“I am pleased to inform our many U.S.A. Patriots that I am designating Antifa, A SICK, DANGEROUS, RADICAL LEFT DISASTER, AS A MAJOR TERRORIST ORGANIZATION,” he wrote on social media. There is no legal statute with which to declare antifa a “major terrorist organization.” Nor does antifa have a network of rich, shadowy benefactors who can be unmasked. (They asked that their name be withheld for fear of reprisals from the far right.) I got to know what antifa actually is over the past decade as a reporter covering the far right. Equating antifa with a “major terrorist organization,” as Trump has, then becomes an excuse for the right to target whomever it pleases, with both state persecution and vigilante violence.