By, Carter Walker
Patriot Front, a white supremacist group formed in the wake of the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, is actively recruiting across Pennsylvania, including in Lancaster County and the surrounding region.
Internal group communications, photos and videos published by a nonprofit news organization on Jan. 21, and data collected from the group’s social media page, reveal Lancaster County has been targeted at least nine times by Patriot Front propaganda efforts.
Stickers placed on street signs in downtown Lancaster In April carried messages like “united we stand” and “better dead than red,” and ones that read “America first” were placed in East Petersburg in December. Five dozen similar incidents, as well as the defacement of a public mural, took place in neighboring Berks County.
The Anti-Defamation League and federal law enforcement say Patriot Front carefully crafts its image and promotional material to avoid off-putting, overtly-racist or neo-Nazi imagery, opting instead for ambiguously worded messages and a red, white and blue aesthetic that gives the aura of mainstream patriotism, all with the goal of recruiting members willing to commit to Patriot Front’s rigorous physical training and ideological indoctrination programs.
“You look at Patriot Front uniforms, they’re wearing collared shirts, they almost look like Best Buy uniforms,” said Andrea Heymann, associate regional director for the Philadelphia branch of the ADL. “It’s not nearly as in your face, because it’s supposed to be more palatable.”
But the leaks published by Unicorn Riot, a left-leaning non-profit news outlet that covers extremism, reveal that white nationalism is the group’s fundamental principle and that Pennsylvania members are tied to more overtly racist and anti-semitic groups like the National Justice Party and area skinheads.
Following Charlottesville, Patriot Front founder Thomas Rousseau rebranded his former group, American Vanguard, “from a neo-Nazi organization to one (Patriot Front) that reflected a skewed version of American white nationalism in order to appeal to a broad range of supporters,” according to a 2019 terrorism threat assessment from the New Jersey Office of Homeland Security. One of the two Patriot Front networks active in Pennsylvania includes members from New Jersey.
Racist ideology revealed
The leaked data shows that behind closed doors, neo-Nazi ideas and vocabulary are common, including among Pennsylvania members.
One Patriot Front activist says as much at the end of a promotional video filmed by Pennsylvania member “Ryan.”
“Seig [expletive] heil,” the member says, not knowing the camera is still recording. “I can say that now that it’s over.” Another member joins the speaker in giving the Nazi salute.
Ethnic purity is also a requirement for membership, according to a leaked script of interview questions for prospective members. An interviewee must claim “at least 75% European ethnic lineage, and be born within America to qualify,” the document says.
Another question asks a candidate for membership to describe his feelings on “civic nationalism,” an academic term describing governments organized around ideas of democracy, diversity and inclusivity. Unicorn Riot’s analysis of applicant’s interview notes found that every member who was accepted – including Pennsylvania applicants – stated there was an “ethnic component” to being American and that “nationhood cannot be bestowed to those not of the founding stock.”
“Only White Euros can be American. We built this nation,” “Patrick,” a 27-year-old member from Williamsport in Lycoming County said during his interview.
“There is a ethnic component, U.S. was founded by Europeans,” a 19-year-old from Philadelphia, who was accepted into the group, said in his interview. ”In order for founding ideas to take root, it needs to have a base.”
Patriot Front has been careful to avoid acts of violence similar to Charlottesville, where a white supremacist with ties to Rousseau drove his car into a crowd of counter protestors, killing one. Patriot Front has asked members to sign non-violence agreements. But as Chapman University professor Pete Simi told Propublica in 2019, this is part of a strategy to avoid liability while their message still encourages violence.
“They are promoting violence by their goals,” he told the nonprofit news outlet. Video released as part of the leak shows Patriot Front members training for combat.
Pennsylvania, and in particular the state’s southeast, has been a hotbed of activity for Patriot Front, with members reporting more propaganda actions than their counterparts in nearly every other state.
At a 2020 symposium on domestic terrorism in Pittsburgh, FBI supervisory analyst John Pulcastro said the area had become a hub for white supremacists, including Patriot Front.
“They believe they are being invaded,” he said of Patriot Front members’ views of non-white immigrants. “They are training for an invasion.”
Pennsylvania networks
Two Patriot Front networks are active in Pennsylvania, according to a map released as part of the leak.
In the eastern part of the state, Lancaster, York, Dauphin, Lebanon, Berks, Lehigh, Northampton, Bucks, Montgomery, Chester, Delaware, and Philadelphia counties are part of Network 10, which also includes all of New Jersey, Northern Delaware, New York City and parts of New York state. In western Pennsylvania, the Ohio-based Network 13 includes Beaver, Lawrence, Mercer, Crawford and Erie counties.
The two networks have between them more members than any other state in the nation, except Rousseau’s home state of Texas. And in 2021, there was more propaganda material placed in Pennsylvania than any other state except Virginia.
Pennsylvania members using the aliases “Eric,” “Leo,” “Francis,” “Patrick” and “Vincent” attended a November meeting of the National Justice Party in Pittsburgh. The National Justice Party was organized by white nationalists who announced the party’s formation in Lancaster County in 2020.
In the leaded data, other Pennsylvania members, including “Patrick” and “Eric,” mentioned having ties to “pool parties,” a term used to describe meetings of white nationalists organized by National Justice Party leader Mike Peinovich and others who participate in an alt-right podcasting network called The Right Stuff. “Pool Parties” is a play on the phrase “gene pool.”
The leak also documents that one prospective Patriot Front member from Georgia mentioned being a fan of “Spectre” in his interview. “Spectre” is the online alias for Norman Garrison, a white supremacist blogger and former editor of The Lancaster Patriot, who as of December was still living in Lancaster County.
In looking to bolster numbers for a recent march in Washington D.C., Pennsylvania Patriot Front member “Eric” said he was trying to get members of the New Jersey European Heritage Association to join. The ADL says the Heritage Association is a “New Jersey-based white supremacist group” that “espouses racism, anti-Semitism and intolerance under the guise of ‘saving’ white European peoples from purported imminent extinction.”
“Jason,” a New York-based member of Network 10, also has ties to Keystone United and American Defense, two Pennsylvania-based skinhead groups.
Since the leak, no new Patriot Front propaganda material has been posted in Pennsylvania, according to the group’s social media.
Source: LNP/Lancaster Online
URL: https://lancasteronline.com/news/pennsylvania/white-supremacist-group-patriot-front-recruiting-in-pa-targeting-lancaster-county-with-propaganda/article_64c7dc5e-85de-11ec-8673-f7b96d1c7b58.html?fbclid=IwAR1s2JdLCuAMMSyiWHZcc2CUBw15eNSfeMYky1KkKMb8sP1FfP2CWFlu2lY