For the second time in as many years, an American fascist organization is facing a humiliating leak of internal communications, messages revealing a trove of evidence pointing to coordinated criminal activities in multiple states, including New York, Washington, Indiana, Virginia, Massachusetts, and Oregon.
According to experts consulted by Gizmodo, the material is likely to cause serious damage to the organization, which the Anti-Defamation League has identified as one of the biggest sources of white supremacist propaganda in the U.S.
After the white nationalist rally in Virginia in August of last year, a new neo-Nazi group formed called the Patriot Front. James Alex Fields Jr., who was convicted in December of killing anti-racism protester Heather Heyer at a rally, was seen holding a shield with the VA logo. The VA denied he was a member. The split from VA followed months of infighting between Thomas Rousseau, the Front's founder, and VA leader Dillon Irizarry, who was seen accusing Rousseau in leaked chat logs of staging a "literal coup" in June 2017, according to the ADL.
Rousseau said that the betrayal was necessary to make the movement more presentable and less anti-Semitic. Rousseau had a plan to inspire sympathy among those who were inclined to fence-sitting, those who were already believers in his cause.
The 400 gigabytes of data that was leaked on Friday is an unprecedented look at Rousseau's master plan. The internal conversations show a group that is focused on the recruitment of ardent nationalists and segregationists, as well as Hitler-worshiping fascists who have grown tired of concealing their fantasies.
The defacement and destruction of public works of art that illuminate and confront racial and social inequality has simply continued, routinely planning and executing what are essentially hate crimes.
The recent actions of the group have shown that they can walk down busy avenues at night in Seattle and deface the largest mural in the city without being accosted.
The leak and its contents have not yet been commented on by the front.
Rousseau and senior members of the group insisted on the importance of regularly conducting offline activity in service of the group. These acts of so-called activism include spreading the Front's propaganda into public spaces, and installing large banners in highly visible locations. The defacing of murals, memorial, and statues that depict Martin Luther King, Jr. and Harriet Tubman triggered the racists, among other art supporting the Black Lives Matter movement and opposing police brutality.
Rousseau and his directors were emphatic in pushing this kind of activity, but ordered members to film and photograph themselves committing vandals. The media was released on platforms such as Telegram in order to boost recruitment. The chats show that senior members had ulterior motives for demanding documentation and for making lower-rung members obedient. Those who did not obey would be labeled as uncommitted, cowardice, or possible infiltrators.
Rousseau wrote in a primer for new members that they can only retain their membership if they organize. There are inactive accounts that are subject to regular deletion.
The leaked messages provide sufficient evidence in some cases to positively identify the culprits despite efforts to shield the identities of members engaged in criminal activities. Paul M. Gancarz, who shared his actual name and address in private messages and later revealed he was employed as an engineer in Virginia, confessed in the logs to tampering with construction signs. A network director who posted under the handle Samuel VA shared links to a private folder containing evidence of criminal activity after videos were abruptly deleted on Friday.
Attempts to reach him were unsuccessful. The phone number listed under his name was not reachable.
The November logs show a group quota of at least 10 big actions a month, and that acts of vandalization were recorded in a spreadsheet. The leak includes hundreds of videos and photos of members apparently committing crimes, if not more, because of the insistence on documentation and sloppy info security. In Washington, members of the Patriot Front vandalized a mural by covering it up and stenciling their name on it.
The hate is not a story worth telling, according to the mayor.
There were a lot of pieces of media that were left up on Mega folders and Rocket chat. Should any law enforcement take up interest in the case, many of them contain information that members failed to remove.
The leak puts on display tensions within the group, ranging from accusations that certain members were incompetent or infiltrators to their public perception.
Many of the Front's uppermost ranks were obsessed with perceived spies in every bush. Constant suspicion weighs heavily on the decisions of the group. People were told to cover stories at camps and gatherings. A member from Maryland wrote that they were a youth group hiking the trails. Others scout public parks to make sure there are fewer witnesses.
The text of questionnaires was a point of debate among higher-ups who were determined to find reliable methods of fingering saboteurs. Many of the people dismissed by the Front did not acknowledge the ethnic component of the nation's problems. Those who accused wealthy Jews of a global conspiracy to brown down the world populations were accepted.
The Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino, says that the leak is devastating because it lays out bare for the world internal maneuvering and gossip. It furthers internal dissension because previously internal, but institutionally divisive private communications about members and strategy are now open to view from the entire membership, along with the rest of the world.
Many members of the Patriot Front are upset with Rousseau for charging premium prices for official promat, or for allowing him to pay their leader's rent. After the march in DC, a number of members of the Patriot Front expressed their anger over accusations from Alex Jones and other conspiracy theorists.
One user going by the name "Lewis TX" wrote, "Of all the preposterous claims and smears from the media and peanut gallery, what I can NOT suffer without response is being compared to the feds by virtue of physical fitness."
Rousseau is depicted in some messages railing on the incompetence of their recruits and regular violations of the organization's facade of non-violence. One leader discussed disciplining a member who ripped a Latino person out of a car. Rousseau complained to a network director from Minnesota of a recruit who had "ghosted" others and delayed the convoy by bringing two fully loaded pistols to the event.
Rousseau directed anger at subordinates after the group failed to detect suspected infiltrators and lost control of potentially incriminating media, as well as several doxxes of members on the West Coast. Rousseau was warned by a network director in Washington state that he might get a knock over the Olympia vandals and that all of them could be prosecuted. The task of internal NW security and guide enforcement was given to you by Rousseau. It didn't happen to anyone. It happened to you.
While the public face of the organization is that of a public face, it is a tightly managed organization that makes the most of maintaining secrecy about its membership and intimidating activities, some of which is illegal and open to full view. The adverse employment consequences that come with internal communications like this can really backfire on the leadership and members. These Nazi Humpty Dumpties will not be able to operate with the impunity they had as late as yesterday because of additional exposure for potential criminal and civil liability.
Ben Lorber, research analyst at the Political Research Associates think tank, said that groups like the Patriot Front can only advance their White nationalist agenda under cover of darkness. This leak helps researchers attach a public cost to their toxic movement by shining much-needed sunlight on the unapologetic neo-Nazism, unvarnished antisemitism, virulent anti-blackness, homophobia and other bigotry undergirding their organizing. Following many similar groups before them, the Patriot Front will hopefully soon collapse under the pressure of the public. Next week's International Holocaust Remembrance Day reminds us of the need to counter groups like the Patriot Front and defend multiracial democracy in the U.S. as White nationalist politics continue to move mainstream across an increasingly radicalized Right.
In a message to Rousseau in November, a user named Michael IN proposed to visit a memorial for George Floyd in Lafayette, Indiana. He said that members had vandalized it before. He suggested the use of rubberized roofing cement to wreck the memorial. He said there were two men waiting for the green light.
Rousseau said to keep him posted on your research and practice with the substance.
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