Blanket accusation of terrorism

The Trump administration accuses the Italian internet collective Autistici/Inventati of supporting terrorism.

The blanket sanctions imposed against the anti-fascist group are followed by a wave of solidarity and the question: Who's next?

The Italian internet collective Autistici/Inventati actually thought it would be until the 25th.

September available.

Time to look for new hosting providers.

Time to move domains.

Time to find payment service providers that can process incoming donations.

In the end, there were only a few days left at best.

Less than 24 hours after the US government suspected the donor-financed internet collective of terrorism and imposed sanctions on it, the US payment service provider PayPal shut down their account.

It should actually take a month before such sanctions officially take effect.

Obviously, organizations based in the USA in particular did not want to wait that long.

The next day, the web server at Autistici.org was no longer accessible because the Public Interest Registry responsible for .org addresses is located in the US state of Virginia and has to comply with US regulations.

On day five, the Italian Banca Etica finally suspended the activists' account in order to avoid the threat of secondary sanctions.

What happens next remains unclear.

A/I, as the collective is called for short, has been exposed to state and political attacks since its founding and “has been able to fend off a lot through political consistency and clever self-organization,” says Tom Jennissen from Digitale Gesellschaft.

However, this resilience reaches its limits when powerful actors like the USA abuse international institutions and mechanisms and use them as a weapon against an unpleasant civil society, says the lawyer.

General accusation of terrorism The Trump administration's allegations are serious: The collective is said to have provided digital infrastructure to left-wing extremist groups and thus provided them with material support.

Terrorist attacks in Germany, France and other European countries are said to have been planned and announced.

Even left-wing US activists who are said to have disrupted a US border agency CBP helicopter with a laser pointer in the US city of Portland appear in the statement from the US State Department.

They are all said to be part of the anti-fascist group, which has “developed into a central hub of a transnational campaign of violent and criminal left-wing extremist networks,” according to the official US explanation.

The collective aims to “destabilize the United States and its partners in Europe and the Western Hemisphere and beyond.” Accordingly, the sharp sword of sanctions should not only affect the collective itself, but also those around it.

Anyone who has anything to do with “Specially Designated Global Terrorists,” according to the official classification, and who manages their bank account, for example, must expect to be cut off as well.

Arbitrary procedure That's not how liability works in Europe, explains Francesca Bria, who is involved in the EuroStack project and advocates for digital sovereignty. “A provider is liable if it knows about concrete illegal content and does not act – not because of the identity of its users,” says Bria.

If content has to be removed, a certain procedure is provided: a targeted order, proportionality, a right to legal remedy. “None of that happened here,” Bria says. “No order, no court, no determination by an Italian or European authority.”

Simply the political orientation of the users is the reason why the entire infrastructure is treated as guilty.

According to an anonymous spokesman, the collective adhered to the relevant rules: If authorities approached them and pointed out illegal content on their services, they would have removed it after checking, the spokesman told the Dutch medium NRC.

Otherwise they would have quickly ended up in court, because freedom from liability is tied to this condition. “We were never convicted,” the spokesman said.

Control via gear lever It's also a David versus Goliath story, says digitalization expert Bria.

What took A/I offline within a few days was not the strength of the legal argument. “No court has ever examined the proposition that the provision of communications services amounts to supporting terrorism,” says Bria.

What was more important was the “bottleneck” in the system. “The domain registrar, bank and payment service provider are either subject to US jurisdiction or rely on the US financial system.

Therefore, an official decision from Washington does not have to go through a legal process,” said Bria.

It is enough to hit just one of these bottlenecks – “the rest will happen by itself.”

The fact that the US government has control over many levers has recently become an increasing problem.

Last year, for example, it blocked the Microsoft email accounts of Karim Khan, chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, and temporarily suspended his work for political reasons.

Other judges from The Hague were also affected: In addition to email or Amazon accounts, credit cards whose providers usually come from the USA have also stopped working.

Blogging service in read-only mode The blogging platform Noblogs.org, which is operated by A/I, has also been shut down for the time being.

The background was a cyber attack, and Trump supporters were probably behind it, the A/I spokesman speculated to NRC.

Users cannot create new posts until further notice - including, for example, Anne Roth, consultant for digital policy for the Left Party in the Bundestag.

She has been filling her blog there for almost 20 years, but now she has to be patient.

She's itching to write something about how long she's known Autistici and how it affects her that this is happening to her now. “I have known some of the collective for a very long time, ever since we filled one of the first online tickers with reports about the protests at the G8 summit in Genoa in 2001,” says Roth.

The infrastructure provided by A/I has been a perfect solution for them so far. “I don’t have to worry about servers and software and still have a blog that doesn’t track anyone and doesn’t pass on any data to third parties.”

What is also relevant for her is “that I am part of a collective with a clear political compass”.

In a sense, she's come full circle: "When I started blogging, and this is almost ironic at the moment, I was looking for a platform to write about what it's like to live with anti-terror surveillance," says Roth.

At that time, her partner, the sociologist Andrej Holm, was suspected of terrorism.

Although the proceedings were discontinued years later without any results, the damage to him and those around him had already been done.

Dangerous precedent The US government's actions have now triggered a broad wave of solidarity.

Over 30 civil society organizations from Europe, from the Chaos Computer Club to epicenter.works, have signed a call published yesterday by the digital NGO EDRi (European Digital Rights).

The fear that A/I will not stay is obvious: “This sets a dangerous precedent for non-commercial hosting providers, registrars and privacy protection services across Europe,” warns EDRi.

These concerns are also emerging in German politics. “First it hit HateAid, then Rote Hilfe and now Autistici/Inventati.

Who’s next?” said Bundestag member Clara Bünger (Left).

The governments and the EU would have to defend themselves against this. “It cannot be the case that Trump behaves as a world police and legal organizations are deprived of their foundations because they do not correspond to his worldview,” says Bünger.

However, it remains questionable whether this view will extend to the federal government.

It recently became known that the German Interior Ministry, together with representatives of the US government, wants to hold a workshop on the topic of “left-wing extremism/terrorism” in the fall.

In response to a request from the Left Party, it was “a priority for the Federal Ministry of the Interior” to combat left-wing extremism.

There is no need to fool yourself, says MP Bünger. “Trump is not concerned with internet providers, but with leftists, feminists, antifa.

He says that very clearly.” There are enough points of contact with European conservatives here. “Merz and Dobrindt also have an interest in framing left-wing and anti-fascist groups as a supposed danger in order to justify the expansion of the surveillance state,” says Bünger.

Source: https://netzpolitik.org/2026/autistici-inventati-pauschaler-terrorvorwurf/ happened on September 4th, 2026