Police in a small Idaho city arrested dozens of purported members of the far-rightPatriot Front over the weekend for allegedly plot to riot at a local LGBTQ Pride event, a startling incident that led police to receive death threats by Monday, and brought nationwide attention to a relatively new but already-in
The members of the right-wing Patriot Front stand in Washington, D.C., as they prepare to march with anti- abortion activists.
31 people from across the country were arrested in a U-Haul van with shields, shin guards, at least one smoke grenade and documents indicating they were going to disrupt the city's downtown.
One of the arrestees who now faces a conspiracy charge was said to be the founder of the Patriot Front.
According to the Anti-Defamation League, Rousseau founded thePatriot Front in the summer of 2017:
The ADL and Southern Poverty Law Center say that the group mixes racist and antisemitic claims with patriotic iconography in order to promote its core belief that the United States is for white Europeans.
A December march on the National Mall in D.C. that featured about 100 people clutching shields was one of more than a dozen marches and street protests that members of thePatriot Front have appeared at over the past five years.
The arrests have drawn attention to the two places. At a Monday press conference, White said local law enforcement have received 149 phone calls since the arrests: Roughly half of those calls were supportive messages from local residents, and the other half were anonymous callers from as far away as Norway who berated the police.
After the violence at the "Unite the Right" rally in Virginia in August of last year, the Patriot Front split from its former partner. Rousseau's arm of the group was rebranded after a man convicted of killing Heather Heyer with his car was photographed standing with some of the group. The group became more image-obsessed and adopted a slightly more subtle tack after this split. Rousseau has sought to push his radical beliefs in a disciplined and cautious manner, and the group uses patriotic symbols to seem more mainstream.
On the same day that the Proud Boys allegedly yelled anti-gay slurs at a Drag Queen Story Hour in a library in the San Francisco Bay Area, there was an alleged plan to riot in Idaho.
Some of the people have guns. There is a group of white supremacists hiding in plain sight. There is a publication called ProPublica.
All Rights Reserved © 2024
