Morning Briefing: Patriot Front Spreads Propaganda While Facing Lawsuit
Morning Briefing: Patriot Front Spreads Propaganda While Facing Lawsuit
Patriot Front, the neo-fascists White Nationalist group, continues to spread racists propaganda throughout New England, while also facing a lawsuit for allegedly committing 'racial intimidation.'
Morning Briefing: In Winsted, Connecticut, local law enforcement are “investigating after white supremacy signs were found posted in downtown,” and the signs were reportedly propaganda from Patriot Front, the neo-fascist White Nationalist group.
Patriot Front was also reportedly responsible for White Supremacists propaganda “posted outside two Black-owned businesses on Martha's Vineyard,” and the signs, “some of which read Strong Families, Strong Nations and America First, were initially found on utility poles.”
A pair of civil rights organizations recently filed a lawsuit against Patriot Front, “alleging that it committed racial intimidation by defacing businesses and public property around the city of Fargo with the group’s logo and other graffiti.”
Local law enforcement in multiple counties in Florida, including Volusia, Okeechobee, Palm Beach, Orange, and Brevard, are reportedly “investigating packets of antisemitic flyers that members of a hate group left in residential neighborhoods overnight.”
Robert Wilson, a neo-Nazi formerly based in San Diego County, has reportedly “been extradited to the Netherlands to face hate speech charges in connection with an antisemitic incident that took place at the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam earlier this year.”
Must Reads
David Gilbert reports that in “California, the effort to attack trans students began with Republican Assemblyman Bill Essayli, the author of Assembly Bill 1314, a bill that ultimately inspired the Chino Valley policy. AB 1314 would have required all schools in the state to inform the parents of any child they believed to be trans. When the bill failed in April, Essayli didn’t give up. Instead, he shifted strategy and sought out allies at a local level. While Essayli’s bill was widely criticized and never received a hearing in Sacramento, it did find some support in the state, including from the board of the Chino Valley Unified School District, which passed a resolution supporting Essayli’s bill in April. The new Chino Valley Unified School District Board chairwoman Sonja Shaw swept to victory in November 2022 with support from Moms for Liberty and helped flip the Chino Valley school board from a Democratic majority to a Republican one, running on a platform of so-called ‘parental rights.’” [Vice News]
Andy Campbell writes that “though five of their leaders have been sentenced to a combined 82 years in prison over their seditious plot to overturn an election, the Proud Boys aren’t going away. The far-right street gang has certainly undergone changes since hundreds of its members stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021: Its national chapter, consisting of leaders from across the country, was purportedly dissolved shortly after the gang was labeled a terrorist organization in two countries. Several local chapters disavowed their chairman, Enrique Tarrio, after news outlets revealed he’d been a federal informant in an unrelated case in 2012. Meanwhile, dozens of rank-and-file Proud Boys have been indicted for their role in the Capitol attack. But the gang didn’t fall apart in the wake of these shake-ups — it merely changed tactics, and went local.” [Huffington Post]
Will Sommer reports that in “August 2022, James O’Keefe needed to get to Maine for a sailing trip. Rather than take a commercial flight for roughly $200, the conservative undercover-video activist directed his employees to book a $12,000 helicopter flight direct from New York to the seaside town of Southwest Harbor, using funds donated to Project Veritas, the nonprofit he founded, according to a draft of a private internal audit conducted by an independent law firm. When bad weather forced the helicopter to make an unscheduled landing in Portland, O’Keefe booked a $1,400 black car for the three-hour drive from the helipad to the sailboat. O’Keefe justified the expenses by saying that he had a meeting near the dock, the audit stated. Two Project Veritas staffers described the person he met with to The Washington Post as a low-level donor. It wasn’t the first time O’Keefe had covered personal expenses with funds from the donor-supported nonprofit whose self-described mission is investigative journalism, according to the report compiled by Dorsey & Whitney, a firm hired by the Project Veritas board in the wake of its founder’s departure in February.” [The Washington Post]
What to expect from Radical Reports: Morning Briefing provides a daily round-up of reporting on the Radical Right; Extremist Links offers a weekly round-up of extremists activities including the white supremacist and militia movements; Narratives of the Right delivers weekly analysis of the current narratives in far right online spaces and promoted by right-wing media; and Research Desk provides monthly highlights research and analysis from academia on the Radical Right.
There were flyers and graffiti around my town near Sacramento, CA yesterday too
New England. Don’t they have more of an audience south of the Mason Dixon line?