A “We the People” petition for the federal government to target the Antifa political movement has earned enough signatures to garner a response from the White House.
The petition, to label the loose collection of self-described anti-fascist groups as a terror organization, began Thursday and by Sunday had picked up 135,000 supporters.
“AntiFa has earned this title due to its violent actions in multiple cities and their influence in the killings of multiple police officers throughout the United States,” contends the petition. “It is time for the pentagon to be consistent in its actions – and just as they rightfully declared ISIS a terror group, they must declare AntiFa a terror group – on the grounds of principle, integrity, morality, and safety.”
The petition has the support of a number of gun rights organizations to include Open Carry Texas who argues Antifa groups want to “disarm opponents so that they can mob them and destroy them with violent crimes and intimidation.”
While the petition asks the “pentagon” to put the anti-fascist group in the same club as ISIS, it is the State Department that maintains the list of foreign terror groups while the FBI, which deals with domestic terrorism, maintains an open list of most-wanted domestic terrorists, not organizations. Those currently on the list are a mix of 1970s radicals and more recent animal rights and earth rights advocates wanted for a variety of crimes.
That’s not to say that the feds have not gone after some that associate with the Antifa movement. The Department of Justice filed charges against more than 200 rioters at various incidents that occurred during President Trump’s Inauguration, with some so-called “black bloc” members since entering guilty pleas and is seeking information on as many as 1.3 million visitors to a protest-organizing website.
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