Letter Bombs and Hammer Attacks—US Adds European Antifa Groups to Terror List

The new Foreign Terrorist Organization designations have ramifications for American-based Antifa groups.

An official U.S. terrorist list dominated by jihadist groups and a clutch of cartels has its first European additions in more than two decades: four Antifa groups.

Designating groups as foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs) empowers U.S. federal authorities to investigate the groups’ supporters, prosecute them, and seize their assets.

The European groups, which were added to the list on Nov. 20, include Italian anarchists who carried out a letter-bomb campaign against EU leaders, a German hammer-wielding gang accused of targeting right-wing party members, and two Greek anti-capitalist groups.

The designations reflect President Donald Trump’s commitment “to uproot Antifa’s campaign of political violence,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio wrote when announcing the designations on Nov. 13.

Short for “antifascist,” Antifa seeks to silence people whose viewpoints it defines as “fascist,” and vows to do so “by any means necessary”—a popular Antifa rallying cry.

Here is what to know about the four foreign groups and how, according to one former CIA operative, the designation helps the Trump administration confront Antifa on U.S. soil.

Italy, Home of ‘World’s Largest Anarchist Network’

One of the newly declared FTOs hails from Italy, where fascism originated under dictator Benito Mussolini in the 1920s.

The group is called the Informal Anarchist Federation, also known as the International Revolutionary Front.

The Informal Anarchist Federation “is likely the world’s largest anarchist network and the one that claims the highest number of attacks,” according to a March 2024 report published by the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism.

The group has claimed responsibility for attacks in Italy, Greece, Spain, Germany, the United Kingdom, Indonesia, Chile, Brazil, and Mexico, the report said.

Since 2003, the organization has committed violence, bombings, letter-bombs, and other attacks against places it deems “capitalist institutions,” the State Department said in a Nov. 13 fact sheet. Although it mostly operates in Italy, the group has “self-proclaimed affiliates across Europe, South America, and Asia,” the fact sheet said.

The Informal Anarchist Federation declares that “armed struggle” is necessary against nation-states and “The Fortress Europe,” according to the State Department.

In 2014, as Antifa was growing globally, West Point, America’s first military academy, published a profile of the Informal Anarchist Federation.

The report said the group served as a sign that Italy had become “the birthplace of a new threat that has spread to other countries,” the article said.

By then, the Informal Anarchist Federation had been responsible for “dozens of attacks” over a 25-year span in Italy and elsewhere—a trend that Italian authorities had “underestimated” partly because the attacks caused no fatalities, the West Point report said.

However, this type of “insurrectionary anarchism … has become the most dangerous form of domestic non-jihadist terrorism in the country,” the article said.

The Informal Anarchist Federation “has ideological and solidarity ties with Greek anarchist groups,” the report said.

By Janice Hisle and Savannah Hulsey Pointer

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