The white nationalist hate group Patriot Front is trying to boost recruitment by secretly controlling a large swath of the active clubs network, according to audio messages and a leaked document posted to Telegram that Hatewatch verified.

The audio messages and leaked document reveal that Patriot Front is the hidden hand behind about a dozen active clubs across the country. The leaked document, which appears to be an internal report created to update Patriot Front leadership on a new recruitment tactic, refers to these active clubs as “subsidiary recruitment projects.” Other active clubs are referred to as “cooperative” and “highly cooperative.”

...

Over the last several years, Hatewatch has monitored the close relationship between some active clubs and Patriot Front. The leaked document corroborates Hatewatch’s observations and provides a detailed look at how these relationships reflect Patriot Front’s changing tactics as its brand has faced setbacks. For example, in a Feb. 4, 2024, post to Telegram about an anti-LGBTQ+ rally, an active club chapter refers to being “alongside” Patriot Front at the event. However, the document shows that Patriot Front directly controls the active club chapter that participated, which suggests that Patriot Front organized the rally.

The inclusion of an active clubs chapter to what is essentially a Patriot Front rally raises questions about whether these active club members knew they were being groomed by Patriot Front leadership. It also suggests a new strategy Patriot Front has implemented to compete for recruits as the group faces criticism and suspicion from powerful far-right influencers. Some have claimed the group is full of undercover federal agents or is otherwise collaborating with federal law enforcement — a common accusation in the paranoid world of the organized white power movement.

https://www.splcenter.org/resources/hatewatch/patriot-front-active-clubs-network-influence/

#PatriotFront #WhiteNationalism #fascism #NeoNazis #fcknzs #ActiveClubs #ThomasRousseau #RobRundo #KieranMorris #WhiteLivesMatter #WLM #Will2Rise #RAM

A few years ago, the people behind the now-defunct white nationalist website VDARE bought a castle (yes, a castle) in Berkeley Springs, West Virginia. It got a fair bit of coverage at the time, but there hasn't been all that much reporting on what they've been doing in there since then.

Now it's clear that the castle was the venue for a recent conference that brought a bunch of Patriot Front goons to town, along with a handful of leading antisemitic and "race science" intellectuals from around the US. And this is after the VDARE people promised to be nice, quiet neighbors.

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On March 7-9 of this year, the neo-fascist American Freedom Party (AFP) held what it billed as its “National Convention” at a location that organizers kept secret from the public. Participants later said that it was in West Virginia without specifying where, however they did post photos from the conference online. A close examination of these images reveals that the conference took place at the Berkeley Springs Castle, which is owned by the people who ran the now-defunct white nationalist website VDARE.

...

The Brimelows’ presence has been a source of tension in Berkeley Springs from the start. Peter Brimelow has downplayed residents’ concerns, saying that he wasn’t organizing big rallies in town or doing anything disruptive and that “We just want to be quiet, good neighbors.” Yet the VDARE website also described the castle as a “meeting place” for like-minded people, and Lydia Brimelow stated during a 2022 podcast appearance that “My vision is it becomes a big hub of American patriotism.”

One reason why the recent conference is noteworthy is because it provided exactly the kind of “meeting place” that VDARE promised while breaking any sort of commitment to simply be “quiet, good neighbors,” highlighting the inherent contradiction between the two.

https://alasbarricadas.noblogs.org/post/2025/03/31/a-fascist-gathering-in-west-virginia/

#VDARE #WestVirginia #BerkeleySprings #PatriotFront #ThomasRousseau #AFP #antisemitism #racism #RaceScience #fascism #NeoNazis #fcknzs

A self-proclaimed “tribe” of racist heathens is building a compound on a 122-acre property in Tellico Plains, eastern Tennessee. This group overlaps with Patriot Front (PF), a fascist organization with members nationwide, and the “Church of Aryanity,” a racist cult that refers to Adolf Hitler as “the Great One.” The leader of the Tennessee “tribe” is Brian Culpepper, who spent a decade in the white supremacist National Socialist Movement (NSM) and was its PR Director for several years.

In 2022, Patriot Front used the large property—mostly woodland but with cleared areas—to train its members for street demonstrations. Last year, PF members traveled to work construction on the property, including a large building intended as a combined martial arts dojo, heathen temple, and home for PF member, Ian Michael Elliott. As construction on the land progresses, the property will host increasingly large racist gatherings. At least equally dangerous, the “tribal land” will bring together far-right martial artists, aspiring street brawlers from fascist “Active Clubs,” and some of the most violent fringes of the neo-Nazi scene. It already provides a home for committed PF members. By documenting this compound and revealing its location, we hope to warn eastern Tennessee residents about the white supremacist threat in their midst.

https://atlantaantifa.org/2024/01/30/revealed-patriot-front-linked-aryan-tribal-land-in-eastern-tennessee/

#PatriotFront #NeoNazis #fascism #fcknzs #BrianCulpepper #ActiveClub #ThomasRousseau #TellicoPlains #Tennessee #ChurchOfAryanity #NSM #IanElliott #Odinism #WolvesOfVinland #SeanKaufmann #Rundo #KieranMorris

Patriot Front lost in court today and, while they'll never actually pay all of what they now owe, it's nice that they just got hit with a good seven figures in damages: $2,755,000 in total.

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A federal judge on Monday ordered the white supremacist group Patriot Front and its leader to pay more than $2.7 million in damages to a Black musician for violating his civil rights by attacking him in Boston’s Back Bay in 2022 during a “flash march” through the city over the Fourth of July weekend.

The assault on Charles M. Murrel III as he walked along Dartmouth Street on his way to the Boston Public Library to play his saxophone was encouraged by the group’s leader, Thomas Rousseau, who led the marchers and “glorified” the attack afterward by celebrating a video clip that had been posted online, US District Judge Indira Talwani wrote in a 27-page decision.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2025/01/13/metro/patriot-front-civil-rights-black-musician-boston-attack/

#PatriotFront #ThomasRousseau #Boston #NeoNazis #fcknzs #fascism #WhiteSupremacy #racism #FuckThoseGuys

Report on the American Renaissance conference in Montgomery Bell State Park, Burns, Tennessee, a few weeks ago.

https://www.newschannel5.com/news/newschannel-5-investigates/confronting-hate/inside-the-influential-white-supremacist-conference-that-calls-tennessee-home-away-from-home

#AmRen #AmericanRenaissance #JaredTaylor #fascism #fcknzs #PatriotFront #ThomasRousseau

This article is from last February, but I guess I missed it at the time, and it's still relevant. The upshot: federal agents will never be our friends (no matter what your favorite cool kid podcaster says). They may take down some awful people when it serves their own objectives, but their objectives don't include other people's liberation, and particularly not the liberation of populations targeted by white nationalist groups like Patriot Front.

===

“The prosecution in Coeur d'Alene finally had an opportunity to hold them accountable for their harassment and their intimidation of the diverse community,” Tischauser said.

Instead, Rousseau’s case never got to trial.

While most of Rousseau’s underlings have either been found guilty of conspiracy to riot or pleaded to a lesser infraction, Judge John Cafferty dismissed the case against the white nationalist leader in November.

“This is an important case. It should not be dismissed lightly,” Cafferty said, according to court transcripts. “I tried to do what I could to not get to this point.”

But after a year and a half of delays, lost evidence and failures of prosecutors to follow court orders, he said he didn’t have a choice. The prosecutors, on the other hand, blamed judges and defense attorneys for the case devolving “into a forum for fishing expeditions justified by nothing more than bumper sticker claims.”

In all, it highlights just how difficult it is for an overwhelmed and understaffed team of prosecutors to take on a case involving so many extremists at once.

It’s one reason why, Kris Goldsmith, head of an anti-fascist research organization, said the Patriot Front case should not have been handled by local prosecutors to begin with.

“Expecting a city prosecutor to take on a national white supremacist organization is disappointing,” Goldsmith said. “The FBI is just sitting on their hands.”

In fact, court documents suggest, the FBI made prosecuting Patriot Front a lot harder.

https://www.investigatewest.org/news/how-local-idaho-prosecutors-lost-the-case-against-patriot-fronts-white-nationalist-leader-17706733

#acab #fascism #PatriotFront #ThomasRousseau #CoeurDAlene #Idaho #FBI

Patriot Front leader Thomas Rousseau has pleaded down to a disorderly conduct conviction in his tiki torch trial in Charlottesville. He's now the third participant in the big march on the weekend of Unite the Right to have done so (several others have been convicted, but I've lost track of how many). All were charged under Virginia's anti-KKK statute that bars using fire to intimidate.

The judge accepted the plea "because of Rousseau's lack of a criminal record and the fact that he didn't make physical contact with any counterprotesters" at the Rotunda on the University of Virginia campus on the night of the march. It's true that Rousseau has never been convicted. But he (along with Patriot Front at large and several of its members) has a trial pending in Boston for an assault that took place when they marched there a couple of years ago, and he was lucky to get his personal "conspiracy to riot" charges dropped in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, late last year (although a bunch of other PF members were convicted, including one for having child porn on his phone). It's not a coincidence that the assault in Boston targeted a Black man and the march they were plotting in Coeur d'Alene was targeting a pride event. So sure, Rousseau has a clean record, but it seems completely bonkers for a judge to pretend they don't know that he's obviously going to go out and keep doing the same shit. This is what he does. It's actually his full-time job.

It's not that I'm a fan of putting people in cages. It's just the logic at work here is, well, foolish.

https://dailyprogress.com/news/local/crime-courts/patriot-front-leader-takes-no-jail-disorderly-conduct-plea-after-torch-charge/article_3e872f70-84f7-11ef-87af-6b2701fc6862.html

#PatriotFront #ThomasRousseau #fascism #UniteTheRight #UTR #NeoNazis #fcknzs

This is a solid analysis of the ways that two of the most prominent neo-fascist groups in the US organize, namely Patriot Front and the Active Club network. Specifically, it looks at the ways they have adapted to the post-Unite the Right environment and their resilience in the face of threats from law enforcement and antifascists.

If you're not familiar with how these groups organize, this would be a very good primer. And if you're already up to speed, I still think this is a good analysis of how they have weathered certain challenges and what organizing problems they still face, in light of the fact that they take very different approaches to organizing.

(I should mention that I'm not crazy about ISD's orientation toward crafting analyses that might be useful for law enforcement. Still, this is good research that's freely available online, and there's nothing to stop the rest of us from utilizing their work for our own nefarious purposes.)

From the article:

Key Findings

Failures resulting from the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, which included the doxxing of protestors, substantial financial penalties, and increased scrutiny on the white nationalist movement, forced leaders and groups to shift their tactics and organizational structures.

Specific organizational models, like those used by Patriot Front and Active Clubs, have been instrumental in making groups more resilient to disruption from law enforcement and perceived enemies.

Recent arrests of key white nationalist leaders do not appear to have had a significant impact on groups’ operations, which have continued unabated and may indicate that changes at the organizational level are generating some results.

https://www.isdglobal.org/digital_dispatches/patriot-front-and-active-clubs-two-modern-models-of-white-nationalist-organizing/

#PatriotFront #ActiveClubs #fascism #WhiteNationalism #NeoNazis #fcknzs #LeaderlessResistance #Rundo #ThomasRousseau

Over on ex-Twitter, Molly Conger has posted this little nugget, stating that Thomas Rousseau bonded out of his stay in the McLennan County Jail, but not before he was finally served his summons for the Patriot Front assault case in Boston.

The Complaint in the Boston case is at the link below, but basically, PF did one of their unannounced marches in July 2022 and, along the way, encountered an unsuspecting Black man, who they attacked in keeping with their "defensive" training.

PF itself was served last November via email, which is apparently a valid way to serve a summons.

#PatriotFront #ThomasRousseau #fcknzs

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mad.260101/gov.uscourts.mad.260101.1.0.pdf