International repression | US order: Tech collective servers confiscated from Italy

US President Donald Trump launched the repression against domestic anti-fascism, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio expanded this abroad. Legal experts have a theory as to how this fits together via the NSA secret service. Photo: dpa/AP/Julia Demaree Nikhinson The police in Amsterdam confiscated a rented server in a data center on Tuesday at the request of American authorities. The police confirmed the incident and the newspaper “NRC” reported on it. The device therefore belongs to the defunct left-wing Italian tech collective Autistici/Inventati (A/I). This has provided free web hosting and email services to thousands of groups for over 25 years.

In accordance with the US request under a bilateral mutual legal assistance agreement, the Dutch police create a digital image of the data and send it to the public prosecutor's office there. The server should then be returned to the data center. If it was actually rented from A/I, the data stored on it would have long since been deleted and overwritten several times: Left-wing technology collectives have always been subject to repression and know how to combat it.

The action in Amsterdam is the latest in a campaign that the US government began a year ago - initially against domestic groups. On September 22, 2025, Donald Trump issued a presidential decree classifying “Antifa” as a domestic terrorist organization. This was followed three days later by a “National Security Memorandum” to combat domestic terrorism and organized political violence. On September 29, then Attorney General Pamela Bondi also declared protests against the immigration agency ICE to be the target of the measures. Another internal memorandum dated December 4th highlighted “Antifa-affiliated extremists” as a particular threat.

On November 13, 2025, the State Department under Marco Rubio placed four foreign left-wing radical groups on its list for the first time as “Specially Designated Global Terrorists”: the Informal Anarchist Federation/International Revolutionary Front from Italy, the Armed Proletarian Justice and the Self-Defense of the Revolutionary Class from Greece, and Antifa Ost from Germany. A week later, the four groups were also given the status of “Foreign Terrorist Organizations”.

The classifications are implemented by the Office for the Control of Foreign Assets in the Ministry of Finance. It has kept a list of “Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons” for decades. In the case of the four radical left-wing groups, the mention does not have a direct effect in the European countries in which they live and are active. However, their financial transactions in the United States, for example via Visa, the Swift system or providers such as Paypal, are blocked and US citizens are not allowed to do business with them. Anyone who provides material support to such organizations risks up to 20 years in prison.

Six weeks ago, the US government finally used this instrument against Autistici/Inventati because the collective was said to have supported “Antifa”. The Treasury Department also justified its inclusion on the list by saying that American groups were using the services. Among other things, A/I lost its domain name for hosted blogs because the registrar for endings with ".org" is based in the USA. A/I has since shut down all of its services forever, probably to protect the left-wing groups that had websites with the collective. The seizure in Amsterdam suggests that this concern was justified.

It is unclear why the government is spending so much effort on its actions against left-wing groups in Europe. Several legal experts in the United States suspect a reason for this is Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act: the classification of foreign groups can therefore also be used to track domestic activities. The paragraph allows - similar to a regulation for the German Federal Intelligence Service - to monitor the telecommunications of US citizens if they take place via internet nodes abroad.

The notorious National Security Agency (NSA), the country's largest secret service, is responsible for surveillance abroad. The Federal Police (FBI), which pursues domestic terrorism, can access the NSA information without specific suspicion and, above all, without a search warrant. Antifascism can be pursued in the USA via this back door without having to go through court orders.

But it is also possible that the A/I server confiscated in Amsterdam is intended to provide new material to the cross-border US repression against left-wing groups. On July 16, Secretary of State Rubio hosted a “ministerial conference on the resurgence of political terrorism” in Washington, in which he portrayed Cuba as a puppet master.

The Federal Ministry of the Interior also took part in the conference. Instead of contradicting the anti-left US conspiracy theories, it even supports them: a follow-up meeting will soon take place in Germany, a spokesman had confirmed. Details about this “workshop of experts” have remained secret since they were announced in July. But we are talking about a “broad international participation from the security and law enforcement agencies.”

In response to a new request from "nd", the ministry repeated the information from the summer that the planning and preparations were at an "early stage". Not even the calendar week of the workshop, which is supposed to take place “in the fall,” is revealed. The lead on the American side lies with the Foreign Ministry, which – as far as is known so far – also sets the agenda.

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