Racist and Anti-Semitic "Patriot Front" Pummeling Colleges, Universities and Synagogues With White Supremacist Propaganda

November 18th 2019

Symbol used by white nationalist group Patriot Front (Thomas Rousseau)

Bill Berkowitz 

With Donald Trump at the helm, and white nationalist Stephen Miller at his side, white nationalist/supremacist organizations and individuals, like a cancer on the body politic, continue to mutate and step up their activities. According to the ADL’s Center on Extremism (COE), which tracks “white supremacist propaganda efforts,” “the 2018 data shows a 182% increase of incidents from the previous year, with 1,187 cases reported, compared to 421 in 2017.”

In the first weeks of November, the ADL (Anti-Defamation League)

reported that the “FBI agents arrested white supremacist Richard Holzer for allegedly plotting to bomb a Pueblo, Colorado, synagogue”; East Tennessee University campus officials were “opening an investigation after signs saying ‘It’s okay to be white’— a popular white supremacist slogan — appeared around campus”; “A man in Milwaukee is facing felony hate-crime charges for allegedly throwing acid on a Latino man because of his heritage”; and, students at Arizona State University Campus in Tempe, woke up one morning to find “posters with swastikas plastered around campus.” 

Mass Live recently reported that “Stickers created by the white nationalist group Patriot Front have been put up on street signs and utility poles across Middleborough and West Bridgewater.” The Columbus Dispatch reported that “Stickers and flyers with pro-white messages and tied to white supremacists appeared at Ohio Wesleyan and Ohio State universities over the weekend.” 

Boston Magazine’s Michael Damiano recently reported that, “local chapters of white supremacist organizations … using anti-Semitic and anti-immigrant rhetoric, … [have been] posting fliers, including ones denying the Holocaust, in public spaces and on synagogues throughout New England. …[H]ate-fueled incidents have included property crimes—vandals have damaged the New England Holocaust Memorial downtown, toppled a menorah in Harvard Square, and desecrated a Jewish cemetery in Fall River—as well as more-personal acts of violence.” 

When internal conflicts develop among fellow nationalists, or when one group does something totally outrageous or optically revolting and loses support, another group seems to pop up. Patriot Front is not the flavor of the moment, but it is an organization worth examining. 

In a story posted at the website of ProPublica – and a number of other venues -- titled “They Are Racist; Some of Them Have Guns. Inside the White Supremacist Group Hiding in Plain Sight.” reporters Carol Schaeffer and Fritz Zimmerman profiled Patriot Front, one of the groups leading the racist, and anti-Semitic sticker/poster/flier assault on college campuses across the country.  

Patriot Front is an organization aiming “to help chart a new way forward: spread propaganda espousing its version of a nascent American fascism; quietly recruit new members worried about a nation overrun by immigrants and a world controlled by Jews; avoid talking about guns or violence online, but engage in a mix of vandalism and intimidation to foster anxiety; wear masks in public and communicate secretly,” ProPublica pointed out.

And, according to an ADL backgrounder, Patriot Front’s  

“members maintain that their ancestors conquered America and bequeathed it solely to them; espouses racism, anti-Semitism and intolerance under the guise of preserving the ‘ethnic and cultural origins’ of their European ancestors; spreads [the word] via the Internet and by distributing banners, fliers, posters and stickers; [and] participates in localized ‘flash mobs’ and torch marches/demonstrations.”

ProPublica’s Schaeffer and Zimmerman reported that, “’The organization is not about its members,’ the group’s leader, Thomas Rousseau, once wrote to its members in the secret chats. ‘It is about its goals. Each person behind the mask is just another awoken member of the nation, who could be anyone who’s had enough.’”

While the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has branded Patriot Front a white hate group, “to some of the more avowedly violent neo-Nazi groups in the U.S., Patriot Front is a laughable collection of clowns and cowards, content to chat online and put up stickers while a race war awaits,” ProPublica reported. 

With so many incidents of white supremacist-inspired violence to investigate, the FBI has not put Patriot Front front and center. Instead an FBI statement pointed out that its investigations of domestic terrorism “focus solely on the criminal activity of individuals — regardless of group membership — that appears to be intended to intimidate or coerce the civilian population or influence the policy of the government by intimidation or coercion.”

Thomas Rousseau founded the Texas-based Patriot Front after a nasty split from Vanguard America, which according to the ADL, is “a group known for directly targeting Jewish institutions with hateful propaganda another white supremacist group.” And despite the split, Patriot Front “hasn’t abandoned their anti-Semitism.”

According to ProPublica, Rousseau “has much the same profile as the accused gunman in El Paso, Patrick Crusius: both grew up in middle-class suburbs of Dallas — Crusius in Allen, Rousseau 35 miles away in Grapevine; both were seen as unremarkable teenagers before being inculcated in their racist ideology online; both talk of a desire to reclaim America for ‘true’ or ‘pure’ patriots; both regard immigrants as a poisonous and present danger.” 

And while Rousseau maintains that wholesale violence is not his preferred path,  he thinks the group can make more progress by “spreading its ideology and increasing its numbers,” ProPublica reported. 

Pete Simi, a professor at Chapman University in California and an expert on white supremacists in the U.S., told ProPublica: “It is very common for the leadership of these groups to disqualify violence, while doing things that are encouraging violence. It is part of their strategy to avoid liability, while simultaneously promoting hate. When they say they are not violent, this is a lie. They are promoting violence by their goals.”

Patriot Fronts Rousseau, who at 18 participated in the Charlottesville “United the Right” rally in 2017 as a member of Vanguard America, makes it clear that he is not out to replicate the Nazis of Germany: “This is not Germany, this is not the 1930s. Get a grip on the fact that we’re activists, not re-enactors trying to scratch some self-indulgent itch for a political fantasy.” Instead, the practical Rousseau is all about recruiting young disaffected white boys/young men, and political action.

And, as ProPublica reported, “masked flash mobs, defacing property, distributing propaganda — are the day-to-day work of Patriot Front. Screaming outside an anarchist book fair in Texas. Plastering stickers across multiple storefronts on a busy block in Denver. Parading with flares at night in a public park in Boston. Posting an ‘America First’ sticker at a gay pride center in Vermont. All in the last year.”

These actions have several purposes; to frighten, to intimidate, and to recruit.