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National
Location:
Category:
Anti-Liberties
Status:
Active

Background

Patriot Front is a white supremacist and anti-government hate group that was formed in 2017 as a splinter group of Vanguard America. The group’s founder and leader is Texas-based Thomas Ryan Rousseau. According to the Anti-Defamation League, “Patriot Front has been responsible for the vast majority of white supremacist propaganda distributed in the United States” since 2019. The group’s logo is “an image of a fasces (a bundle of sticks with an axe and the original symbol of fascism), encircled by 13 stars.”


Members of Patriot Front “generally wear khaki pants and a blue or white polo shirt” during flash demonstrations; “many also wear masks” to conceal their identity and photos on their website have faces blurred out. During protests and demonstrations they fly upside-down American flags and the Betsy Ross flag.


Ideology

According to its website, Patriot Front believes that Americans, distinct from “citizens,” have a heritage of “European race” that must assert their “right to cultural independence.” Although the group as a whole tends to avoid overtly white supremacist rhetoric in its public messaging, members regularly target communities with white supremacist, anti-semitic, anti-LGBTQ+, and anti-immigrant messaging and actions.


Patriot Front incorporates an element of anti-government rhetoric into its messaging, believing that the United States government has become a “corrupt and ineffective State” as part of a global plutocracy. They use “revolutionary” language and claim that solutions cannot be achieved through politics and that the government faces “alteration or abolition.” They wrap their messaging in nationalist rhetoric but their vision of America is dramatically different and limited to those of white European descent.


Patriot Front

Tactics

Patriot Front members are required to meet certain quotas of “on-the-ground activities for the group or risk expulsion.” According to the Anti-Defamation League, Patriot Front was responsible “for approximately 60 percent of white supremacist propaganda recorded nationwide” and has been distributed in every state, except Alaska, Delaware, and Hawaii. The group holds public white supremacist events and flash demonstrations, contributing to their high visibility among white supremacist organizations today.

Utah Connections

Since its founding in 2017, there have been 564 Patriot Front documented events and incidents of white supremacist propaganda in cities across Utah.


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