Under the leadership of President Donald Trump, the United States shifted its counterterrorism focus to the far-left. This included the designation of ANTIFA as a domestic terrorism organization in a September 2025 executive order, highlighting the push by the Trump administration to target the far-left. However, ANTIFA has no discernible leadership structure, organization, or official membership, rather being an anti-fascist ideology than an organization. ANTIFA’s designation stands on shaky ground as well as being difficult to enforce. There has been limited evidence to support the idea that ANTIFA poses a threat to the United States. While the effectiveness of this executive order can be debated, what is less difficult to dispute is how the executive order plays into the paranoid style of American politics that often can lead to the breakdown of democratic practices through the polarization of society and delegitimization of the opposition party. 

Hofstadter, in The Paranoid Style in American Politics, defines the paranoid style as the feeling of persecution and vast conspiracy, carried by a spokesman who finds that their nation, as well as others’, culture, and way of life is being threatened. They find that their actions and political passions are unselfish and patriotic. Additionally, they fear a vast, insidious, and effective network that works to carry out actions against the nation and its people. 

Trump’s political actions tend to mirror this paranoid style. The executive order states, “Antifa recruits, trains, and radicalizes young Americans to engage in this violence and suppression of political activity.” This, paired with the notion that ANTIFA does not have a legitimate structure or organization, fits into the paranoid style. By framing ANTIFA as an organized domestic terror threat, President Trump is fostering the perception of enemies within the United States, preventing democracy from functioning as it should through further polarization. 

Polarization can be created through the finding of others with similar political views, in turn making those views more extreme, or demonization of a group, pulling people into camps that are opposed to or support that group. Polarization gives rise to perceptions of mutual threat and reduces mutual toleration, especially if one side is portrayed as a terrorist organization. This increases the likelihood that polarization will take the form of affective polarization, or hate for the other side, highlighted in Iyengar, Lelkes, Levendusky, Malhotra, and Westwood’s The Origins and Consequences of Affective Polarization in the United States. Republican politicians may abandon forbearance in interactions with the Democratic Party, attempting to win at all costs to ensure that this domestic terror threat that has been tied to Democrats cannot threaten Americans, reshaping politics to be a fight between good and evil. With ANTIFA and Democrats being synonymous in the eyes of Republicans, there is the possibility that Democrats can be targeted on the basis of being terrorists.

President Trump and his Republican allies have consistently painted the Democratic Party and its members as illegitimate actors. Portraying Democrats as illegitimate hampers the view of the public that they can truly represent the people as confidence in the party is eroded. Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson attempted to portray members of the democratic party and those protesting the second Trump Administration as members of ANTIFA. In saying that those who are protesting the administration are members of ANTIFA, Republican leaders can be seen as attempting to equate ANTIFA to the Democratic Party. In equating the party to a domestic terrorist organization, this communicates to the President’s base, and Americans in general, that Democrats hold anti-American values. This highlights the paranoid style of politics, being oversuspicious of the Democrats’ true goals, and pushing a conspiracy that Democrats are out to harm America and Americans.

Casting ANTIFA, and Democrats, as enemies of the United States holds similarities to how communism, Islam, globalists, and the deep state have previously been portrayed as enemies of the United States: a threat coming from the inside. This would allow Trump to further coalesce and his base around an enemy that targets the way of life of Americans. The domestic terrorist organization designation is an attempt to further entrench a social conflict between the President’s base and those they see as  anti-American and part of the outgroup, Democrats. Social conflict is not something that can be easily mediated or compromised and is seen as more so as a  conflict between absolute good and absolute evil. 

This can further strengthen Donald Trump’s base, seeking to further cement the moralistic high ground his base rests on, reinforcing their imagined view of politics, pitting a morally pure or fully “unified people,” MAGA supporters, against those deemed morally inferior, which in this case are those they believe to be members of ANTIFA.  Sebastian Gorka, the senior director of counterterrorism on President Trump’s National Security Council has stated that there are no lone wolves in terrorist incidents, implying that there is an extensive network of people working against the United States. This establishes that there is an evil and unappeasable network of enemies that must be eliminated, further increasing polarization in the United States.

The designation of ANTIFA as a domestic terrorist organization highlights the paranoid style of governance, and how this style of governance can be used to erode democratic norms in the United States. Through tying the “organized domestic terror group” to the Democratic Party, the opposition can no longer be seen as legitimate and threatening to America and the American way of life. Mutual toleration, core to democracies around the globe, would be detrimental to the survivability of democratic norms, reframing politics as now a battle between good and evil, eroding that mutual toleration. Overall, the designation of ANTIFA as a domestic terrorist group holds serious concerns for the future of American democracy.