STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Hundreds of men marked Independence Day by putting on identical khakis and blue shirts, along with masks and sunglasses and hats and walking through Washington, D.C. They were part of a white nationalist group called Patriot Front. So where does the money come from for demonstrations like that? NPR's domestic extremism correspondent Odette Yousef covers groups like this. Odette, good morning.
ODETTE YOUSEF, BYLINE: Good morning, Steve.
INSKEEP: What is Patriot Front?
YOUSEF: So Patriot Front is considered one of the largest white nationalist groups in the country right now. You can think of them as a modern-day iteration of neo-Nazi skinheads - same ideology, different presentation. So these are militant white supremacists. They organize locally across the country. It's a few hundred members. And although it was established in 2017, Steve, Patriot Front is really just a rebrand of Vanguard America. Vanguard was one of these groups behind the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. You'll recall that fatal convening of white nationalists, where ultimately one of them drove a car through a crowd of counterprotesters...
INSKEEP: Yeah.
YOUSEF: ...And killed a woman named Heather Heyer. You know, the optics of that were very bad for the white nationalist movement. And so one of Vanguard America's leaders, Thomas Rousseau, took that lesson when he went on to establish Patriot Front just weeks later.
INSKEEP: I appreciate this. It's like you're giving me the genealogy of this group. But you also mentioned a few hundred members. On a national scale, not very big, yet they manage to get a lot of attention on occasions like July Fourth. Who pays for that?
YOUSEF: OK. So, you know, logistically, this is how Patriot Front operates. You know, the top decides where they'll stage a provocative display. They tell members to be at a certain place on a certain day. And then typically, they are herded into box trucks, driven to the site and unloaded to start marching around in a kind of menacing display. I actually saw this in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, four years ago, when police busted a U-Haul that was stuffed with Patriot Front members...
INSKEEP: Wow.
YOUSEF: ...En route to disrupt a Pride event.
For what happened in D.C., a source who's not authorized to speak publicly told me that the group rented a campsite 90 minutes from the city under a false name. But I think what may surprise people is that the men are expected to pay their own way. And actually, this reflects the overall structure of the group, which has been described to me as both a cult and a pyramid scheme.
INSKEEP: Oh, what do you mean by that?
YOUSEF: OK. So I spoke with Kristofer Goldsmith. He established the Task Force Butler Institute to work with military veterans against fascism. He infiltrated Patriot Front in 2020 and said that it revolves completely around its founder, Thomas Rousseau.
KRISTOFER GOLDSMITH: Oh, they have this kind of pyramid scheme where you have to buy stickers from Thomas to put up Patriot Front stickers all over the place. You have to show them through photographs on a weekly basis that you are putting them up in neighboring towns to spread neo-Nazi propaganda.
YOUSEF: But, Steve, I think the more important takeaway from the D.C. presentation is that Patriot Front - you know, what you saw there really hides what the group is and does. You know, they looked clean-cut. They marched orderly. But we know from their record that this is a violent hate group.
INSKEEP: NPR's Odette Yousef. Thanks so much.
YOUSEF: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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