Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s government launched a continentwide manhunt when a group of European antifascists attacked a neo-Nazi rally three years ago.

Orbán, though, showed no such appetite for cracking down on the annual fascist rally, which this February drew attendees sporting SS patches, swastikas, and the “Totenkopf” death’s head symbol — all under the watchful eye of Hungarian police.

The aggressive response to antifascist activists, compared to the kid-gloves treatment of neo-Nazi demonstrators, has roiled European politics for years.

On Thursday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio joined the fray, inserting the U.S. into the debate by declaring the antifascist group that attacked the 2023 rally a terrorist organization.

Though the designation is aimed at foreign groups, Rubio said that he was acting in accordance with President Donald Trump’s National Security Presidential Memorandum-7, or NSPM-7, regarding purported “domestic” terrorists.

The terror designation will cut off the small Antifa Ost group, and three others designated by Rubio on Thursday, from raising funds in the U.S. It could also imperil American antifascist groups with civil and criminal allegations of “material support” for terrorism, a civil rights lawyer warned.

“The clever way to go about it for them is to designate some foreign organization, because a foreign organization can be designated and there is almost no due process,” said Shane Kadidal, a lawyer at the Center for Constitutional Rights. “Then, you go after the U.S. groups for supposedly coordinating their political messages with the messages of the foreign groups.”

© The Intercept