How Trump cut antifa’s global leftist lifeline — and struck a blow for democracy

Left-wing terrorism is a serious problem in the United States, though for political reasons it doesn’t receive anything like the attention right-wing violence gets.

For example, when most people think of violence connected to abortion, they imagine attacks on abortion clinics — yet lately pro-abortion extremists have been firebombing crisis pregnancy centers across the country.

These centers help women who want to have their babies or who are undecided about having an abortion: Women who are making a choice, just not the choice supposedly “pro-choice” abortion advocates find acceptable.

So a group calling itself “Jane’s Revenge,” named for the “Jane Roe” of Roe v. Wade, has declared war on anyone who might choose life.

The left-wing Guardian newspaper documented how “pro-choice militants” conducted terroristic attempts at intimidation from New York and North Carolina to Wisconsin, Texas and Washington state in recent years.

“The methods have been extreme,” the report noted; “vandals have thrown molotov cocktails, committed arson, damaged property and made threats.”

Jane’s Revenge issued a statement demanding “anti-choice establishments” shut down in 30 days or face further violence.

That was in 2022 — yet the group continued operating, until its website went dark just days ago thanks to President Donald Trump’s crackdown on terrorist infrastructure.

Jane’s Revenge and various other radical organizations, including “antifa” groups, were part of a network relying on web services provided by Italy’s “Autistici/Inventati,” or A/I Collective.

According to the State Department, the A/I Collective “builds and operates the digital infrastructure for violent antifa cells and other far-left militants across the world.”

It provides technology “designed to support the operations of far-left terrorist networks, built to enable them to organize, recruit, communicate, disseminate propaganda, share target information and tactics, and carry out violent attacks — all while remaining anonymous, untraceable and beyond the reach of the law.”

The collective has been facilitating leftist provocations for years.

But on Aug. 26 the State Department struck back, officially deeming the A/I Collective a “specially designated global terrorist.”

The designation means sanctions can be imposed on domestic individuals and financial institutions that do business with the foreign group, as well as restricting any of the collective’s assets that are under American jurisdiction.

Results were immediate: Radical sites shut down.

“Antifascism and anticapitalism are not terrorism,” the collective complained in a media statement. “Protesting is not terrorism.”

Yet all too often, it is: Groups like Jane’s Revenge consider terrorism a legitimate form of protest.

And antifa organizations specialize in using protests as cover for carrying out acts of mayhem.

Indeed, that’s their grand strategy — to tear down American society, which is capitalist and “fascist” in the left’s eyes, by exploiting the freedoms our “capitalist” Constitution protects.

Legend has it Lenin once said capitalists would sell communists the very rope they would use to hang them.

Today’s militant left is counting on capitalists and constitutionalists to provide them the legal protections they need to incite and perpetrate violence.

But the Trump administration refuses to play along.

The State Department’s action is long overdue: Americans should not have had to wait for a Republican administration like this one before government acts to dismantle the infrastructure that supports intimidation and violence.

Foreign interests like the A/I Collective are often suppliers of that infrastructure.

America’s domestic extremists are not simply isolated local loonies who spring up at random in our own communities — they’re connected to and coordinated with international networks.

The networks encourage cross-pollination and collaboration.

A/I Collective, the State Department notes, provides services to European “anarchist cells responsible for sabotaging rail systems across France, Italy, Germany and the Netherlands” as well as to the domestic “anarchist cell” that waged a “violent campaign to prevent the construction of a law enforcement training center” in Atlanta, Ga.

The violent left is a transnational movement, and Trump is right to see it in the same light as other networks that support or engage in terrorism.

Domestic sites and groups using A/I Collective resources have published calls for “direct action” against US immigration laws — and the officers responsible for enforcing them.

That includes publishing pamphlets urging activists to shine laser pointers at Customs and Border Protection helicopters, intending to blind pilots and potentially make them crash.

Other sites “dox” ICE agents, providing personal information on immigration-enforcement officers to allow activists to harass them at home — or to firebomb their homes, if they take inspiration from groups like Jane’s Revenge.

This is not protest, and it’s not certainly not democratic: These are attempts by a radical fringe to do through intimidation and violence what they can’t do at the ballot box.

Going after the foreign enablers of far-left violence and threats is a first, commonsense step in defending the very principle of self-government.

Daniel McCarthy is the editor of Modern Age: A Conservative Review.