Antifa is trouble, but not terrorism

Still, the local authorities that are contributing to the problem are also the best solution for it. In fact, Arreguin has the right idea when he says Antifa should be labeled a gang. Like many gangs, Antifa is less of a sophisticated criminal enterprise and more of an excuse for hooligans to make trouble. Maybe local police departments aren’t up to the task of combating them, but we won’t know until they stop appeasing them.

Meanwhile, officially designating Antifa a terrorist organization would most likely be opening a Pandora’s box (for reasons my National Review colleague Andrew McCarthy recently laid out in detail). There is a huge difference between countering foreign terrorists, who have no constitutional rights, and domestic ones. The federal government is constitutionally empowered to fight foreign threats. The states are supposed to fight crime, even domestic terrorist violence.

The groundswell behind the label “terrorist” for Antifa is a call to blur that distinction. Although treating American radicals and vigilantes the way we treat foreign members of the Islamic State or al-Qaeda might play well in certain corners of the populist Right these days, serious conservatives should be very skeptical about granting the federal government new police powers, which could be used to other ends in future administrations.