A dramatic claim by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to have arrested “the girlfriend of one of the founders of antifa,” therefore putting the Trump administration in position to “eliminate” the leftwing “network,” was dismissed by both the activist the arrested woman was said to have dated and a leading expert on such leftwing groups.

“I want to make it absolutely clear that I am not now, nor have I ever been, the ‘founder’ of ‘Antifa’ — in Portland [Oregon], the United States, or anywhere else,” said Luis Enrique Marquez, the activist, in a statement on a website promoting a book.

“It’s an absurd claim, no matter how they try to frame it,” Stanislav Vysotsky, an associate professor of criminology at the University of Fraser Valley in British Columbia, told Raw Story.

Nonetheless, Noem’s trumpeting of the arrest of Katherine Vogel, 39, showed the administration’s determination to make headlines as it seeks to paint “antifa” activists as a danger to the American public, and Portland as the supposed base of such groups.

‘Root them out’

Seated alongside President Donald Trump during a White House roundtable last week, Noem said: “One of the individuals we arrested in Portland was the girlfriend of one of the founders of antifa.

“We are hoping that as we go after her, interview her and prosecute her, we will get more and more information about the network and how we can root them out and eliminate them from the existence of American society.”

On Sept. 30, Vogel was the subject of a targeted arrest carried out by Federal Protective Services and U.S. Border Patrol agents, after she was allegedly observed with a group of people spilling red paint on the sidewalk outside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility.

A federal criminal complaint alleges that “while Vogel was being escorted into the facility for processing, she actively resisted by flailing her body” and struck one of the agents on the jaw with a closed fist.

She told an investigator she did not recall striking the agent.

Vogel was a contractor with the U.S. General Services Administration. As a result of her arrest “she was found unsuitable” and will no longer work for the agency, a spokesperson told Raw Story.

Noem’s description of Vogel as a potential linchpin for a nationwide network supposedly posing a terrorist threat appears to have been sourced to Andy Ngo, a right-wing media figure who Trump said at the roundtable was “a very serious person.”

Ngo was previously represented in a lawsuit for assault against Rose City Antifa, a Portland group, by Harmeet Dhillon, now assistant attorney general for civil rights at the Department of Justice. Rose City Antifa was dismissed as a defendant. Ngo and Dhillon frequently share each other’s posts on X.

A week before Noem’s White House remarks, Ngo posted that Vogel was “a veteran Rose City Antifa member” and “the previous girlfriend of violent Rose City Antifa member Luis Enrique Marquez.”

Vogel, who was released from custody on Oct. 1, could not be reached for comment.

Marquez, the author of the book Antifascist: A Memoir of the Portland Uprising, refuted Ngo’s claim. The statement on his website said: “I have never been a member of Rose City Antifa or any other Antifa group.”

Marquez also said his relationship with Vogel ended in 2020, adding, “Any insinuation of an ongoing connection between us is false and disingenuous.”

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) did not respond to a request to clarify Noem’s reference to Vogel as “the girlfriend of one of the founders of antifa.”

Vysotsky, who has extensively interviewed antifascist activists, said that notion was difficult to square with reality, given that the movement dates back to the early 20th century.

“If we’re talking about the girlfriend of the founder of antifa, then we’re talking about someone who would have to be 120 years old or 130 years old,” Vysotsky told Raw Story.

While antifascism emerged in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s, in response to the rise of fascism in Italy and Germany, Vysotsky said the modern antifascist movement in North America can generally be dated to the mid- to late-1980s.

Rose City Antifa, the Portland-based group referenced by Ngo, was founded in 2007. Vysotsky said that to the best of his knowledge, Marquez was not a founder.

“He came on the scene in 2016 or 2017,” Vysotsky said. “He happens to be someone who is prominent and outspoken on social media. It’s an absurd claim, no matter how they try to frame it.”

A DHS spokesperson, Tricia McLaughlin, said Vogel’s activist connections were the subject of “an ongoing investigation,” adding: “We will release more information when we can.”

‘A militarist, anarchist enterprise’

In a Sept. 26 X post, DHS described Rose City Antifa as a “domestic terrorist organization.” The post followed an executive order issued by Trump days earlier, which described “Antifa” as “a militarist, anarchist enterprise.”

But Vysotsky said Noem’s vow to “root out” and “eliminate” an “antifa” network was likely to go nowhere because there is no formal membership organization or international network.

“It’s an orientation, because it’s a set of beliefs by people opposed to fascism,” Vysotsky said.

“What they mean when they say ‘fascism’ is a movement based on a belief in an inherent inequality between people that is enforced by violence. What antifa stands for is equality between people, and what drives antifascism is a desire to create a more just and equal world.”

The idea that the Trump administration will be able to use Vogel’s arrest to identify a leadership cadre and, as Noem put it, “eliminate” an “antifa” network “from the existence of American society” is “an almost absurd claim,” Vysotsky said.

“Antifa activism, as it exists, is highly decentralized,” Vysotsky said, adding that antifascist activity ranges from individuals engaged in intelligence gathering and educational work “to small, local affinity groups that are organized in a direct, democratic manner.

“There’s no leadership,” he said.

The Sept. 26 DHS post accused Rose City Antifa of doxing ICE agents. It is unclear whether that is true, but on Sept. 19 a website called Rose City Counter-Info did post two profiles that showed the names and images — and in one case, information about the employment history of a spouse — of two individuals purported to be ICE agents active in the Portland area.

The DHS X post referencing Rose City Antifa came a day after Trump issued a national security memorandum, NSPM-7, which argued that domestic terrorists organized under the banner of “anti-fascism” are engaged in “sophisticated, organized campaigns of targeted intimidation.”

The memo claims campaigns “escalate to organized doxing, where the private or identifying information of their targets (such as home addresses, phone numbers, or other personal information) is exposed to the public with the explicit intent of encouraging others to harass, intimidate, or violently assault them).”

The memo specifically references activists targeting ICE agents.

“For the Trump administration to argue that antifa activists are terrorists, they’re going to have to greatly expand what acts constitute terrorism,” Vysotsky said.

They’re already doing that, he argued, by “talking about doxing as a form of terrorism.”

‘Exceptionally broad’

Vysotsky said rhetoric from the Trump administration linking antifascism to terrorism appears to be calculated to distract attention from ICE activities and violence by far-right actors.

“This serves as a distraction to focus Trump supporters away from the negative images of families being separated,” Vysotsky said. “It’s also a way to distract away from political violence, which has overwhelmingly been right-wing political violence.”

Antifascists, with journalists and observers, confront white supremacists in Charlottesville, Va in 2017. Picture: Anthony Crider

Vysotsky and Marquez said they saw the campaign against “antifa” as signaling a crackdown on all who oppose Trump’s policies — not just the far left.

“It’s exceptionally broad, because when they talk about antifa, they’re creating this image that ranges from the bogeyman of black-clad protesters to mainstream politicians like Adam Schiff [the Democratic senator from California] to the Ford Foundation, which is a major philanthropic organization,” Vysotsky said.

NSPM-7 charges that an “‘anti-fascist’ lie has become a rallying cry used by domestic terrorists to wage a violent assault against democratic institutions, constitutional rights and fundamental American liberties.”

Core tenets of antifascism, the memorandum claims, “include anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity; support for the overthrow of the United States government; extremism on migration, race, and gender; and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.”

Marquez said that “by targeting innocent people and fabricating threats that do not exist,” the Trump administration is “attempting to build a mythical enemy in order to expand control over our lives.”