024: Why Does Patriot Front Still Exist? feat. Jeff Tischauser

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
About us so listen man so how much how how well what are the
benefits package of the feds like how well do they pay you
man like is there like they don't pay me they don't pay you
Nope OK I. I'm I'm not a federal agent.
I am not being paid by anybody and actually a lot.
Do you think so many people thatare trusted don't believe you?
I think it is partly astroturfed.

(00:20):
I think because it is so convenient, because when we do
these big things it is we are presented to millions of new
people because it is a spectacle.
And when we go on March, when wehave the drums and the banners
and the uniforms and the masks, it is engineered to be something
which is spectacular. It is very out of the ordinary
and people watch it and it's very easy for a lot of
conservatives, I believe, not the ones here, but a lot of

(00:42):
conservatives to dismiss us by saying that's not real, it's
fake. Welcome back to posting through

(01:18):
it. I'm Jared.
And I'm Mike. And I'm Jack.
We've got a episode this week all about Patriot Front.
It's not quite, you know, at, you know, a full blown who the
hell is episode, but we do have some in the hopper coming later
this summer that we're really excited about.
Jeff Tischhauser is here. He is a academic who researches

(01:41):
the white power movement, maybe one of the foremost experts on
the white power movement, knows a hell of a lot about Patriot
Front, has published a bunch of reporting about them, and he's
going to help us understand whatthis group is about.
They tend to get more active in the summer.
And on the last episode, we talked about protest movements,
and it's possible these guys might show up.

(02:04):
So we thought it would be good to kind of walk through what
they are, who they are, so people aren't confused.
You know, one of the main reasons to do an episode like
this, particularly in the summerseason, is that when Patriot
Front shows up, it creates a whole mess of confusion for
people. You have some MAGA people will

(02:25):
kind of talk about them as if they're federal informants.
I don't know if they can still do that with Cash Patel running
the FBI, but not federal informants, but actually
performing feds in order to try to discredit MAGA, right?
Something like that. You know, you'll have also a lot
of people will treat them as being like, you know, like a
terroristic threat when they show up and they March around

(02:47):
and things like that. So I think it's important to
kind of like, actually we scrutinize Patriot Front and
look at what they do and who they are.
Before we dive in, a quick reminder.
We have a link to our tip jar inthe episode description.
Throw a few bucks in there if you'd like.
It helps us keep going. And after we record this

(03:08):
episode, I'm getting on a plane and going to the Alaskan
wilderness in search of the nextchapter of my life as I re enter
the job, Mark, you know, lookingfor full time work and that sort
of thing. I'm really looking forward to
the trip. But it does mean that next week
we're going to be off. We'll be back on July 14th.
So let's talk about Patriot Front.

(03:28):
Jeff, introduce yourself. I I gave you a little ramble
there, but who the hell are you?That that's the question that I
ask myself every single day. I really don't know.
You know, I've been researching the white power movement for
about 10 years now. Started with identifying people
who were counter protesting. My friends and I, Madison in

(03:51):
Madison, WI Officer Matt Kenny murdered Tony Robinson, unarmed
black men in March of 2015. Protests ensued and then people
started showing up with long rifles in combat gear looking
like they wanted to go to war against us.
And I got with a couple people, we started identifying them and
that's kind of how I got startedin this started then pursuing

(04:14):
some of the academic work. I was in grad school at the
time. But funny enough, the people
that we originally identified that were counter protesting us,
some of them ended up being involved in the Governor Whitmer
kidnapping plot. Really.
No shit. Which is just a wild, small
world kind of far right thing that that you get into doing the
work. There's another acute like

(04:35):
alleged fed up right that. These federal agents are busy,
man. They're busy.
We open the show with a clip of Thomas Rousseau, who is the
leader of Patriot Front, denyingthat the group is a bunch of
federal informants or federal stage actors trying to discredit

(04:56):
the MAGA movement or whatever. Before we dive in, you've you've
done a lot of reporting researchabout the group we're talking
about today. Are these feds?
Do they glow? Honestly, some of them are
probably feds. Right, but are they working for
the FBI to infiltrate Patriot fund or to make Magda look bad?

(05:16):
Absolutely not. I, I say that they're feds
because they've all been, you know, a lot of them at least
have been arrested and charged with crimes and who knows who
has talked. Right.
So to clarify for the for the audience, just So what you're
saying is that like once, once you've sort of been through the
system in some sense, they know your name, they know your

(05:37):
number, right? And they can lean on you with
the pressure of potentially going to jail.
Exactly. Yeah.
And some of the some of the people that have been arrested,
right, have taken plea deals. And you know, one reason a
prosecutor offers a plea deal isso they don't have to go through
the hassle of taking you to trial.
But they usually come with some conditions, right?
And I don't think it would be totally far fetched to think

(06:00):
that it involved, you know, having a little chit chat with a
couple people who might be interested in this group.
I'm just asking questions because it seems like Thomas
Rousseau got off with a slap on the wrist for his involvement in
the Unite the Right. Why?
It's a fair question. So Jeff, in the scope of the
white power movement, where doesPatriot Front sit?

(06:24):
Why? Why should people care about
this group and and what's the risk that they pose?
Where did where do they situate?Where are they situated on the,
in that white power movement? It's, it's a question that I
asked myself a lot because on the surface, Patriot Front seems
almost like a conservative group, right?
I mean, they're, they, they dress themselves in like

(06:45):
Americana garb. They use red, white and blue,
right? They, they don't use symbols of
hatred that we all know, you know, the rhetoric is fairly
tame. However, you know, once you get
into their online spaces and their, their private spaces,
once they're among themselves, now they show themselves to be,
you know, just as rabidly white supremacist as any acceleration

(07:09):
is neo Nazi group that I come across.
So, you know, where does it situate?
Where is it situated? It's, it's almost like a, you
know, I, I perceive it as along the start, you know, is it the
start of the pipeline to radicalization?
Not necessarily, but it is closer to the start of
radicalization than not, right. So it, it, it is, it is a group

(07:30):
that captures a lot of attentionfrom the larger far right.
And they they recruit mainly from people who are already kind
of, you know, so-called red pilled.
And then once they get in patriot front, they, they get a
little bit more radicalized to white nationalism, you know,
among themselves. They're reading, you know, some
neo Nazi literature. And then they, a lot of them

(07:52):
start realizing, Hey, holy cow, I'm actually in a cult of Thomas
Result, right? And so they leave, and then they
go join like an acceleration group or something more radical.
I, I don't think everybody in our listener base necessarily
knows what you mean by accelerationist group.
OK, So what, what, what you're, what you're talking about the
like sort of like cells that sort of of people who kind of

(08:14):
speak to one another on Telegram, right?
Like that's like sort of that's sort of what it is.
And and by acceleration is the idea is, I know this is getting
a little little heady guys, but like the idea, correct me if I'm
wrong, is that if you take drastic actions like terror,
like terrorism, things of that nature, you can potentially
destabilize society and open up new possibilities for fascism.

(08:40):
Is that sort of what you mean byan accelerationist group?
Yes, it is. So I mean Patriot from members,
you know what, what are they doing?
They're posting stickers. They're they're doing banner
drops, you know, full of their messaging and going to rallies
with the group. And that gets stale for a lot of
them looking in some of their internal communication, talking

(09:00):
to a couple of former members. It's it's just gets boring after
a while. So it, like it Patriot Fund is
like an incubator in a way for more radical action that they
take once they leave the group. Because again, one of the
biggest criticisms that I've heard from people in the
movement and you can see on Telegram from people who compete

(09:20):
with Patriot Front for membership, it's a cult around
Thomas Rousseau. Like I, I cannot emphasize how
big of a like just a cult of personality.
If you go against Thomas, you are shunned, right?
If you, if you speak out and tryto assert yourself and your
idea, if Thomas doesn't like it,that could go very wrong for you
socially within the group. If that's the case, then we need

(09:42):
to talk about who Thomas Russo is because we're because we're
kind of going into this backwards.
So Thomas Rousseau is the founder of Patriot Front, right?
And so the first time we kind ofsee like those sort of origins
of this group kind of come in 2017 at the Unite the Right
rally, right? But he does not come to that

(10:04):
event. How old is he then when he goes
to the event? He was 16 years old, a junior in
high school at Unite the Right. I mean, that had to sort him
along like one of the youngest people at Unite the Right,
right? Yeah, Thomas Rousseau talks
about getting visited by the FBIat high school after United,
right. So he's you.
You said before we went on that he's from Texas and he's kind of

(10:26):
like, you know, blonde hair, blue eyed guy.
How would you describe him? Does he Was he?
I know I've seen him a lot in this sort of like cowboy hat
type thing he wears these days. It looks quite, which in my
opinion looks quite fatuous. But no offense, Thomas, but what
kind of kid showed up at Unite the Right?
In in high school, Thomas was a journalist with his high school

(10:48):
newspaper. He appeared to, you know, write,
you know, he writes favorably about Barack Obama and inclusive
democracy in a couple articles back then.
So I mean, that is an interesting question.
You know, So simultaneously as he was doing this work for a
school newspaper, he's on this old fascist forum called Iron
March. So there there's so which you

(11:11):
know, which Thomas Rousseau likecomes out of high school or it
goes to Unite the Right. Something happened between him,
you know, getting started with, you know, this journalism
interest and then just quickly falling into the Iron March
crowd. So who shows up at at Unite the
Right is this little fascist kidwho is part of a group called

(11:33):
Vanguard America. And Vanguard America primarily
is recruiting folks from the military either currently, you
know, active duty military or people with military experience.
And much of Vanguard America is in their 20s or 30s.
So what is going on with Vanguard America hanging out,
You know, and not even just hanging out with Thomas Rousseau

(11:55):
is in high school that it as a as a high schooler like Thomas
Russo for Vanguard America was like in the upper crust of the
organization, right? He was part of the logistics
team going in to unite the rightfor the group.
Yes, and and in his in their capacity as a group at there
they're they're those are these guys are wearing like black and
white uniforms. There's a lot of different

(12:16):
groups that wore black and whiteactually right, or at least a
few is like traditionalist worker party or whatever, but
they're like 1. You know, when you see images of
it in, in retrospect, there weredifferent people like carrying
Shields. That's kind of like what unified
them. They just went with their with
their Shields and and and and marched and got into conflict
with anti fascists. Yeah, and if you've heard the

(12:37):
name Vanguard America before this podcast, Vanguard America
got news coverage around Unite the Right for the old Heads
listening because a man named James Field, who toured the end
of the day in Charlottesville, got in his vehicle and did a car
attack against a crowd of anti fascist murdering Heather Hayer

(13:01):
marched with Vanguard America. Fields was also young, by the
way. I mean, he was he, he, he was
what, a tick above high school, right?
He was like, 20 years old or something.
Yeah. And he wasn't just marching with
Vanguard America, he was watching marching right next to
Thomas Russo. After Charlottesville, in the
hours, days, weeks that followed, a just huge wave of

(13:26):
scrutiny starts to come down on the white power movement.
Legal scrutiny, political scrutiny, and groups that were
involved in Unite the Right are really feeling the pressure.
About two weeks later, Thomas Rousseau announced that Vanguard
America was rebranding, and it'scalled Patriot Front.

(13:49):
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Yeah, OK. OK, it's time to.
Let's get back to Patriot from. Seriously.
So, Jeff, can you explain sort of the context here?

(18:05):
I I mean, obvious to me, this was like an obvious play of
like, OK, this brand is ruined. Some guy who was marching with
us just murdered somebody. We've got to change it up.
But Thomas Rousseau, he was in the upper echelons of Vanguard
America, but not like the ultimate point person.
So how did he become the guy that decided that the group's

(18:27):
rebranding? That's a great question that a
lot of former Vanguard American members would love to know a
little bit more detail about. From what I've learned, Rousseau
So there was like a middle point, a very quick middle point
between Vanguard America and Patriot Front, and it's called
Southern Front. Southern Front was a Discord

(18:47):
server that many of the VanguardAmerican guys would communicate
on. There was another server, but
I'm blanking on its name. So basically you put those two
Discord servers together and that's all of Vanguard America
and Southern. The Southern Front one,
Rousseau, was an administrator of it apparently, and he

(19:08):
basically does a coup from what I understand.
He strips everyone else with administrator access to the
Southern Front Discord. He just revokes their
administrative privileges and not and then he starts
controlling it and he starts really demanding people fall in
line with his ideas. And if you don't get in line,
then you're out. And that's then kind of quickly

(19:31):
morphs into him branding Southern front into Patriot
front. There is, you know, on on this
kind of why is he so, you know, pushy about getting people you
know who he was once comrades without of the group.
Well, his big innovation is to abandon the so-called big tent

(19:52):
approach to the white power movement that was being tried at
the time. That's what.
What's What's that mean? Tenor of the white power
movement at the time like 20/16/2017, early 2017 is that
they're, they're riding high, they're victorious Trump's in
office. They're guys there.
You know, they might have some problems with him, but you know,
he's moving the rhetoric forwardthat he's got some favorable

(20:13):
policies. He hasn't, you know, necessarily
abandoned them, you know, in their minds, abandoned them at
that point. So you see just a ton of St.
activity within the white power movement across the United
States in the summer of 2016, the summer of 2017.
And it really is showing membersof the white power movement
that, hey, you know, we got the juice.

(20:35):
We can, we have all this activity going around the the
country. We have our guy in the White
House. We need to like build coalition
basically. And they start thinking of how
can we just create a large presence, a larger white power
movement by combining all our forces.
And they learned pretty, pretty,pretty severely at Unite the

(20:58):
Right that when you combine a bunch of neo Nazis and white
nationalists together who have, you know, just violent intent
and that these violent ideologies is going to turn out
bad. It's going to turn out in in a
way that's going to leave your movement as a whole, but
particularly the groups within it, badly damaged,
reputationally facing legal liability, The stuff that you

(21:18):
talked about, the media scrutiny.
So it's within that context that, that, that that building
of the big tent to get to the unite to right, to really
represent this big tent of the unite of, of the far right at
this event. It showed Rousseau that that
approach is the wrong choice because it leads to so much

(21:38):
negative attention. And that's really his big kind
of take away and one of the big reasons why he breaks off this
Southern Front Discord server from the rest of Vanguard and
then renames it and then kicks everybody out of Vanguard who
don't agree with, hey, it's timeto end the Big 10 approach.

(21:59):
We need to focus on building really a Vanguard of white power
activists. You had mentioned earlier on in
the podcast they're the kind of Americana stuff that they brand
themselves in, and we kind of moved through it quickly, but it
always struck me as being a conscious choice to try to look

(22:19):
like patriotic Republican. You know what they look like to
me? My first job was working at a
Walmart and we also wore Navy shirts and khaki pants.
That was what we were required to wear.
So every time I see them I just think like shit, was I supposed
to work today? Like I.

(22:39):
These guys from the Best Buy pissed.
I, I envisioned them as like kind of Cracker Barrel racist.
I don't know. It's like they got the kitsch,
they got the Americana of that. Well, there were but, but, but
I, you know, I think it's important to just just kind of
under score that. Like the khakis, the polo
shirts, you know, the only thingthey, you know, they, they, they
stick with the masks where like they wear masks all the time.

(23:01):
And that's what everybody, that's why everybody calls them
feds and stuff like that. And that doesn't look normal.
Yeah, I mean, that that look strikes me as being a deliberate
attempt to try to recruit conservative men, right?
Like people who lean conservative And they, you know,
they see a conflict on the street between guys dressed like
that and Antifa. And they're like, these are my

(23:24):
guys. They they look like they watch
Fox News. The symbols that Patriot Front
use are, you know, this is Russo's very careful branding of
this group. He has spent a lot of his adult
life trying to think through howcan I appeal to normie
conservatives? And he has so far seemingly

(23:45):
failed because all the all the normie conservatives tend to
think Patriot Front are a bunch of feds, which is funny in a
way. But it also says a lot about
how, I don't know, white supremacy is kind of normalized
on the right and, and how they can't really get around it and
and they just kind of lie about it.
But the symbols that they use that I think really speak to how

(24:09):
they try to appeal to normie conservatives who, you know,
that that there are folks who just love our country, right?
And they they're patriots in in some very negative.
But you know, honestly, you could be a patriot and still be,
you know, an all right person, Isuppose.
But to get to my point is they use this of what's called the

(24:29):
Betsy Ross flag. And you'll see this at every
rally. It's the, it's a flag that was
developed in 1777. It has 13 stars in a circle to
signify the 13 colonies. And for Page, you know, for
Thomas Rousseau and for members of Patriot Front, this is the
most authentic way to express your white American identity

(24:53):
because by the time the United States flag got popularized for
them, for Patriot Front, the country was already controlled
by Jewish people, right? So the the American flag to
members of Patriot Fund is something to look down upon
because it symbolizes, you know,this degenerate Jewish power

(25:14):
structure that's trying to control in, in, in, you know,
terrorize white people. And they also use the upside
down American, Yeah, right. Which you which you which we saw
like you know, a lot after January 6th anyway.
They, they also fly, you know, their own flag, Patriots flat
Patriot fronts flag, red, white and blue.

(25:34):
And, you know, if you don't lookat it carefully, you just kind
of think, oh, it's just a patriotic flag.
But there's a, I always have trouble pronouncing this word,
but it's a fascis. A fascis.
It's a. It's a.
Sticks right? Yeah, it's a bundle of wood or,
you know, basically a an axe. Sometimes, Sometimes it's an axe

(25:58):
and it's wrapped in barbed wire.It's a symbol that was
popularized by Italian fascists under Mussolini in the early
20th century. And it's supposedly what it
means to these guys is revolution through tradition,
which is a misnomer. And I don't understand how they
get there. I mean, I can understand it, but

(26:18):
rationally I cannot. I can understand it at an
emotional level, right? Like, I get that.
But revolution through tradition, I mean, that's one of
their, that's one of the PatriotFront slogans as well.
It's it's like people that are like, I'm radically conservative
and it's like what? Right.
I, I just keep going back and thinking that like, at the time,
this group is coming together, Rousseau is still in high

(26:40):
school, right? Like the Patriot Front is coming
together. It's whipping out its branding.
It is kind of setting out a strategy and it's being run by a
child. Just something, something to
think about. So let's go on then and talk
about what Patriot Front gets upto in their first year of

(27:02):
existing. There is a few stand out events.
In September 2017, Patriot Frontholds its first event.
So within a month they're out onthe street.
They go to a anarchist book fairin Houston and there's about,
what, 15 people there, a couple dozen people there.

(27:23):
They've got that outfit on, you know, khaki pants, Navy shirt.
And they hold banners. They chant and they yell at
attendees. What is sort of your take away
of of this first showing? What do you make of it?
I think the biggest thing for meis the timing of it.

(27:44):
It's only about a month after Charlottesville, right?
It's I think it's September 2017.
And it's a very much a crash course in Russo's management
radar. Russo's big innovation of moving
away from the Big 10 approach toa coalition building on the in
the white power movement. It's him with his trusted

(28:07):
comrades, his trusted people. And he was able to, you know,
get them out and shout down, youknow, and, and yell and Heckle
and and mock attendees of this anarchist book book fair.
And it, I think, kind of solidifies in in Russo's mind
that this is the right approach.Like, look it, this is starting
off on a good foot. I got 15 people with me and

(28:29):
where where wreaking havoc against our political enemies.
Asthma door was with them, if that's if I'm not mistaken and
and he it was like like 15 really young guys and this guy
who's basically like like looks like a racist Santa Claus who is
who is a Blogger for the daily storm or a neo Nazi website

(28:52):
who's been it was in out of prison a whole bunch.
Was it Robert Warren race? Is that his name?
Is that his name? Something like that.
But he died recently. And, you know, I just had to
mention that. It was very weird.
I remember thinking how weird itwas that you had all these
extremely young guys and like a teen leader and then this old
predatory looking white supremacist with them.

(29:15):
And Kid O'Connell was there on the other side.
I don't know if you're familiar with him, but he's, he's a, a
journalist based out of Texas And you know, he was, you know,
he's, he's into a queer rights and disability rights and stuff
like that. And he was he, he was kind of
like part of the back and forth there.
So they must have thought something worked because in the

(29:39):
following months they would continue demonstrations.
In November, they did their first event at a college campus.
It was on the South Mall of the University of Texas at Austin.
About 25 people participated there.
And in January 2018, Patriot Front attended a anti abortion

(30:00):
rally in Chicago. Jeff, you live in Chicago,
right? I do, yeah.
It is a wonderful place. That's our backyard right there.
So this anti abortion rally, it's it's like the March for
life in Chicago, right? They keep going back to this,
this may come up a couple more times, but they have claimed,

(30:22):
Rousseau has claimed that they get warm reception at these anti
abortion events. So tuck that in the back of your
head. July 18 comes along, Patriot
Front members attack a San Antonio ICE protest camp.
Jeff, is this the first case where this group has, you know,
had a physical altercation or like physical aggression towards

(30:45):
people they perceive as their political opponents?
From what I understand, yes, this would be the first time
that their their members picturefrom members were seen
aggressively kind of shoving someone call it assaulting
members of their political opposition.
However, there, I mean, even at the anarchist book fair, though,
you kind of see not I mean, there were separated, but there

(31:09):
was a lot of just very I mean, there's there's images of
Rousseau from this anarchist book fair.
Just kind of see him see you seehim foaming at the mouth almost.
So that anger was there with Rousseau and with some other
people at the Anarchist Book Fair, but it wasn't really until
July of 2018 that we see that kind of turn into physical

(31:29):
contact. So the next thing, and I should
say I should have said earlier, I'm working off a timeline of
Patriot Front that you put together.
So this isn't all coming out of my noggin.
Listeners, this is this is a lotof hard work by Jeff.
August 2018 on this timeline youput together Jacob Zak.
What a fucked up spelling. I'm just looking at the name

(31:51):
here, JAKUBZA, OK, this is like a gamertag on Xbox Live.
So anyway, this guy, he's charged with a weapons violation
in Illinois. They found him in possession of
five guns without a license. He pleaded guilty, sentenced to
18 months probation. So a year after Unite the Right,

(32:12):
we've got Patriot Front, you know, doing these
demonstrations. They're seen being physically
aggressive. And we've got a member arrested
on gun charges. That is the first year of
Patriot Front. So a few questions to kind of
zoom out. Besides Thomas Rousseau, who is

(32:33):
involved in Patriot Front at this point?
We know it's split off of Vanguard America and like,
Discord servers are involved, but like, what does the group
look like at this point? I mean, Patriot Front members
are generally on the younger side, right?
I, I mean, like, what? Besides maybe Asthmador, you
know, lording over the anarchistbook fair protest.

(33:00):
What? Yeah.
What is this group like at this point a year in?
There are some older men within the group at this point, one of
them being he goes by Braxton Bragg or Nick Texas in the
movement in the group, Joseph Nicholas Brown.
And from what I understand, he'sa holdover from Vanguard.

(33:21):
And my hunch, you know, it's, it's hard to verify this without
talking to him and he doesn't ever want to talk.
It's like Joseph Brown is this older man.
He's got a fairly long life in the movement until, you know,
then he meets Thomas Rousseau. He won't, he moves over with
Thomas Rousseau. He seems to be like a kind of a

(33:43):
mentor figure at this moment in,in the in the organization as
well as this man Billy Merce. He doesn't use an alias.
I don't think he's ever used an alias.
But he's a long time Patriot Front member.
And I also think he's a holdoverfrom Vanguard America.
And he's also older. He's probably 15, maybe 20 years

(34:04):
older than Thomas Russo. So yeah, there it's mainly young
men, you know, mainly 16171819 year olds, but there are some
guys in their late 30s, mid 30s.So around the time around this
summer, summer of 2018 time, I actually had a personal
encounter, personal encounters with members of Patriot Front.

(34:27):
Like like Craigslist personal encounter or like no?
No, no, I did not have sex with anyone in Patriot Front that
summer. But but yeah, I was, you know,
when I was on the two things. I'm trying to figure out which,
which one to tell first. The first one I was talking
about, you mentioned Braxton Bragg, that guy who?

(34:47):
What was his name again? Joseph Brown.
Joseph Brown, that fucking guy. OK, so when I was on Gab, I was
on for, for people who don't know Gab as there's just like a
white supremacist version of Twitter.
It was very like, it was very big in 2018.
It's useless now in the age of Xbecause they're all there.
But you know, a lot of these guys were coming for me, right?

(35:09):
This is and, and, and the tone on that site was really vicious.
This is like before, you know, like a few months later you had
the the terror attack in Pittsburgh at the synagogue,
which was Gab related. And that sort of changed the
dynamic of Gab after that. But before that it was just like
people with swastikas in their eyes or whatever.
And that guy doxed my sister or tried to and wrote this or like,

(35:35):
OK, an account that he that onlyhe followed did, let's put it
that way, not very subtle or that only or that only followed
him or whatever. And it was like, you know, it's
like yours. You know, his sister is this she
likes to take whatever. I don't want to get too obscene,
but it's like racist and you know, very misogynistic and you
know, pornographic too for especially for a so-called

(35:58):
conservative person. Anyway, they got the docs wrong.
But the other thing that happened was my parents received
a card in the mail that said Patriot front on one side and on
the back of it, it said patriotism with teeth.
And that was a problem because Iwas getting a lot of threats
back then. And like everything I got was

(36:18):
like, what was just like, it wasjust like compounding, like, I
mean, you know, you know what you're like when you're in that
space, it's just like, seems like it just like everything is
seem makes you feel more and more fucking scared because it's
just like, 'cause whatever. Now, now that I look back on it,
what they were doing there is they were picking reporters who
covered the far right and they were trying to like boost their
Rep and trying to get people. I think, I think 2 separate

(36:41):
things. The doxing of my sister was
because they hated me, this guy or whatever.
But the, the, the stuff about the card, yeah, they want to
scare me, but also they want me to post about it on Twitter,
boost their Rep. It's like easy activism.
And I just wanted to interject that personal story because
'cause they were very much part of my life, yeah.
I I also got some Patriot Front mail.

(37:04):
I got the most mail from Alex Jones listeners.
I'll tell those stories on the show someday, but it was not
fun, is what I will say about it.
Yeah, because patriotism with teeth is like, not a threat, but
it could be. It could be right?
I had a Patriot Front associate,you know, he's not really a

(37:26):
member. Brad Lewis.
He paled around with, you know, Sean Kaufman and the Tennessee
Active Club, which according to one of my most recent articles,
we learned, we learned that thisparticular active club as well
as dozens of others are secretlybeing controlled by Patriot
Front. And so, you know, is Brad Lewis
a Patriot from member? Oh, he's an associate

(37:48):
nonetheless. I'm trying to say that this man,
have you ever had a Nazi write apoem about you?
He, this, this guy has written 4poems about me and posted it on
Telegram. His wife is reading a song about
me. That's so sweet.
I'd like to I'd like to critic, critique those from a literary.
Yeah, yeah, we can. We can we can boot up like a
bootleg pitchfork here and then listen to some of this music

(38:10):
together. It's horrible.
So last question before we move on, Patriot Front after their
first year is going to start getting really active.
So we're going to be moving pretty quick through these next
few years of Patriot Front. But before we do, Jeff, just

(38:32):
question for you, what do you know about the reception to
Patriot Front in the first year among their, I guess they would
call them comrades in the white power movement?
My take at the time was Patriot Front was seen as something
innovative and new among white power activists, even though the

(38:54):
tactics and really some of the rhetorical strategy that Patriot
Front was deploying at the time,you know, that's really not new.
I mean, people were trying to beimplicitly white supremacist,
are coded white supremacist in the white power movement for a
long time. I mean, look at David Duke,
right? So it, it, it it was new in the
sense that, you know, in 2018, 2017, 2016, the alt right that

(39:18):
you mentioned, it was such an online phenomena.
And then hatred front comes in acouple other groups come in and
like they're avoiding this big 10 approach and say, hey, guys,
let's create our small groups orsmall kind of cell like
structure and let's get out in the street and do so-called
activism. And by that they mean, you know,
post racist propaganda, do banner drops, hold rallies.

(39:43):
They start destroying murals andworks of public art that
represent our celebrate black history, victims of police
violence, migrant cultures. So there's there seems to be an
excitement for Patriot Front because they're out there on the
street, you know, pushing the message forward.
That was my ticket at the time. So let's hit the gas because

(40:07):
like I said, things are getting busy for Patriot Front. 2019
comes along. You got another visit to that
Chicago anti abortion rally? February that year Boston police
arrest 3 Patriot Front members after observing them placing
Patriot Front propaganda on cityproperty.

(40:30):
One of the guys allegedly slapped the arresting officer on
the hand and caught a charge forthat.
Larson Hood get a dangerous weapon charge, a pocket knife
and a pair of brass knuckles. June that year another Patriot
Front member is charged with a bias motivated crime after he
harassed and intimidated families at a local bookstore

(40:51):
hosting a drag queen story hour.These anti LGBTQ protests start
to become quite a theme for Patriot Front demonstrations.
July 2019, Thomas Rousseau is deposed in Science First
Kessler, which is one of the biglawsuits that came out of Unite

(41:11):
the right Stop there, Jeff, he'sdeposed.
He's not named in the lawsuit, right?
It's like against groups or I'm I'm less I'm less familiar with
that. How did he, you know, I guess
the question with, you know, whyis it Thomas Rousseau named as,

(41:32):
you know, someone to be sued in this lawsuit?
What what, what did he give up maybe?
Or, you know, how helpful was heto to to the science part of
the, the the case? But at this deposition,
something that sticks out and it's in this timeline that I
published is the lawyer for the playoffs is asking Rousseau to

(41:54):
read some of the things that Rousseau himself hosted to this
discord server. And it's an anti-Semitic slurs,
racial slurs. And Rousseau, it is like, I
can't say that I, I don't, I don't, I'm not like this
anymore. I, I'm just, it's, it hurts my
stomach to say these things. So, yeah, I think it's kind of

(42:16):
indicative of, you know, we're so seeing that the language is,
is part of the problem and and he understands that he can't be
an explicit white supremacist without any consequence.
And it's it's it serves a lot. I mean, there's some humor in it
with just kind of how he says that these weird kid things like

(42:38):
gosh darn it, you know what I mean?
Yeah. Yeah.
He's very. He's a.
Child, I mean, he's only like 18at the time and, and he's being
pressed by this lawyer to say things that he's, he's written
online, but Thomas won't say in public or not in public.
I'm sorry, in, in in a room of, of of, you know, in this
deposition. To be fair, I don't think I

(43:00):
would want to repeat that stuff either in front of a bunch of
lawyers. So let's skip ahead.
That summer they do another rally at an anarchist book fair.
About 20 people participate. Something interesting happens.
In November 2019, Patriot members traveled to Europe to
network with violent neo fascistgroups.

(43:22):
So they're getting on a plane and flying to where?
Poland, right? They go to a couple places this
trip and since then I believe, at least from what we know,
they've been on at least two more and they seem to have
stopped at the same places each time.

(43:42):
This one in 2019 they stopped inItaly and what the the fascist
group there? It's in the article.
Forza Nuova is what this timeline says.
Yes. And then they stopped in Poland.
Actually, I, I don't know the exact like timeline of that
trip. I don't know where they stopped
First off the top of my head, but I know they went to Italy,

(44:04):
they went to Poland, they met Nordic resistance people in
Denmark, in one of the Nordic countries.
I want to say it's Denmark. It might be, I think it's
Sweden, but they might have likeconverged together in like
Copenhagen. I, I think that's what happened.
But they, they met with Nordic resistance people either in
Sweden or in Denmark during thistrip.

(44:26):
And then in Spain as well, they meet with Casa #.
Casa Pound is a fascist group, like the most traditional, like
the at when, when we say fascist, you know, what does
that really mean? Look at Casa #.
Those are like, Franco Spanish fascists, right?
Like, I mean, they're, they're very much military.
Like, kind of, yeah, fetishizingthe military.

(44:47):
Very much like literal sense of the word kind of kind of groups.
What does that tell you? I mean, the white power movement
has always had, you know, international aspirations.
But what's that signal to you that Patriot Front members are,
you know, I guess, presumably with some money, whether it's

(45:08):
their personal money, membershipdues or whatever, buying these
plane tickets to go hobnob in Europe.
Looking at why they were there and we know why they were there
because of leaked documents thatwere obtained or documents that
were leaked to journalists from anti fascist infiltrators who
infiltrated Patriot Front and obtained these documents.

(45:29):
And some of those documents included logistic kind of memos
and other kind of prep agendas and what not for this trip and
why they were there. They wanted to learn from these
groups. They wanted to try to understand
how these groups in Europe who are under tighter speech laws.

(45:52):
So these groups in Europe can't say certain things because of
how laws work, right? You can't deny the Holocaust in,
in, in many countries over there, for example.
So it was, it was a way for themto kind of learn how to become
better implicit white supremacists, right?
What do what, what do they need to brand themselves as like in

(46:14):
appearance, in messaging, you know, stylistically just across
the board. And they learn from these groups
who are also tied to this hooligan movement.
I, I don't know much about it, but a lot of the groups that
they met in Europe are tied to this hooligan culture.
And they're also learning how todefend themselves and how to

(46:37):
aggressively fight people in thestreet, just like these
hooligans do in Europe. So they, they went there to
train, they went there to learn how to, you know, message
better. They went there to network.
They went there to build their international movement of white
nationalists. This was like also a thing
around that time too. They were always, they're always
trying to it's almost like, you know, these anti globalists or
whatever, they're all still at the same time.

(46:58):
I have this trying to network, right.
Steve Bannon, probably not on the level of these guys.
Still a little bit more tetheredto, is he really, I don't know
actually, but still a little bitmore tethered to the actual
mainstream Republican Party for sure.
He was always trying to build these inroads with other, you
know, right wingers in other countries who have a kind of

(47:20):
hard right point of view. And yeah, the same thing is true
of some of these these groups Iron March which you mentioned
earlier brought together a bunchof different acceleration as
groups from different from different countries.
So I. And I, I want to, I'm sorry, I
want to shout out Claire Goforthto for doing the reporting that,

(47:40):
you know, we know this because of her reporting.
So thank you, Claire. And we're we're fans of Claire
on this show. We we need to have her on
actually. We do we do.
She would be a great guest. So we walked through some some
of these events in the early years.
I just to kind of illustrate a point and I think all of them in

(48:02):
their own way, you know, it's, you know, we spent some time on
them here, really illustrate that Thomas Rousseau from the
founding and in those early years has these really big,
almost larger than life expectations for what he hopes
to accomplish with Patriot Frontand the strategy that he has,

(48:24):
you know, kind of cooked up the branding that he has cooked up.
But the people that he is networking, all of IT support
this vision that he has for a, you know, soft to the touch
white power group. Here's going forward, you know,
I, I am just going to speed through it because like I've

(48:45):
said a couple Times Now, they get very active.
There's doing flash rallies at places like pharmaceutical
companies. They're doing rallies in DCA,
rally outside the Alamo. That one was one of the funnier
ones. I thought They are destroying
memorials. Destroyed a memorial in Orlando,

(49:07):
FL for the victims of the 2016 Pulse nightclub mass shooting,
which I found particularly disgusting.
They are in places like Chicago,August 2020.
Skipping ahead quite a bit here,a few leaders of the group are
arrested. And this, I think, right, is the

(49:28):
first time Thomas Rousseau actually gets a pair of cuffs
around his wrist, right? From what I understand, yes.
Also in that group, Graham Whiston and Cameron Pruitt, who
are those guys? They're just like leadership.
They are leaders within Patriot Front.
They are part of Thomas's inner circle.
Long time Patriot Front members.Graham also pals around with

(49:51):
Media to Rise as well as Will toRise, which are groups created
by I know this is going to be a a can of worms here, but Robert
Rondo, I don't know if we want to talk about Rondo right now,
but he's got two groups and theycrossover a lot with Nick.
He's got a couple groups. You know, he's another

(50:12):
Charlottesville guy who is very much on the street fighting, you
know, side of things, right? Right.
And that's a simple way to do it.
And basically Graham works for his propaganda outlet, Robert,
Robert Rundo's propaganda outletcalled Media to Rise.
Graham works very closely with that as well as Will to Rise,
which is Robert Rundo's clothingbrand.

(50:34):
And Graham and we again, we learned all of this from the
work of anti fascist infiltrators who gained a bunch
of documents and then leaked it to journalists.
So we know that Graham has his name on a banking document for
Will to Rise, which is this online clothing store.
And they sell like other merchandise like sunglasses and
just like kind of random items. But in this banking document,

(50:58):
Graham writes that the expected revenue and I'm sure you know
the thing. How do you verify this?
But the expected revenue, they said, was $10,000 a month.
I wish I made that. I mean, I'm sure that that
that's, you know, I guess you could lie on that.
It's not like legal, I don't think it's he's just setting up
a business account for a bank and then talking about what's
your expected net revenue. But still the to claim that I

(51:21):
think says enough. And then Cameron Pruitt is an
interesting guy as well. He he's from Utah.
Cameron has a private, he at least at one point had a Private
Eye light or private investigator license.
And he has done work with security firms.
So he is on the surface a dangerous guy.

(51:44):
But then when you look at him, you see he doesn't really have a
salt. But Cameron's a long time
picture front guy, big like whenwhen I talk to people who have
left front, which is it? Just a handful, but I've talked
to them. Graham and Cameron come up a lot
as like Thomas's yes men. So they get apprehended after

(52:04):
two police officers saw them posting Patriot Front propaganda
near a courthouse. So, you know, that's not a very
serious crime, right? I imagine, you know, they get
sort of slapped on the wrist there and go on their way.
They do another rally at the National Mall in December 20. 20
is about 100 people at that. And I think maybe so this is

(52:28):
like the end of the Trump years,right?
That's kind of where we are on the timeline.
End of the first Trump administration, End of the.
Trump years, end of the first Trump years.
So you know, they are, they are rocking and rolling during Trump
won. They're getting bolder, people
are getting arrested, but they just keep going.

(52:50):
But something that sticks out tome here is that they're not
really engaging directly in electoral politics.
Like that sort of alt right era of the white nationalist
movement really glued itself to Trump.
They really just like stapled themselves to the coattails and
try to see how far they could run it.

(53:10):
I'm sure all of these guys votedfor Trump, right?
I, I mean, I don't think there were any, you know, Joe Biden
voters or Hillary Clinton supporters in Patriot Front.
But they're not really like it doesn't seem like they are
making a whole lot of effort to associate themselves with with
his 2020 campaign. I will say the exception to this
is that there have been a few Trump rallies where they have

(53:33):
gone to hand out Flyers and propaganda.
But these Flyers aren't like, ifyou love Trump, join Patriot
Front. It's just like, you know, they
quick story time. I went to go cover a Trump rally
one time and I missed the cut off to get let in as media.
So I was like kind of stuck outside with all the people who
also couldn't get in. And I was like, well, fuck, man,

(53:54):
how am I going to get my story? Like, what am I going to file
tonight? And then some guy literally
walks up and hands me a Patriot Front Flyer and, like, puts it
in my hand. And I look at it and I go wait a
second. And I jump.
I jump out of the line I'm in and try to chase him down.

(54:14):
But so that's the exception there.
You know, they've been seen as some Trump rallies, but they're
not really in case in the electoral side of things.
But how much of that is like a conscious decision and how much
of it is just, I don't know. I, yeah.
I, I guess my question for you, Jeff, is just why?
Why? Is there a reason for that?
I, I think it is a conscious decision to go there and try to

(54:36):
recruit, right. They see MAGA as a whole, like
the MAGA movement as recruit as a part of their recruiting
grounds. And they see, you know, the
these folks who are going to Trump rallies as almost red
pilled. Some of them, you know, might be
red pilled. And red pilled, you know, comes
from the movie The Matrix. And it's like, you know, the,

(54:58):
the choice that Morpheus gives Neo is the red pill or the blue
pill. The blue pill brings you back to
the fantasyland. The red pill is how you see the
truth, right? So Patriot Fund in their private
communication will talk about some of the strategy here.
And they will mention that, you know, these MAGA guys, they're,

(55:18):
they're so close to our side. If we could just turn them.
And so that that pushes them to get out into those spaces to try
to, you know, talk to them and, and pass out their literature.
But, you know, in terms of electoral politics and, and, you
know, even Trump Patriot Front as a whole, they're members.
But I would also expand this to a lot of groups within the white

(55:39):
power movement. They look at Trump with
suspicion, right? They, they see him sure as kind
of like a useful idiot. They're he's helping mainstream
some of their preferred policiesor even implementing some of his
preferred, their preferred policies now indefinitely, like
pushing the rhetoric, their rhetoric forward.
You know, they see him as a justa, a guy doing that work.

(55:59):
However, they also see, you know, him rallying around Israel
and they also see him part of the so-called Zionist occupied
government, which is this long term slogan of the white power
movement. And that's how they'll put it in
these private communications. So it, it's a complicated
relationship, though, and it is worthy of, of real in depth

(56:20):
analysis. I mean, it, my take is that
Patriot Front needs MAGA, but MAGA doesn't need Patriot Front.
And you see that, right? I mean, you see that in in a
campaign rally, I think it was in North Carolina in September
2024 where you have at a Trump campaign rally, people behind
Trump while he's speaking is holding are holding signs that

(56:42):
say reclaim America. And that's been Patriot Front
slogan sense its infancy. Reclaim America.
That's what they want. So you, you, you have you know,
there's many people smarter thanme writing about kind of the
Fort chanification of the GOP orthe you know, how these young
staffers are really just kind ofgetting molded by this far right

(57:03):
Internet culture. But so you have magus people
kind of stealing a little bit oror maybe even like, I guess
stealing is a good word reappropriating.
I was maybe going to say, but they're they're stealing from
patriot fronts kind of way to dowhite supremacy and in a very

(57:24):
implicit way. So MAGA will take from Patriot
Fund and it would, it, it makes them upset because they, they,
they, they want to get the credit right?
They, they want to get on stage and Maga's just not having any
of that. They'll they'll, they'll take
their ideals, they'll take theirpolicies, they'll take their
slogans, but they won't take Patriot Fund as people.

(57:45):
And at this point, you know, as the first Trump era is coming to
an end, how is the group growing?
Because it is getting larger. Here it is.
You know, if you're just counting numbers of Flyers and
stuff, you know, if you count like putting a propaganda
sticker somewhere as white supremacist activity, then

(58:07):
Patriot Front is like by far, I mean miles further than like any
other white supremacist or like white power movement group in
the country right now. Just in terms of like how much
they do. A lot of it is stickers and
stencils and spray paint, but that takes people, right?
And also how are they organized at this point?

(58:29):
Because I know Patriot Front haskind of a like a interesting way
of running its hierarchy, right?It's like kind of like a network
of groups. I'll start with talking about
like are they growing or were they growing back in you know
the end of the Trump the first Trump administration some
something of note about like their propaganda production.

(58:51):
It's an easy low effort waves todo a white supremacist activism
right. It's 2 knuckleheads in a car
with a lot of time can knock outhundreds of that thousands of
racist fires across a metro region or or rural area and
Patriot fund actually requires its members to there's a quota

(59:15):
system within Patriot front eachmember is supposed to there's.
Quotas. Yeah, so Thomas Russo's for a
very long time has. Back to the Best Buy thing.
Has demanding so he's demanding his members, you know, post a
certain amount of racist propaganda per month.
If you don't get those numbers, you know, you're, you're

(59:37):
punished in a way or you know, you have to do basically shamed.
From what I've heard, it's, it'sto do that to, to get to their
quota. Some members are told to drive
sometimes 50 to 100 miles outside of where they live to do
these runs because Patriot Frontnot only wants you to do the,
the production and to post them,but they want to, they want the

(59:59):
public to think that they're bigger than they are so that
they'll, they'll tell members todrive out and, and just post
material in as many places as you can and.
You know, does it show growth? Yeah, I guess in a way you could
see kind of the spread of their propaganda across the United
States in terms of like growth in numbers of people doing it.

(01:00:22):
It's harder to tell the organization.
And and Thomas actually was speaking about this in in some
interviews he gave to far right media at the time the he was
trying to build a vanguard. He only wanted a couple 100
people that he can trust to kindof build his little, you know,
Patriot Front national group to then kind of control the white

(01:00:42):
power movement and, and influence the white power
movement and, and it helped create, you know, to move the
Overton window a little further.His his real goal for a long
time has been recruiting from the conservative movement.
So to turn concert, he puts it like this, He wants to turn
conservatives into nationalists,then he wants to turn

(01:01:03):
nationalists into activists. And that comes with a lot of
problems in terms of how to grow.
And he does speak fairly openly about some of the struggles that
his organization has has had in,in trying to grow bigger than a
couple 100. But then he's like, actually,
that's my goal. So it's kind of a little 2 sided
there. But it's it's a group that

(01:01:24):
probably at its peak had about 300 people, maybe 250.
And you could kind of tell basedon the amount of people that
they get out at the rallies, as well as some things that, you
know, other researchers have have revealed there's such a
burnout with and just they churnthrough members that it's, it's,

(01:01:45):
it's hard to pinpoint the growthof the organization.
Well, well, one thing I've heardabout some of these folks is
that like they, they get a lot of people who have drug
problems, I've heard, and which is interesting because they have
a lot of anti drug messaging, right?
So you get a lot of people, right?
So, so maybe somebody is really battling with drugs, hard drugs,

(01:02:06):
for instance, sees this and is like, yeah, I'm going to get the
poison out of my veins and and Patriot Front.
But then, you know, with with drug with, with drug use can
possibly there can be other mental health issues attached to
you have a lot of people who have mental health issues or
maybe they have propensity for violence and things like that.
A lot of people who probably would benefit from some
psychoanalysis, you know, reallybecause like, but you know,

(01:02:31):
that's fairly obvious, I think when you're joining a white
power group to begin with. But that's my personal opinion.
Yeah. And it must be very difficult to
maintain because then you have all the any one person you bring
into the in into the fold as potential to docks all these
different people or like leak all kinds of information.
It must be extremely difficult, right?
I, I have heard from, you know, again, like the handful of

(01:02:53):
former people and people who, and then the another handful of
people have been close to the organization outside of the
white power movement. They, they have told me that
it's, it's just, there's such high turnover in the group
because people start either getting tired of like these
boring tactics of, oh, I'm posting fires.
I need something more, or it's getting tired of the cult around

(01:03:15):
Thomas Rousseau, which is, you know, you're either with that or
you're against that. And once they, once the cult of
Thomas Russo realizes you're against that, you're out or
you're basically shunned to the side.
So that, that's just it, it's, it's hard for Patriot Front to
grow for that reason as well. And it's, you know, surprising
that oh wow, there's a cult within a, within a fascist

(01:03:37):
group. Like, so I don't know exactly
what they were expecting in terms of like how the group is
organized. It, I think it's important to
really clarify how this group isorganized because it's
intentionally organized into what Thomas Russell calls
networks. And these networks cross state
lines, which is crucial for prosecution, right?

(01:04:00):
Which is crucial for any civil case against this group.
Because nine times out of 10, when Patriot Front comes into
your town, 9 times out of 10, ifthey're rallying in your
community or posting whatever, they're crossing state lines to
do that. And when you're, you know,
there's statutes that we have federally that which were used
in the United right rally, right, that, you know, if you

(01:04:20):
call them, if you cross state lines with the intention to harm
or to intimidate, you know, black folks, migrants or people
generally for their mutable, immutable characteristics, you
cannot do that. And you can be held liable for
that. And how Patriot Fund has
organized itself under Thomas Russo's leadership.
You know, it, it, it's, it's kind of mind boggling in a way

(01:04:42):
because they set themselves up to be sued because most of their
members need to cross state lines in order to do their
activism. There's, there's, so there's not
most groups, A lot of groups will break down by states to
kind of avoid that. But to create these networks.
It, it's, I don't know, it's an interesting way to organize a
group, but nonetheless, Patriot Fund is organized into more than

(01:05:04):
10 so-called networks. These networks are then operated
by what are called network directors.
I look at them as chapter leaders.
These network directors, their job is basically to coordinate
for Thomas Rousseau the activities of that network.
And those activities can includethe circulation of racist

(01:05:25):
propaganda. So making sure you're getting
your, you're hitting your quota of racist propaganda each month.
There is network directors who will oversee that.
They're also interestingly and and kind of humorously, network
directors oversee the diets and exercise regimen of Patriot Fund
members. And that's an expectation when

(01:05:47):
you join the group or when you're, you know, LED into the
group, when you're vetted and all all that.
Particularly if you come with a body size that they don't find
acceptable, you are put into a very rigid diet in program as
well as an exercise program. And that's overseen by the
network director. And if you're a member and

(01:06:10):
you're not adhering to it, you can be reprimanded.
So it's like white genocide fat camp?
Basically, I think that's going to be the name of my book about
Patriot Fund. Going back to kind of how it's
organized, I, I think that's kind of a smart observation in
terms of just the way that they're organized makes them

(01:06:33):
potentially more legally vulnerable.
You know, people are getting arrested.
What they're doing, you know, it's, it's very petty crime,
vandalism, disruptive protests. Like you're not supposed to like
hang banners off the highway andstuff, right?
But but even as members are getting picked out here and
there to face legal consequences, the group just

(01:06:56):
doesn't seem to like it just kind of doesn't seem to faze the
group much, which is interestingto me because as we talked about
earlier, I mean, the reason Patriot Front exists was kind of
like, you know, attempting to, you know, jet out from the scene
after Unite the right. You know, I, I, I just assumed

(01:07:16):
to try to avoid some consequences or whatever, right.
But but they don't really seem that concerned about it.
Am I reading that correctly? Or I think you you are reading
that very correctly when you talk about like just kind of the
lack of accountability within the larger far right or
narrowing it down to the white power movement or Patriot
frontage, just just a lack of accountability across the board.

(01:07:38):
And Mike German, JM Berger, Chris Goldsmith, they are three
researchers just brilliant at what they do.
And they can inform folks about this topic on why has the far
right. It's saved accountability much
more thoroughly than I can. But I can, you know, from
paraphrasing some of their work.Why aren't why isn't the FBI

(01:08:04):
what the FBI just never seems tohave cared about?
And this is also, oh, I forgot her name, but she's writing the
book Bring the War Home. Kathleen, I believe.
You know, so the FBI essentiallyjust kind of advocated the space
of holding white supremacists and organized white supremacist

(01:08:24):
accountable. And they just, there's not any
law enforcement out there that'scollecting information about
these groups. So prosecutors are kind of bound
in that ignorance because there's no information that
there anybody is collecting within the criminal justice
system itself. Most of the information that we
know about the white power movement going back to its

(01:08:44):
infancy in the 1970s up till today in Patriot Fund, most of
that information comes from, youknow, people who have turned and
and kind of changed their life, their former members telling us
how it works or it's infiltrators or it's family
members of these guys who are telling us information about the
group. So you just this kind of did

(01:09:05):
this abdication of just knowing about the white power movement
is a problem among prosecutors. And there's this just general
lack of effort. I think there's so many shooting
off fireworks outside of my apartment and it's distracting.
That's OK, sounds like you're being shot at.
Which is, which is. I do live in.
Chicago so, but no, it's that's a bad joke about Chicago.

(01:09:28):
I'm sorry. The So what I wanted to say
though, is that there's this knowledge gap that prosecutors
have because they're not collecting information, but
that's really based on the the non prioritization that
prosecutors in, in law enforcement are, you know,
people who are supposed to uphold criminal justice in our
country. They just don't see the white
power movement as a priority. And that leads to them making

(01:09:51):
haphazard cases against patriot or against members of group of
groups and not bringing in the group itself, right.
So people within white power groups, you know, they might get
charged here and there, but prosecutors have a real tough
time bringing in the whole group.
And they have an even tougher time kind of laying out a

(01:10:13):
conspiracy in some of the like some of the Rico statues that
exist in our country. So it, it, it, it stems, though,
from this lack of prioritizationand this lack of knowledge.
We could also think about like, well, FB is, you know, are just
the history of our country. It's who is it?
What what is the FBI supposed tobe doing?
It's supposed to be protecting property.
It's supposed to be protecting, protecting the capitalist.

(01:10:34):
This is me as a communist guy. So but it's supposed to be
protecting wealth, right? It's not supposed to be be
protecting communities against white supremacists that that's
the FBI. But something that Chris
Goldsmith brings up in his he's he leads a group called Task
Force Butler and they developed this really fascinating,
important, very interesting report about how prosecutors can

(01:11:01):
criminally charge Patriot Front.He also does this with another
group that's that used to operate in New England.
But the one on Patriot Front suggests that how do we get
across, you know, how do we get this across?
The criminal justice, the, the institution of criminal justice,
the, the lawyers, the, the cops.How do we get it across that

(01:11:22):
white supremacists are a problem?
Well, we need to start treating them as a criminal group.
And if you think about how Patriot Front targeted,
especially with these, the destruction of these memorials
that celebrate, you know, the life of a black folks who have
been killed by police or, you know, symbols of LGBTQ pride,

(01:11:44):
right? They're they're intentionally
going out there and Patriot farmers are intentionally going
out there and destroying these symbols and going into
communities, crossing state lines.
And we can show coordination andintention.
It's a that's those are criminalacts.
And thinking of the group as a criminal enterprise could help
kind of shift the criminal justice system as a whole and

(01:12:05):
make it at least ideally it could push them to to hold
groups like Patriot Front to account.
Like they have used similar lawsagainst the left, left groups
and, and the mob. Yeah.
So undeterred, Patriot Front during the Biden years just
continues to get active. And again, a lot of questions

(01:12:28):
here, right? Biden's in charge, a lot of
extremist movements kind of going to, I don't want to say
full blown hibernation, but theykind of hit the brakes for a
second after the capital riot, rethink their strategies,
rethink sort of what they want to be doing.
But Patriot Front is just cruising along.
They are vandalizing, defacing murals of Ruth Bader Ginsburg,

(01:12:51):
George Floyd, Martin Luther King, Junior Arthur Ashe.
They are targeting historically black colleges and universities.
They've got rallies in Salt LakeCity, Pittsburgh, DC, Indy,
Youngstown, Austin. I I mean, they're getting
around. It seems every month or two they
kind of pop out of the woodwork and they do something else.

(01:13:12):
And in the meantime, they're just leaving litter these stupid
stickers and posters and bannersall over the place.
I thought maybe a way to wrap the show up here, just being
conscious of time and and wanting to respect your time,
Jeff too. I thought maybe modern day
Patriot Front. So I'm I'm saying 2021 to today.

(01:13:37):
Let's go with that window. Is there an event that comes to
mind or, or like something Patriot Front has done in that
window in sort of, let's say thelast five years that says
something to you about what the group is today?
Mike. Yeah, so I'm doing some

(01:14:00):
reporting now writing a magazinefeature about Coeur d'Alene
Idaho, where there are, you know, there's a big problem with
right wing extremists. And in June of 2022, a bunch of
Patriot Front guys hopped into Uhauls to go over to the park

(01:14:21):
there, which is, by the way, beautiful.
Having been there. I went to Pride this year in
Coeur d'Alene and it was it was so cool.
I loved it. What a beautiful lake.
And they pull up at this at thisthing.
And you got to understand any kind of place like this where
it's like a red state in a, in areactionary place, pride is
really important. And not only that, it's it's
very tender, right. Like, you know, you know what

(01:14:43):
I'm talking about, Jared. It's like, you know, I mean,
it's for people who is like coming out in, in places like
this is not as easy as coming out in, in, in Brooklyn, right?
So they come in and they're going to go in and they've
decided they're going to go terrorize folks there.
At the same time, they're, they're sort of responding to a
bunch of hype from Libs of TikTok, AKA Chaya Rightchek, who

(01:15:07):
has been, who has fixated on a few things promoting this pride
event. And no sooner do they get out of
EU hauls, but they're arrested because for any kind of pride
event in a place like Coeur d'Alene, there's going to be
more cops than people pretty much.
And I, I, I don't know, not really more cops than people.
But I mean, it was when I went this year, it was just flanked

(01:15:31):
with police. Like I was just police on all
sides. Just sort of keep people from,
from mixing it up between protesters and pride goers.
And yeah, they were, they were shut down within a second.
Then they hopped out of EU Haul and next thing you know, they
were all sitting their arms bound behind, behind their
backs. And that to me is, is patriot

(01:15:52):
front, right? They think that they're going to
come in kind of, you know, be greeted as liberators in a place
like this and, and, and be loved.
But ultimately they, they, they set the group back and
everybody, everybody in the group winds up with a, you know,
with a police record of some kind, if they didn't have one
already. They end up looking like

(01:16:13):
assholes. I think even to the, to the very
kind of Republican people they want to recruit.
Because even if the rhetoric around pride is very negative
from the MAGA right and it's very negative.
They don't like the idea of going, of being perceived as
terrorists. And whether it was terrorism or

(01:16:34):
not, that not likely, you know, by any kind of legal definition,
but they were definitely trying to scare the shit out of those
people and it ended up looking really, really grim.
Jeff, what's something that has happened in Patriot Front in the
last four or five years that kind of tells listeners
something they should know aboutthe group?

(01:16:56):
That's that's hard because there's so much.
However, can I say two things? One's pretty quick.
Yeah. Something that we all shouldn't
remember about Patriot Front is that it leaks like a sieve.
There's so many disaffected members who have now gone
through Patriot Front that are out in the world, are on

(01:17:16):
Telegram just bad mouthing the organization, sharing documents
that they took from the organization when they were in,
right? These are not like good people,
right? These are still like white
supremacists, but you know, they're they're sharing
information about Patriot Fund. And then of course, not to
mention the work of anti fascistinfiltrators who have been able

(01:17:38):
to get into the organization, get into the good graces of
leadership within the organization.
And then take what information that they've been given from
these leaders and share it with journalists.
And that has happened from what I know at least five times those
people, you know, some journalists out there have told

(01:17:59):
me it has happened more than 10 times.
So Patriot Front being infiltrated over and over and
over again just shows US1 wow, this group just need to it just
doesn't have any understanding of what OPSEC or vetting is,
right? It's funny in a way.
And two, it it shows us that Patriot fund is desperate for

(01:18:21):
people, right? I mean, it shows us that they're
they're really kind of, you know, fishing at the bottom of
the barrel, right? Like anybody who shows interest
in them, they they'll say, oh, come on, come in, we'll do some
light vetting and now you're part of us.
So it's it's a group that leaks like a sieve and going forward,
I think that's going to be theirundoing.

(01:18:41):
Something else that I wouldn't want to say here is the group
does not give a fuck about its members.
It does not give a particularly give a fuck about the public
safety, right? But it doesn't, you know,
Patriot Front, Thomas Rousseau, he doesn't give a fuck about the
members of Patriot Front. He sees them as pawns in his
game. I've heard this from multiple
people who have been inside the group.

(01:19:03):
I've heard this from infiltrators that I've
interviewed and I've you just looking at the communication
that we've gained from inside the organization.
You see Thomas Rousseau just treating people like dirt like
less than and these are people who look up to Thomas Russo, who
Brown knows Thomas Russo that he's treating like dirt.
So you know, an example of like a really crystal clear example

(01:19:26):
and Mike alluded to this is how do you know they do not give a
shit about their members? They pack 30 dudes in the back
of a U-Haul. How is that safe?
One, it's, well, it's also, you know, you can't do that.
Technically there's municipalities could enforce
traffic laws there and pull themover and then confiscate the
vehicle. That's something law enforcement

(01:19:48):
can do. That's very easy to stop this.
And this is what we saw at quarter one.
But you know, so Thomas Russo doesn't give a shit about his
people. He's packing them in like
sardines. There's this great quote from
Nathan Brenner, his alias his Ben Colorado.
And in the in in one of the leaks, you know, we get all
these text messages and private communication.

(01:20:09):
And here's Nathan Brenner talking to Thomas Rousseau in a
private message about his experience in the back of AU
Haul truck. And this was a back of EU Haul
truck going into DC in December of 2021.
Nathan Brenner writes to Thomas.I know this.
I noticed some people throwing up after exiting the box truck,

(01:20:31):
my guys to a sauna to try and get them accustomed to heat and
humidity for sustained periods of time.
And many of many other people are under the impression they
will suffocate in the truck. End Quote.
I'll stop there. But so that that that's Nathan
Brenner, who is a leader within Patriot Front.
He's one of the network directors noticing the behavior
of his guys in the back of EU Haul and then not being

(01:20:55):
comfortable enough to say, hey, Thomas, why don't we figure it
out a different way, right? It it, it, it kind of also shows
the stranglehold that Thomas hason this organization, which I
also think is going to be Patriot France undoing because
Thomas Russo doesn't have strategy.
He might have a good charisma for some folks, but it's it's
this lack of respect that he hasfor human beings that's going to

(01:21:18):
be also part of Patriot Front's undoing.
Yeah, 'cause it's, it seems likehe outlined this vision.
Of patriot Front as a teenager and just didn't seem to take it
a lot further than that. It it seems to be like his
public communications firm is like, you know, and, and people
get picked off and arrested. It it it brings in all kinds of

(01:21:41):
just like, you know, dangerous people, frankly, but it's I was
going to say that it. Seemed, you know, it doesn't
matter whether they're feds or not really right, because
they're doing the same purpose of like, if they were feds,
right? Like they, they, they're,
they're, they're, they're, they're discrediting the white

(01:22:02):
power movement and they're discrediting mega and making
them look foolish. I mean, what?
Imagine coming out of a box truck and just hurling when
you're trying to come out there and intimidate people.
It's actually fucking hilarious.I mean, I, I, you know, I, I'm
sorry, I'm not exactly feeling bad for the like nauseous,
nauseous riders of the truck. I mean, I, I take your point and
you're not asking me to. I know, but I, I take your point

(01:22:24):
that he's not treating them well, but it's also fucking
hilarious. Just imagine, like, all right,
Coeur d'Alene, let's go. And then you just like barf all
over a fucking drag Queen's shoes where you're where you're
trying to like intimidate people.
Yeah, I mean they're. Not feds, but they're serving
the same fucking purpose that that the feds would like that's
exactly what the feds would do to discredit the White Bower

(01:22:44):
movement. I would, I would, you know, and
that that starts at the top. This.
Lack of care, right, that Thomashas for his own people, But you
also see that translate down thethe chain as well.
I wrote a story with Jason Wilson, great journalist, follow
him. He's he's really good at what he
does in uncovering aspects of far right activity.

(01:23:06):
But we wrote a story that kind of shows just like the bumbling
nature of these guys, right? It's two young men on an
overpass hanging a banner over the Interstate 35 in Dallas.
And they're using flat flares totry to, like, look cool and take
photos. And then the flares catch the

(01:23:27):
banner on fire. And it's basically like from,
you know, what the police reportsays and some of the video, body
Cam video, it's just kind of like Benny Hill, like hilarity.
It's like just these two young guys just kind of like running
around not knowing what to do. The banner ends up dropping onto
the Interstate on fire, and theyhad to close down Interstate 35

(01:23:49):
for a time. And, you know, that's just to
emphasize the lack of concern that these young men have for
communities that supposedly theywant to recruit from.
And it's just a lack of concern again for people and it it's
going to be their undoing. The event that sticks out to me
is. May 2023.
So Patriot Front has done a handful of rallies in

(01:24:11):
Washington, DC, now seems to always be on the National Mall.
They want the theatrics of it, right?
That these have been some of their biggest, you know, single
event gatherings, right? This is where, you know, all
hands on deck come to DC becauseThomas has got a film, you know,
some new thirst trap videos rambling about the globalists or

(01:24:36):
Jews or whatever the hell he is on that month.
But this May 2023 rally sticks out because when they show up,
it is again, a flash rally, unannounced.
Boom. What do you know, they're just
there. The police are scrambling to try
to figure out, like, what is happening and like, keep people
away from them. Keep them away from people, too.

(01:24:59):
They've got their masks on, their uniforms, they're marching
around chanting, whatever, and they just get heckled there.
They just they just get called losers, you know, and this is
also to me, this was the one that stuck out as like this is
when the MAGA movement, really the the big social media stars

(01:25:21):
of the MAGA movement just went full bore on the these people
are federal agents thing. And that had that like swirled
around a little bit. What I'm saying is cat turd had
fallen at that point. The cat turds of the world were
like, these people are federal agents and they're here to trap
you and make us look bad. We would never barf in a U-Haul

(01:25:45):
to be clear, that is for the people we don't like.
So so to be that kind of I thinkwhat that says to be about
Patriot Front today is like theywant so bad to seem vicious.
And you know, we talked about aswe went through some of this
early timeline, this it's not a harmless group.
I want to be clear about that, you know, but they are a bunch

(01:26:09):
of doofuses, right? And this is it's like the group
seems almost laser beam focused on optics and somehow thinks
that like if they present the right image of their group
specifically, and more specifically of Thomas Rousseau,
something, something, something America is saved.

(01:26:29):
Does that feel right to you? I mean, I don't want to like
miss something critical. I I think that's right on.
I mean, you hit at. Really what the organization's
like aura is or their vibe, I guess.
And it's Speaking of, I just want to name Job one more person
because it's it's him who reallytook the cake with a heckling

(01:26:50):
Patriot Front in May of 2023. He got on, you know, some of
this, this clip just went so far.
Rachel Maddow talked about it. A bunch of other commentary folk
talked about it. But Joe Flood, Joe Flood was on
a red city bike. I think they're called city
bikes in Washington, DC, right? The capital bike share, the red
bike thing. So my man Joe Flood basically

(01:27:12):
just gets on his bike share, whatever.
It's like capital bike share andfollows Patriot front throughout
their March on DC and he's just heckling them about like their
dress and what they're saying and and it's hilarious.
If you Google Joe Flood Washington DC Patriot front,
you'll find the clips and it's it's worth your time.

(01:27:32):
You do not scan. There will be no one like Diary
of America to come on hate you. No history into this and found
its people wanting Americans real Americans cast adrift under

(01:28:00):
fall back different types of pants on the city's What I've
learned today is that. Patriot Front is unquestionably
the most prominent white power group in the country and at the
same time has been kind of like stuck in one place for like

(01:28:23):
nearly a decade. It doesn't seem like anybody
wants them to exist. Except, yeah, but what does it
say about the white power movement in general?
It's all been infused into MAGA and that is really what has
happened. I think.
I mean, that's, you know, bottomtext.
That's all my read on this is just like that's the biggest
like that's there used to be a bunch of them right in

(01:28:43):
Charlottesville and they really kind of it really shrunk.
You know, they're neo Nazi accelerationist groups.
There's been like a few Atomwaffen division came and
went after a few murders. But like pager fund is really
like the you know they're. If you like this.
Genre. They're the, they're The Beatles
of it and like, and yet at the same time, they're going

(01:29:04):
absolutely nowhere. They're going nowhere at all.
You know, if I if I heard Patriot Front was going to be
somewhere. Like if I thought they were
going to be in Chicago and I like went to go like see their
rally in Chicago, it would give me the same 5 as like going to
see Gene Simmons where it's justlike, yeah, they were like that
guy was like in a band that was good a while ago.

(01:29:27):
Right, Right. It's you're like trying to like
explain to your friend who like also got comped tickets at the
casino to see Gene Simmons. Like what what the deal is.
Yeah, it's, you know, actually like my big.
Question I think from this is sort of like, why are why are
they still doing it? Like why are you still doing it?
It's a maggot is where all the energy is.

(01:29:49):
You know, why bother go through all this?
But yet nevertheless, we're doing this and we've made this
podcast and we will definitely have to promote it later on this
summer when they end up showing up some random place, Tulsa, OK,
someplace you don't know yet andjust March around with their
masks and looking ridiculous. Yeah, cuz, cuz I feel like

(01:30:10):
Patriot Front. Is not like super understood.
I mean that's like the impetus of the episode today, right?
I mean, Jeff, maybe last question here and we'll let you
go. In terms of like media coverage,
mainstream media coverage, localnews coverage, like when Patriot
Front rolls up to town, do you feel like most news consumers

(01:30:32):
are like getting a good understanding of what this group
is? I, I'm just, you have like
people that scream that they're feds.
You have people that act like they are, you know, the Third
Reich raised from the grave, ready to come kill them all.
But like, I, I don't know, how do you feel?
Do you think that the public really kind of understands what

(01:30:53):
this group is? I do not think so just based on
what I see. Of commentary online, yeah.
And I think this is just maybe how large audiences or large
populations think that a lot of people will call Patriot Front
Proud Boys or anybody in in the far right because Proud Boys as
a label has gotten such attention, right.

(01:31:15):
So even like talking with like my family members who are
somewhat, you know, news consumers, but they're not like
super glued into it like we are.They'll just say, oh, the Proud
Boys, the Proud Boys, I'm like, oh, actually they're patriot
fraud. And this is what they do.
And this is how they're different.
But I mean, in, in, in all, for all practical purposes, I mean,
yes, there's some ideological differences, There's some

(01:31:37):
strategic differences. Proud Boys are much more openly
violent, for example, but behindtheir covers, behind their dumb
little masks, the people that are in Patriot Front are some of
them are felons. Some of them have domestic
assault charges on their record,right.
Some of them are drug addicts. Some of them have committed a

(01:31:59):
litany of felonies that are for my read of it would be more
crimes of poverty. So like bad like theft in in in
in stuff like that. Fraud using checks, passing bad
checks. So they're members that are, you
know, the people that Patriot Front has around it.
They are violent. Whether the group wants to admit

(01:32:19):
that the group is itself violent, that's a different
thing. But members within the group are
violent. And you know that that could
lead. And what we saw in Boston in
July 22, you know, that that's arecipe for disaster when you
get, you know, these these violent minded men together
Channing white supremacist bullshit.

(01:32:39):
And then all of a sudden they'regoing to be confronted by a man
like Charles Moreau, who's a black artist and musician in
Boston. He was on his lunch break.
He gives Patriot Front his business, right?
He's like, you know, says thingsto them.
And what does Patriot Front do? They react.
They escalate the situation. They pin him against the light
post, right? And then just kind of jam him

(01:33:00):
into the light post. He sued successfully.
Patriot Front never showed up tocourt.
So the judge defaulted against Patriot Front and awarded
Charles Morrell $2.75 million. And you know, where does Patriot
Front go, right? They're, they're getting sued.
Their, their membership is, is plateauing.
They're on the same stuff since 2016, since this teenager came

(01:33:24):
and created it, but at the same time they're the most active and
the same time they're the ones that are causing it.
When we see the news about whitesupremacist groups and
communities, 9 times out of 10 it's going to be Patriot from I
think you know, we cover a lot of groups.
And people like exist in the Patriot Front universe on the
show. And, you know, a theme is just

(01:33:45):
that a lot of these people or groups or movements themselves
are just full of contradictions,right?
I think that's part of what whatmakes them the way they are.
Jeff, we have had you long enough.
What? What a brain dump about Patriot
Front. Thanks for joining the show this
week. Where can people keep up with

(01:34:06):
you and your work? Yeah, thanks for having me,
guys. It was it was a blast.
I could talk about Patriot. Front unfortunately for a lot
longer if you want to do a Part 2 however yeah if you want to
look at my work and and into thewhite power movement catch me on
blue sky my name Jeff Tishauser at blue sky.
I just want to say Jeff rocks I I've.

(01:34:27):
Worked with him he's one of the best guys.
He's just guy guy and also a question a question, you know, a
question. I I even I have more things to
say about patriot from I was going to ask are they are they
the last white power group? But I you know, because is it is
it all the Republican Party going forward?
But I'm going to throw that aside to say that how are you

(01:34:48):
feeling about your fantasy football team this year For
people who don't know both both Jared and Jeff are in a in a a
fantasy Football League. I've been running for a like the
last four years or so. Five years, yeah, 4-5 years.
The features features a number. Of prominent.
Journalists who cover the right and it's an it's it's it's an

(01:35:09):
eclectic crew. You got Parker Malloy.
There's a bunch of people. Ben Collins.
Anyway, I'm just I'm just both was in it too right.
Like last year, she'd be. Oh, Claire was it?
That's right. Claire was in it last year.
That's true, yes. Great great team names, anti
fascist play action. Oh what was mine this year?
LL BS of TikTok was L BS of TikTok was the best.

(01:35:31):
Like linebackers of TikTok, anyway.
But yeah, how you feeling about your team this year?
You know, I go in, turn it around.
Look, I'm a. Bears fan.
All right, so every. Year there's a possibility.
He knows pain. This man knows pain is what he's
telling you. Particularly this year I'm going
in strong. Caleb Williams is going good.

(01:35:51):
Yeah. And I'm just I'm going to take
that energy into my fantasy football draft and run shit.
We we love to see it. I I would say I'm a jets fan.
So you need. To give me a a primer run a
separate podcast about Justin Fields because I don't know what
I'm getting myself into yet. It seems exciting.
We've never had a quarterback who runs.
Yeah, yeah. We've been like, you know, nice

(01:36:12):
to have also a black quarterbackon The Jets.
It's nice. We haven't had that for a
minute. You guys are going to do good.
You guys have a great wide wide receiver.
Crew, you guys got that great running back right on.
All right, I will. Once again be letting the.
Algorithm Take my fantasy football team.
It gives you your best shot to be honest.

(01:36:33):
All right, well, I'll throw a link.
To Jeff's Blue Sky profile, someof his reporting that we talked
about on the show today, down the description.
Jeff is cool. He's good people, so check out
his work, follow him up and I think that's going to do it for
us here this week. And if you wanted to hit that
tip jar, it's in the. Episode description We'll be off

(01:36:55):
next week, but back on July 14th.
Catch you then.

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024: Why Does Patriot Front Still Exist? feat. Jeff Tischauser

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