41of white supremacists. Wolf said it was too early
to say. But as reporters kept pressing, he men-
tioned only one group by name: Antifa.
Antifa — shorthand for antifascist — can be
used to classify anyone who opposes fascism.
But there also exist loosely organized antifascist
groups that have made their presence known
at the street protests of the last few years, espe-
cially in the Pacifi c Northwest. Media exposure
has fueled the creation of an absurd caricature
on cable news and in the minds of Republican
politicians, of a well-funded nationwide orga-
nization of combatants.
Wolf’s comments that day at the news confer-
ence were, perhaps, one point of origin for an
Antifa panic that then began rippling out across
the country. Soon, rumors were proliferating on
social media: Vans fi lled with destructive anti-
fascists were coming to small-town America,
spreading looting and chaos. That evening,
President Trump tweeted that he would be
classifying Antifa as a terrorist group (some-
thing he does not have the authority to do).
The next afternoon, Trump spoke at the White
House Rose Garden as the sounds of tear gas
and fl ash grenades echoed, scattering peaceful
protesters in Lafayette Square. ‘‘Our nation has
been gripped by professional anarchists, violent
mobs, arsonists, looters, criminals, rioters, Anti-
fa and others,’’ he said. He vowed to send federal
troops to ‘‘stop the rioting and looting’’ and ‘‘to
protect the rights of law-abiding Americans,
including your Second Amendment rights.’’
But numerous reports in the past year assert-
ed that violence from right-wing ‘‘homegrown
terrorists’’ was now an equal or greater threat
than attacks from foreign jihadist groups. Chris-
topher Wray, director of the F.B.I., told the Sen-
ate Judiciary Committee at a hearing on F.B.I.
oversight in July 2019 that his agency had recent-
ly arrested just as many domestic terrorists as
it had foreign terrorists, and that a majority of
the domestic terrorists investigated were whitesupremacists. And by this February, Wray said
the F.B.I. had placed ‘‘racially motivated violent
extremism’’ at the highest threat level and that
‘‘lone actor’’ terrorists were of top concern to
the agency. He said that 2019 had been the dead-
liest year for domestic violent extremism since
1995, the year of the Oklahoma City bombing.
Amid the hysteria about nonexistent vans full
of Antifa supersoldiers, actual heavily armed
militia groups around the country stepped
in to provide what they saw as protection to
communities, often with the encouragement of
lawmakers. In Montana, State Senator Jennifer
Fielder took to Facebook on the night of June 1,
warning her followers to be on the lookout for
Antifa. ‘‘There were multiple reports from credi-
ble witnesses of fi ve white panel vans fi lled with
people believed to be Antifa,’’ she wrote. They
had been spotted in a grocery-store parking lot
in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, she wrote. No one got
a photo. Her post went viral.
Soon mobs of armed and angry people came
out in force in towns across Washington, Ore-
gon, Idaho and Montana. In Snohomish, Wash.,
Representative Robert Sutherland posed with
a semiautomatic weapon among other armed
men. In Spokane, groups of armed men roamed
downtown, telling business owners they had
been hired to be there — but wouldn’t say who
hired them. The tiny town of Forks, Wash., along
the Pacifi c coastline, made national headlines
when a mixed-race family driving a bus through
town on the way to a camping trip was sur-
rounded by people who believed them to be
Antifa. Local reports said they later trapped the
family in their campsite with felled trees. The
campers escaped only when concerned resi-
dents brought chain saws to let them go.
In Idaho, in the fi rst week of June, armed
men and women lined Coeur d’Alene, standing
guard outside restaurants and slugging liquor at
crowded bars. Some wore Hawaiian shirts. Most
wore tactical gear. Farther north, in Sandpoint,a county commissioner warned on Facebook of
a looming threat. ‘‘We are hearing from other
sources of protesters coming to the county
courthouse,’’ he wrote. ‘‘It would be great to have
some of the Bonner County folks come out to
counter anything that might get out of hand.’’ A
small group of white, teenage Black Lives Mat-
ter protesters found themselves being followed
and outnumbered by armed men in full tactical
gear. A concerned resident shared a video with
me of an interaction between the two groups.
‘‘Don’t wreck anything in this town,’’ a white man
barked toward a protester’s car. Another said:
‘‘We ain’t gonna have it — not in North Idaho.’’ In
Missoula, Mont., a Black teenager who attended
a Black Lives Matter protest was followed and
questioned by an armed man who had heard that
Antifa was coming to town.
Eric Ward, executive director of the Western
States Center, a progressive social-justice non-
profi t group, has been researching white-nation-
alist groups and militias since the early 1990s,
and he says it is common for extremist groups
to position themselves as a helping hand to their
communities. ‘‘There are places where libraries
aren’t even open, or they don’t want to deliv-
er the mail every day, or maybe the state police
don’t get through that part of the community but
once a month,’’ he says. Hospitals are far away.
Emergencies are handled by neighbors. It ‘‘opens
up a space for others to step in, suggesting they
will bring solutions,’’ he says. Ward was disheart-
ened when communities around the country
embraced the presence of armed militias in their
towns. America has spent the past two decades
trying to root out terrorism around the world, he
told me. Surely we should recognize the tactics
of a rogue paramilitary inside our own country.O
n an overcast April day in Las Vegas, outside a
brick government building circled with palm
trees, a group of men from a Facebook group
called Battle Born Igloo met in person at a
reopening rally. Stephen Parshall, a bearded
35-year-old, and Andrew Lynam, a 23-year-oldThe New York Times MagazineTHE RIOTS AND SUPPORT
CAUSE,’ HE WROTE.
ANGER TO
FUEL OUR FIRE.
OUTSIDE THE BOX.’