladesh.

The economic and supply struggles in conflict regions are also visible on the map, with very little meat consumed in Syria and Yemen. This also applies to North Korea.

Studies, like this landmark release by Nature in 2018, have found that Western countries would have to reduce their meat intake by 90 percent to limit climate change to acceptable levels.

To ensure that nutritional needs continue to be met with reduced meat production, the survey recommends increasing the consumption of beans and other pulses to create a climate-friendly protein supply.

Good luck with that!

Tyler Durden Thu, 10/30/2025 - 04:15