SPLC Releases Interactive Timeline of Patriot Front Activity

MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Today, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) released an interactive timeline tracking the white nationalist hate group Patriot Front. The group formed in 2017, following the deadly “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and has quickly grown to become one of the most active extremist groups operating in the United States.

The interactive timeline illustrates the group’s increasingly threatening and violent activity often targeting Black and Brown people, LGBTQ+ individuals, migrants and women. At rallies, Patriot Front leaders regurgitate the “great replacement” theory, which has been used to rationalize violence across the U.S., including the mass shootings in El Paso in August 2019 and in Buffalo in May 2022. Over the past year, Patriot Front members have intensified their posting of racist propaganda and held at least a dozen rallies and marches across the country aimed at creating fear and recruiting young men. Several members were arrested near an Idaho Pride event in June 2022.

“Patriot Front is a clear and present threat to public safety,” said Jeff Tischauser, senior research analyst with SPLC’s Intelligence Project. “This new resource documents the scale of danger the group presents to communities across the country and, we hope, forces authorities to take their activities seriously.”

View the timeline here.

Background on the group:

The SPLC has closely monitored the activities of Patriot Front since its inception in 2017. The white nationalist hate group broke off from Vanguard America in the aftermath of the deadly “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

The SPLC has compiled files on Patriot Front and its founder Thomas Rousseau, detailing the group’s expansion across multiple states since 2017