ANTIFA IN FOCUS

A rare look inside America’s antifascist movement—the people, the methods and the struggle to find a clear voice in a deafening world

- DONOVAN FARLEY

When I call Gregory McKelvey and Kathryn Stevens, they’re in the midst of an alternately quiet and cacophonous Saturday afternoon typical to young parents. The Portland, Oregon–based pair, interracial and in their late 20s, plan to be married next year.

Thankful one of their two babies is asleep, Stevens breast-feeds the other during our interview. Neither parent comes across as a domestic terrorist.

But McKelvey and Stevens are involved with antifa — a decentralized network of leftists representing various belief systems and tactics, united only in their opposition to nationalists and white supremacists — and as such they inhabit the same category as the Unabomber and Timothy McVeigh. Or they would, if senators Ted Cruz and Bill Cassidy had succeeded last summer in designating the movement a domestic terrorist group. (Regarding the senators’ efforts, President Trump tweeted, “Major consideration is being given to naming ANTIFA an ‘ORGANIZATION OF TERROR.’ ”)

McKelvey tells me that despite frequent threats to his family, showing up for antifa actions is something he and Stevens feel they must do. “I think it helps people to see a successful family defending antifascists, because those people often can’t defend themselves.”

Stevens adds, “When it was just Greg and me, it was easier to say, ‘Threaten us all you want. I’m not scared of you.’ But now, with two babies, it’s not okay at all. I haven’t hurt anybody, and I have no intention of hurting anyone, so why would you threaten my family? It’s solely because of our political beliefs.”

Perhaps the problem lies in pinpointing what those beliefs are, how the movement acts on them, and whom the movement consists of in the first place.