Not Highly Educated, Male, White and Mainly Young,The SecretSupremacist Band
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| THESE BOOKING IMAGES PROVIDED BY THE KOOTENAI COUNTY SHERIFF’S OFFICE SHOW THE 31 MEMBERS OF THE WHITE SUPREMACIST GROUP PATRIOT FRONT WHO WERE ARRESTED AFTER THEY WERE FOUND PACKED INTO THE BACK OF A U-HAUL TRUCK WITH RIOT GEAR NEAR AN LGBTQ PRIDE EVENT IN COEUR D’ALENE, IDAHO, ON SATURDAY, JUNE 11, 2022. (KOOTENAI COUNTY SHERIFF’S OFFICE VIA AP) |
Extremely online neo-Nazis are big mad at the cops for figuratively and literally unmasking 31 members of the white supremacist group Patriot Front this weekend in Idaho.
For many in the neo-Nazi and extreme-right communities, few punishments carry as much weight as being identified and held accountable for their online activities and racist activism. So many took it as an attack when cops arrested 31 members of Patriot Front, a group of khaki-clad white supremacists known for their propaganda videos, from the back of a U-Haul truck in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. The men had come from over 11 separate states with a smoke bomb and shields to crash an LGBTQ Pride event. No firearms were found on the men or in the U-Haul.
Members of the group, who typically obscure their identities with white face coverings, were arrested on charges of criminal conspiracy, a misdemeanor, and had their masks pulled off before being loaded into a police car. Later the members’ names and mugshots were also released in public documents.
Among those arrested and charged was Thomas Rousseau, the group's founder and leader.
Since then, activists and journalists have been scouring leaked chats and videos to connect the men with their racist and anti-LGBTQ activities. Now, some are attempting to dox the local police officers in Coeur d'Alene and are urging others to help in the effort, as first reported by Nick Martin of the Informant.
“An attack on one member of the white race is an attack on us all. I'm not going to tolerate it. I'm going to find out who those officers are,” one outraged Patriot Front fan said in a video posted on Gab, “and I'm going to dox every single one of them.”
“Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. You'll be hearing from me soon. Fuck you,” he continued.
The video was shared within a network of neo-Nazi activists who all praised the man and said they would aid in the effort.
“Pigs pissed off the exact demographic you DON'T actually want mad at you,” one of them wrote.
“These people have names,” another wrote.
Hating the police is pretty common among the extreme-right who typically considers traditional authority a barrier to their goals. In a press conference Monday morning, Coeur d'Alene Police Chief Lee White said that he and his fellow officers were being “screamed and yelled at” by anonymous people calling. Some officers were even getting death threats from as far away as Norway, according to Lee.
On Telegram, several neo-Nazi and white supremacist accounts shared addresses and phone numbers they’ve found online associated with Coeur d'Alene police officers. A few have posted about how they’ve called the numbers and found them disconnected. Police officer numbers and addresses are typically unlisted for this very reason.
What is listed online, however, are the phone numbers and addresses of the police stations where the officers are based. Other accounts on Telegram have posted that they’re giving the police and sheriff's offices bad reviews online and calling and leaving rude messages.
“I just left the police chief a scathing voice mail in Idaho for arresting Patriot Front,” one Nazi wrote.
One well-known neo-Nazi terror group that has had former members arrested by the FBI for myriad crimes also posted in favor of attempting to release the names of the police officers.
“Our enemies have names, addresses, and loved ones too. We have no moral obligation to subject them to equal retribution for their crimes,” reads a statement they released. “They deserve to be tortured and humiliated in the most egregious fashion possible.”
The group, however, has a spotty record of being able to conduct proper research of who they’re targeting and once accidentally staged a propaganda photo at the wrong home.
While conducting other research on the Patriot Front arrests this weekend, extremely online members of the extreme-right also found that the Kootenai County Sheriff Bob Norris’ work biography says he once trained with Mossad in the early 2000s following 911. This, of course, makes Norris a “Mossad asset” and the arrests, a part of an elaborate Israeli-planned operation to target the Patriot Front, according to multiple online racists.
“How many other TRAITORS to the United States have been trained and paid by Israeli intelligence to deprive Americans of their rights here at home?” one white nationalist writer wrote. “This is the most pressing foreign policy issue of our times.”
Patriot Front was born in 2017 after splintering off from the neo-Nazi group Vanguard America in the wake of the deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville. The group publicly attempts to eschew outright racism in favor of a focus on nationalism. A recent leak, however, shows the group is rife with white supremacy and its members have a fascination with neo-Nazism as well as shaming fellow members for their porn and junk-food habits.
Patriot Front has long worked as a recruitment funnel for harder and more openly violent neo-Nazi groups. The group regularly organizes flash counter-protests meant to create propaganda videos and puts up posters and stickers. The Anti-Defamation League found in 2021 that the group was responsible for a sizable portion of white supremacist propaganda posted publicly in the United States.
The embrace of Patriot Front hasn’t extended to all avenues of the far-right. Those who exist in a more conspiratorial corner of the far-right, unsurprisingly, have begun to weave elaborate stories in which the Patriot Front is a "honey pot”, the members are mostly are federal agents (a conspiracy that’s been around for some time and endorsed by the likes of Joe Rogan) and that the arrests were a plot to discredit the other activists.
Accusations of the men who were arrested being cops themselves left many in the neo-Nazi and white supremacist sphere of the extreme-right rather agitated. “Brave young men take enormous risks, expense, self-sacrifice and what do conservatives do,” one wrote indigently. “STAB THEM IN THE BACK.”
Coeur d'Alene Police Chief Lee White also seemed to be a little annoyed by the conspiracy when a “concerned citizen” asked him about it at the Monday press conference.
“Let me be very clear here: These were not law enforcement officers that we arrested,'' he said. “These were members of the hate group Patriot Front. These were not antifa in disguise, nor were they FBI members in disguise."
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