US sanctions Italian hosting provider for encrypted email to Antifa and PKK

89 pointsposted 5 hours ago
by unfocso

59 Comments

hexator

4 hours ago

What the US government is doing here is a perversion of justice. Anyone running web services critical of those in control of the US government should be extremely concerned.

theultdev

4 hours ago

[flagged]

hexator

4 hours ago

If the US government can designate their ideological opponents as terrorists without due process or any real justification, then nobody is safe.

swerner

3 hours ago

They’ve been doing this since the post-9/11 DHS initiative, at least.

chaps

3 hours ago

That doesn't make it any less important to recognize when it happens.

tyrabound

3 hours ago

Yes, nobody is safe from the terrorist parasite that has a stranglehold on the whole west and operates out of the USA form its various operational control centers.

We crossed that threshold a long time ago, it's just becoming more and more apparent. It will get worse from here because we have crossed the event horizon.

theultdev

3 hours ago

I was against the Feds designating Juggalos as a "loosely-organized hybrid gang". That was ridiculous.

But this is not the same. Antifa leaders and cell members have been charged and convicted, getting caught coordinating riots.

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/leader-antifa-cell-members-no...

And we all saw the "summer of love" in 2020. Personally I want to see more accountability.

I know Antifa may be popular here, but those riots ruined businesses, got people killed, and caused an enormous amount of damage.

4MOAisgoodenuf

3 hours ago

Who is the leader of Antifa?

Does a charge and conviction mean that this action is good or morally justified? If so then your issue with the feds designating Juggalos as a hybrid gang would be contradicted.

This action follows the administration's established pattern of trying to tie political dissent in the US to unrelated foreign actors (often the Kurdish PKK) so that they can lay the legal footing to prosecute Americans as being actors under the control of "Foreign Terrorist Organizations"

theultdev

3 hours ago

That's a silly rubric. Loosely organized groups have cells with leaders, not a single one.

That specific Antifa chapter's cell leaders can be found in the link above.

The KKK didn't have a single leader either after WWII, it was distributed chapters. So does that mean they weren't a terrorist group anymore?

And the Juggalo fans didn't coordinate to go riot / cause violence, not the same as either of those.

4MOAisgoodenuf

3 hours ago

How is membership or leadership determined? How is a cell determined in this case?

In the case of the Klan (which you conveniently bracket to only after WW2) it, in fact was an organization with a single "Imperial Wizard" at the helm before being broken up in the 20's. The "distributed chapters" (themselves organizations with membership roles and defined leadership) were only "distributed" after the national organization was dissolved to bow out of a legal battle with the IRS.

There absolutely exist fans of ICP who have coordinated to cause violence, crime, and mayhem. (Though I don't believe that people should be prosecuted or persecuted for enjoying a goofy rap rock band)

text0404

3 hours ago

The leaders of the Klan are well known: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaders_of_the_Ku_Klux_Klan

theultdev

3 hours ago

That doesn't disagree with what I said.

After WWII they were distributed chapters (Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, Invisible Empire, Imperial Klans of America, National Knights, etc.)

Those later leaders are only leaders of that chapter/cell, not a single leader.

Distributing your hate does not make you immune is my point.

text0404

3 hours ago

> After WWII they were distributed chapters (Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, Invisible Empire, Imperial Klans of America, National Knights, etc.)

Right, terrorist groups with organizational structure and national leadership, spawned from the original KKK. We're confused about the national organization which you seem to be referring to, because "anti fascist" is not a group.

BryantD

2 hours ago

It’s the rubric the government is using here: Trump designated the mythical centralized organization as a terrorist threat.

MSFT_Edging

3 hours ago

It's laughable to call that an "antifa cell", especially as they're abusing terrorism charges to send someone away for life for moving zines.

We have white-nationalist groups actually organizing and training. Shipping in Khaki clad warriors in box trucks to shout slurs and intimidate people.

We have videos of said groups doing weapons training like the Al Qaeda training videos of the 2000s.

Antifa? Your primary source is one of the greatest abortions of justice we've seen this decade.

GaryBluto

2 hours ago

> they're abusing terrorism charges to send someone away for life for moving zines.

You can make anything sound idiotic if you simplify it enough. They're trying to send someone away for hiding evidence.

Using your logic you could say that someone arrested for shooting someone is being put away for moving their index finger.

mindslight

3 hours ago

> And we all saw the "summer of love" in 2020. Personally I want to see more accountability.

I presume you mean starting with accountability for the police riots? State organized mayhem is much more of a pressing problem than violence by individuals - it's exactly the coordination dynamic you've invoked, but at an even larger scale.

Witness: we already have straightforward avenues of accountability for individuals caught engaging in violent acts while protesting - they're simply crimes already written down, enforced, and prosecuted every day. While state-supported violence, even with open and shut video evidence (eg lines of police marching down a street and slashing every car's tires), gets handwaved away as some kind of perversely necessarily official action. The former is eminently legible to the justice system, while the latter is basically illegible. Never mind how the far right terrorist contingent has now found an official home in federal "law enforcement" where they're encouraged to summarily execute uppity women and 2A enthusiasts.

pastemato

4 hours ago

This is the same government that called Alex Pretti a terrorist after executing him in the street

truthseer

3 hours ago

[flagged]

ceejayoz

3 hours ago

> Certainly not an angel

If that's punishable by death, there'll be about ten people left. And Dolly died yesterday.

guillermin

3 hours ago

sph

an hour ago

Damn I had my first email account with them more than 25 years ago. Nice to see they are still around fighting the good fight.

The US govt can go fuck itself, with their agenda in which antifascism has become the big bad monster to replace the evil terrorists of the Bush era. Fight against fascism is still a point of pride in Italy.

user

3 hours ago

[deleted]

edelbitter

4 hours ago

Why US financial sanctions against an EU-based non-profit? Making it harder to accept money from the US does not seem like quite the right tool. Are they known to be primarily sponsored by US individuals, or depending on other service providers with US presence?

eesmith

3 hours ago

It means no use of Visa or American Express bank cards, which are US companies.

I think SWIFT transactions are under US control.

No use of Apple, Google, Amazon, AirBnB, Uber, or other US-based services.

Eg, "Canadian judge Kimberly Prost is unable to use credit cards or access everyday services in what she calls an attack on the independence of the judiciary " - https://www.irishtimes.com/world/us/2025/12/12/its-surreal-u...

angeldimitrov94

3 hours ago

As long as the same lens is applied equally to far-right and white supremacist groups, then this is fine.

This question is rhetorical with this administration, however.

shimman

3 hours ago

You know you don't have to always accept government overreach under the guise of "fairness." It's not fair, it was never fair, why are you expecting it to be fair?

Just look at how the US treats "ecoterrorists" versus white supremacist; or if you want historical examples look at how the FBI treated labor groups versus fascists ones in the 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s (no need to worry about the decades after, they killed enough leaders to stop leftwing voices in the US).

like_any_other

2 hours ago

Labor groups up to and including in the 60s were fiercely anti-immigration [1], and wanted to expand laws like the Chinese Exclusion act. You would call them white supremacist today. But as you say, the FBI did its job, and eventually the unions accepted immigration, just like capital wanted. Now Amazon can release a study showing diversity impedes unions [2], and Wikipedia helpfully summarizes it to give the opposite impression [3], while the FBI can better spend its time investigating "It's okay to be white" as terrorism [4], libeling whites with fabricated extremism cases [5], and taking instruction from the ADL [6].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_policies_of_Americ...

[2] Whole Foods' heat map says lower rates of racial diversity increase unionization risks - https://www.businessinsider.com/whole-foods-tracks-unionizat...

[3] Factors including racial diversity, proximity to other unions, poverty levels in the surrounding community, and calls to the NLRB were named as contributors to "unionization risk." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Amazon

[4] Ohio universities involve FBI in investigation of ‘It’s okay to be white’ and white nationalist group’s postings on campus - https://www.thefire.org/news/ohio-universities-involve-fbi-i...

[5] https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/sep/15/biden-accus...

[6] Did you know ADL trains every new FBI agent on their role as protectors of the American people and the Constitution? - https://x.com/ADL/status/472384478464061441

wat10000

an hour ago

"You would call [groups from a time when white supremacy was widespread and socially acceptable] white supremacist today" is not the gotcha you seem to think it is.

comrade1234

3 hours ago

Antifa to me has always been the guys who beat up skinheads. I wonder who they're emailing?

BrandoElFollito

3 hours ago

While they are not directly in trouble, this is yet one more reason to have a sovereign financial system in Europe. Especially a direct competitor for the credit card networks (VISA, Mastercard) and SWIFT. These are the immediate threats.

Luker88

4 hours ago

This means that all involved will have their google/apple/whatever account blocked and revoked, correct?

No more services from the USA.

Their websites seems to be based on gandi.net, and this document is threatening secondary sanctions. Will be interesting to check the fallout.

I hope the guys will be able to scramble and move registrars and backup all their data from any service they use personally.

Good luck.

tyrabound

4 hours ago

The far more worrying development is that Tyrant Trump has declared the Palestine Action organization an official terrorist organization, to whatever degree it is an organization at all. Have there actually been threats or acts of violence with political objectives or are we just now calling everything the ruling maniacs don't like a terrorist, as I predicted before the "patriot" act was magically pulled out of a desk on 9/12 and rammed through congress in 6 weeks, before the dust had even settled over the rubble of the twin towers?

That should worry anyone, regardless of whether you agree with them or not unless they have perpetrated some kind of violent acts to scare people in pursuit of political aims like the US government. Trump may only be able to be a Tyrant for about 31 more months at best unless he goes full tilt, but the precedent he is setting will be used against any and all civic and resistance organizations that the ruling maniacs don't like in the future too.

I do not say this lightly, but everyone should be getting serious about what their plans will be when tyranny goes full mask off in the USA and your house and your land and your stuff all the sudden is said to belong to someone else and if you oppose that, you are a terrorist whose children deserve to be shot in the head by government snipers as the try to get water so they don't die of dehydration. No one ever thinks it will affect them, but you are already in the cage, the door is just not closed yet and it's clad in a pleasant facade. What happens when the psychopathic Epstein clan is facing total loss of power because the bond market has collapsed from their evisceration of all trust in the USA and they send their police and military goons after you as you try to scrounge for food to feed your family like in Palestine/gaza? You are the Gazans of tomorrow, you just don't know it yet.

vablings

3 hours ago

I have been a personal victim to PA's violence and attacks. I could explain more details but essentially, they caused a bunch of damage and assaulted some employees of a workplace simply due to the fact we sold a piece of equipment to our middle eastern distributor that was going to a non-military Israeli company.

The rest of the designations are bullshit

mindslight

4 hours ago

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

But at this point "To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world" is seemingly more relevant.

downrightmike

4 hours ago

Boomers really hate their parents. The Greatest Generation didn't raise them well

tclancy

4 hours ago

I’d do my Gen X duty and trash them both, but we are turning into old people every time I look around. Not just literally, but the mindset. Our mating call is “We drank from hoses and we survived!”

That said, I think a true Greatest Generation would not consist so heavily of guys who sit in the car while their wives grocery shop.

deepfriedchokes

3 hours ago

They don’t hate their parents. Their parents defeated fascism but brought some of the war home with them.

Emotional suffering is a memetic disease, an information disease spread by behavior; it makes people sick. The output of one integrated system becomes the input of another, like LLM distillation. Think of a war, or any emotional state, as a packet of information, that spreads like a virus, and infects and modifies the structure of the limbic system, thus transferring the emotional state, the structure of the limbic system, or LLM, from one system to another.

War made the Greatest Generation sick, and because they didn’t get treatment after fighting the sickness of fascism, they brought it home and it made their kids sick. When people are emotionally sick they don’t feel good, and that makes them emotionally inward focused, to the point they don’t have the capacity for much empathy towards others. This makes people appear selfish. It made a whole generation selfish. Because the virus affects the mind, it affects perception of reality and self; people don’t realize they’re sick.

Same thing is happening in Palestine; a group of people who were treated inhumanely are treating another group of people inhumanely. It’s a sickness. An actual sickness.

tyrabound

3 hours ago

The Greatest Generation was just flattery propaganda that you use to manipulate people. It'a a bit complicated, but Boomers didn't actually have real functional control over the actions of the USA until about the mid 90s when they ascended to business, political control, and electoral impact. Yes, even though their parents were really The Most Awful Generation, the boomers kind of are left the useful idiots holding the bag in many ways as they were majorly psyopped all their life to similar but different degrees and for different purposes as the millennial, gen z, and Gen Alpha were abused and brainwashed through social media and "TV".

What you ascribe to boomers is really the fault of the most awful generation. For context, the oldest boomers were only 22 during the civil rights era and the youngest were 12. You were never told that and you never noticed it, did you?

tzs

3 hours ago

Boomers were split nearly evenly between Trump and Harris in 2024. Gen X were the ones that went strongly for Trump (around 54% to 44%).

Millennials were for Harris (51-47%), and Gen Z were for Harris as strongly as Gen X were for Trump (54-43%).

What did it for Trump was voter turn out.

Boomers were around 50 million voters with around 75% turnout, but because they only favored Trump by a percent or two they only gave Trump a small plus of around 750k votes.

Gen X had around 70% turnout for their 50-55 million voters, and with their strong support of Trump they have him a big plus of around 3710k.

Millennials had 60-75 million voters but around 60% turnout. The lower turnout cut their voting numbers to not much more than Gen X which combined with their Harris support not being as strong as Gen X's Trump support means their Harris plus was about 1510k.

Gen Z 40-50 million voters both only around 50% turnout. Their strong Harris support somewhat made up for that and they gave her a plus of around 2470k.

If Gen Z had merely upped their turnout to 60%, like Millennials, that would have turned the election around.

lantry

4 hours ago

[flagged]

mindslight

4 hours ago

The important part here would seem to be that we're talking about communications hosting. Why would we want to propagate a framing created by a far right terrorist network, just because they've managed to capture the bully pulpit? It's not required to pick any extremist organizations to support, you know.

stackedinserter

4 hours ago

I was told that there's no such thing as Antifa.

ceejayoz

3 hours ago

The definition of "antifa" is broad enough to compass Dwight D. Eisenhower.

blitzar

2 hours ago

There are certainly people who are Anti-Fascist in the world.

BryantD

4 hours ago

Ha ha, but no, you weren’t. You were told that there’s no such thing as an organized centralized group called Antifa. You were told that it’s an ideological approach to fighting fascism, not a terrorist organization. You were told that labeling antifa as a terrorist organization was going to be an excuse for bringing sanctions against anyone Trump’s administration happens to dislike.

And all of that is true.

theultdev

4 hours ago

I believe the talking point was "antifa is a myth", quite a few politicians parroted that.

And being a loosely organized group does not grant you some sort of protection from your actions.

hexator

4 hours ago

It's not a loosely organized group, it's a label applied (by the right) to many different groups with little to no coordination operating in entirely different places

BryantD

3 hours ago

Parent comment was flagged but fair point. There’s nobody calling the global shots. I wouldn’t say “little to no coordination” but I think I’m splitting hairs.

swerner

3 hours ago

It may have a different connotation in the US than in Europe. In US media I’ve only heard the term being used recently, in Europe it’s been around for decades.

In Europe, “Antifascist” is a label that people groups use to describe themselves, similar to how other describe themselves as patriot or pacifist. Someone carrying an Antifa flag at a protest is maybe comparable to someone carrying a Gadsden flag at a right wing rally.

hexator

3 hours ago

Yeah, basically this. People have been calling themselves Antifascist, but only the right-wing calls it "Antifa". Literally anyone carrying a sign at a protest that says "Reject Fascism" is an antifascist. Those are the people the US government is calling terrorists.

BryantD

2 hours ago

No, they did not. Jerry Nadler is often cited as an example here and that’s wrong; what he actually said is that it was a myth that Antifa provocateurs were behind the ongoing violent protests in Portland. Not the same thing.

Don’t make vague accusations. If you have real cites, provide them. And your claim is “quite a few” so pointing at one candidate somewhere isn’t gonna do it.

As far as your second paragraph goes, I didn’t say that anyone should be protected from the consequences of their actions so that portion of your comment is irrelevant.