A small Italian provider of free digital services Autistici/Inventati (A/I, which means Autistic/Invented), founded in 2001 by a left-wing collective and supported by donations, has been forced to cease its activity after being included on August 26 by the White House on its list of global terrorist organizations and seeing its accounts blocked.
The case bears parallels with that of the UN rapporteur for the Palestinian territories, also Italian Francesca Albanese, whose accounts were blocked in 2025 for months for accusing Israel and US companies collaborating with it of genocide. Finally, a judge suspended the measure with a stinging argument: “She has done nothing but talk!”. The same treatment was received by judges and prosecutors of the International Criminal Court (ICC) for processing genocide accusations against Benjamin Netanyahu.
As in Albanese’s case, it is again under discussion whether an administrative decision without trial in a foreign country seriously affects an individual in the EU, but in this case there is another controversial nuance: the accusation by the Donald Trump State Department against A/I is simply for being the medium, the digital support, in which some groups it considers terrorist have published communications. The decision is part of its crusade against antifascist movements, grouped under the generic name Antifa, started a year ago after the murder of the American far-right activist Charlie Kirk.
In a statement, the Italian collective has rejected the accusations as “false” and reaffirmed its work to provide a platform “to allow activists, people, groups and associations to communicate freely.” “Antifascism and anticapitalism are not terrorism. Protesting is not terrorism,” it said in a statement. This newspaper has contacted the collective, but at the time of publication of this article had not yet received a response.
On its website, A/I declares itself as a collective offering web spaces, email, blog platforms and other services to people and groups sharing the values of “antifascism, antisexism, antiracism and antimilitarism.” Besides being free, the key is that, unlike large internet companies, it does not collect or accumulate private user information which, therefore, it cannot hand over to a judge if requested. Simply because it does not possess it. This has blocked, for example, several attempts at judicial investigation in Italy of users since 2003, according to the collective itself. In the data it has made public, it claims to manage 12,000 email accounts, more than 1,000 portals and more than 3,000 blogs.
The lawyer for the A/I collective, Shayana Kalidal, from the New York Center for Constitutional Rights, has stated that the defense in these cases is “almost useless because the evidence is classified under secrecy.” In his opinion, in an interview with Domani, the US accusation, as has happened with other Greek and German collectives, is because “it now allows the Government to prosecute antifa activists in the United States for the crime of using A/I services,” and thus, they can be accused of terrorism.
“It is a very serious matter, beyond the ideology of this collective,” says Oreste Pollicino, professor of Constitutional Law and Artificial Intelligence Regulation at Bocconi University in Milan. Pollicino is one of the few who has spoken on the matter in Italy, with an article in La Stampa, while most media and political parties have remained silent.
“This shows a new geography of power,” the academic says in a telephone conversation with EL PAÍS. “It is clear that there is no designation here that automatically transforms A/I into a terrorist organization, but nevertheless, there are consequences. The US controls essential sectors of technology and finance, and therefore, if an administrative decision is adopted in Washington it becomes operative in other countries. I am concerned about this drift towards mass surveillance. Today it has hit a radical collective, tomorrow it could be a company, a humanitarian organization, a researcher, a newspaper…”
Among politicians, Nicola Fratoianni, one of the leaders of AVS (Alliance of Greens and Left), has spoken out, denouncing that the accusations against A/I are “arbitrary” and part of “a hybrid war against the digital sovereignty of the EU, the possibility to dissent and free thought.” On the contrary, in the party of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, Brothers of Italy, they have applauded the measure and attacked one of the founders of A/I, Paolo De Rosa, a digital technology expert who left the collective in 2018, has had links with the Democratic Party (PD) and now works at the European Commission.
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Pierluigi Paganini, cybersecurity expert, has also expressed alarm in an article in the economic newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore: “It is a disproportionate decision and, more importantly, sets a dangerous precedent. Not because all activity hosted on A/I should be considered legitimate, but because responsibility for a crime must fall on those who commit or organize it, not on a provider that offers infrastructure to thousands of users without demonstrating a conscious and concrete contribution to a specific violent act.” Paganini points out that, for example, Telegram has also been used by extremist organizations to make “propaganda, recruitment and dissemination of terrorist content,” but the White House has not included it on its terrorist list.
According to the arguments of the State Department led by Marco Rubio, A/I is “an extremist group that develops and manages digital infrastructure for violent Antifa cells and other far-left militant groups worldwide.” It offers its services “to Marxist, anarchist and other far-left extremist groups in the United States, Europe and elsewhere.” “These tools are specifically designed to support the operations of far-left terrorist networks, allowing them to organize, recruit, communicate, spread propaganda, share information about targets and tactics, and carry out violent attacks, all while maintaining anonymity, untraceability and beyond the reach of the law,” it stated.
The State Department statement cites several examples. One, the “anarchist cells” accused of sabotaging railways in France, Italy, Germany and the Netherlands in 2026, which used A/I “to claim responsibility for the attacks, publish official statements and disseminate manuals for building incendiary devices.” It also points to another group accused of sabotaging the Transalpine Pipeline (TAL) in March 2026, “which temporarily interrupted the supply of crude oil to Austria, Germany and the Czech Republic.” The White House says it used A/I “to claim the attack and publish official statements, as well as to spread a manifesto urging more attacks” and referred to another platform that provided “detailed sabotage manuals and maps of vulnerable critical infrastructure in North America.”
The same accusation is repeated in the case of the “far-left extremist network” responsible for attacks against Germany’s railway and energy infrastructure between 2011 and 2026, including an attack in January 2026 against Berlin’s power grid “which left 45,000 homes without power and caused one fatality,” the US claims.
The US also cites American groups, such as Jane’s Revenge, “which carried out a campaign of arson attacks against centers helping pregnant women” and Rose City Antifa, from Oregon, accused of using A/I “to organize and incite violent and criminal acts nationwide, including an attack against Border Patrol and Customs helicopters,” as well as disseminating confidential information from the controversial Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). This last case was the one that first brought A/I’s existence to light in the US, in reports by the Fox News channel and other conservative media, and from there entered political debates.
Banca Etica, the Italian entity where A/I had its funds and where donations supporting it were deposited, reported the account closure due to the risk of being sanctioned. This bank had already publicly defended Francesca Albanese to denounce the situation and call for a response from the Government and the EU. Now, again, it has condemned the “inclusion in OFAC lists for political purposes,” the “abuse of this instrument” and has insisted on demanding a reaction from Italian and European institutions.
The EU can apply the so-called Blocking Statute, a formula that nullifies foreign sanctions in the community territory and which it has applied on some occasions. It arose in the 1990s in response to problems posed by White House sanctions on countries such as Cuba, Libya or Iran. But in the case of Albanese and the ICC it has not done so.
