Morning Briefing: Patriot Front Lawsuits
Morning Briefing: Patriot Front Lawsuits
Patriot Front, the White Nationalist group, has filed a lawsuit against an activist for revealing the identities of members, and is the subject of a lawsuit for an alleged assault on a man in Boston.
Morning Briefing: Human Rights First, a nonprofit organization which focuses on issues such as authoritarianism and extremism, filed a “civil federal lawsuit against the neo-Nazi extremist group Patriot Front, its leader Thomas Rousseau, and unnamed members for their violent attack on a Black man in Boston in 2022.”
Members of Patriot Front, the neo-fascist White Nationalist group, have “filed a federal lawsuit against a leftist activist, claiming he infiltrated their group and revealed their identities as members.”
Members of the Proud Boys, the far right violent extremist street gang, reportedly “gathered briefly on Broadway” in Saratoga Springs, New York, as “about 30 masked members of the group wearing black and yellow clothing bearing the group's name.”
In Pensacola, Florida, local law enforcement arrested of individuals allegedly involved in several recent incidents of antisemitic vandalism, as police reportedly arrested “four teenagers as suspects who allegedly threw antisemitic language-covered bricks into two Jewish centers and covered additional local buildings with antisemitic graffiti.”
Jim Gilvin, the mayor of Alpharetta, Georgia, issued a statement that “antisemitic flyers were distributed in some neighborhoods in Alpharetta over the weekend.” Local law enforcement are “actively investigating” the incident and “will be coordinating with law enforcement agencies in surrounding communities in which residents have been victimized by similar acts.”
In Rhode Island, “White nationalist flyers were tossed in driveways of a Middletown neighborhood,” and the flyers were reportedly identified as produced by the Nationalist Social Club (NSC), a neo-Nazi White Supremacist group based in New England.
Linwood Robinson and his wife and two sons “will all go to prison for terms ranging from one to four months,” as each of the family members from South Carolina were found guilty of acting as “ringleaders” during the January 6th Insurrection.
Must Reads
Ellie Silverman and Hannah Allam report that “for all the online outrage, only a handful of Trump supporters turned out to protest the latest charges against the former president, continuing a shift in the right-wing fervor that once drew thousands to D.C. rallies, clogged lakes with boat parades and mobilized a de facto ‘MAGA militia’ in the armed groups that took his extremist rhetoric to the streets. These days, Trump’s appeal endures — he’s the front-runner, by far, in a crowded field of 2024 Republican hopefuls — but those once-flashy shows of public support have been scarce, even at a moment when Trump faces monumental legal fights on his way to a presidential race he has described as ‘the final battle.’ In a post last spring, Trump predicted ‘potential death & destruction’ if he were criminally charged, a statement extremism researchers called dangerously incendiary but also out of step with a reality where even his most devoted supporters aren’t rising up in significant numbers to defend him.” [The Washington Post]
Christopher Mathias reports that “a prominent conservative writer, lionized by Silicon Valley billionaires and a U.S. senator, used a pen name for years to write for white supremacist publications and was a formative voice during the rise of the racist ‘alt-right,’ according to a new HuffPost investigation. Richard Hanania, a visiting scholar at the University of Texas, used the pen name ‘Richard Hoste’ in the early 2010s to write articles where he identified himself as a ‘race realist.’ He expressed support for eugenics and the forced sterilization of ‘low IQ’ people, who he argued were most often Black. He opposed ‘miscegenation’ and ‘race-mixing.’ And once, while arguing that Black people cannot govern themselves, he cited the neo-Nazi author of ‘The Turner Diaries,’ the infamous novel that celebrates a future race war. A decade later, writing under his real name, Hanania has ensconced himself in the national mainstream media, writing op-eds in the country’s biggest papers, bending the ears of some of the world’s wealthiest men and lecturing at prestigious universities, all while keeping his past white supremacist writings under wraps.”[Huffington Post]
Steven Monacelli reports that the “intensely political focus of the Southwest Believers’ Convention has its roots in a stridently Christian nationalist theology known as Seven Mountains Dominionism, which posits that America is a Christian nation ordained by God and that Christians must take authority over religion, family, education, government, media, entertainment, and business. Among groups assembled at the convention, dominionism goes hand-in-hand with the ‘prosperity gospel’—the notion that believers can cultivate material blessings like health and wealth through devotion and prayer. (Several of the preachers throughout the convention explained why they need private jets to do their work.) After [John] Graves’ remarks, the host introduced a pre-recorded sermon given by Kenneth Copeland, whom he called the “common denominator” for the entire week’s program.” [Texas Observer]
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.
Were these men brought up as haters? Or social media radicalized them? I view them as bullies aka terrorists. In Canada you’ll see a families with 4/5 children post extremism on their Facebook pages yet some of them are so called Christians?