Thirty-one members of an American white supremacist group known as Patriot Front were arrested in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, on Saturday 11 June, after local police received a tip from a member of the public who reported seeing “a little army” climbing into the back of a U-Haul truck parked outside a hotel.
Officers duly found the men crowded together in the back of their vehicle wearing matching riot gear, including shin guards, shields, balaclavas, beige caps and arm bands.
Video of the men kneeling on the grass with their hands zip-tied behind their backs during the arrest quickly went viral on social media, much of it filmed by eyewitness journalist Alissa Azar, who commented in a Twitter thread: “It’s not every day you see the cops engaged with neo-Nazis that way, especially when you’re so used to them giving fascists preferential treatment and protection.
“The police began removing them one by one from the pile of kneeling Nazis. They were each walked over to squad cars, were dramatically unmasked, and got searched before being escorted to the police van.”
Local police chief Lee White later told a news conference that the whole group was being charged with conspiracy to riot, apparently with the intention of causing disruption downtown and at a “Pride in the Park” event being held in nearby City Park promising musical, dance and drag performances.
Those arrested came from at least 11 states, including Washington, Oregon, Texas, Utah, Colorado, South Dakota, Illinois, Wyoming, Virginia and Arkansas, he said.
It was later revealed by The Idaho-Statesman that one Thomas Rosseau of Dallas, Texas, the extremist group’s national leader, was among the men arrested.
Mr Rosseau is still in his mid-20s but has allegedly been active in racist politics since his teens, when he was a member of a similar organisation known as Vanguard America.
Since the incident, Chief White has said his officers have been inundated with calls about the arrests, some of which have been positive, but others have contained death threats from anonymous cranks, presumably allies of the men.
Patriot Front, said to be based in Texas, is described by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) as “a white nationalist hate group” that formed after the deadly “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in September 2017, at which counter-protester Heather Heyer was run over by Vanguard America member James Alex Fields.
Vanguard reportedly splintered in the aftermath of that event, creating a void into which Mr Rosseau’s successor group stepped.
“Patriot Front is an image-obsessed organisation that rehabilitated the explicitly fascist agenda of Vanguard America with garish patriotism,” the SPLC has said of the group, adding that it “focuses on theatrical rhetoric and activism that can be easily distributed as propaganda for its chapters across the country”.
Its members subscribe to an explicitly racist ideology, denying the citizenship of non-white Americans, according to its own manifesto, apparently written by Mr Rosseau.
“An African, for example, may have lived, worked, and even been classed as a citizen in America for centuries, yet he is not American,” the document states. “He is, as he likely prefers to be labelled, an African in America. The same rule applies to others who are not of the founding stock of our people as well as to those who do not share the common unconscious that permeates throughout our greater civilisation, and the European diaspora.”
Patriot Front’s ultimate aim, according to the same manifesto, is to form a white ethnostate within the US.
“A nation within a nation is our goal,” it reads. “Our people face complete annihilation as our culture and heritage are attacked from all sides.”
The Anti-Defamation League describes the group as specialising in vandalism, racist propaganda and “flash demonstrations” meant to intimidate marginalised communities, an assessment consistent with the apparent targeting of Saturday’s Pride event in Coeur d’Alene .
The group attracted attention when it paraded through along the National Mall in Washington, DC, in February 2020 and again just prior to that year’s presidential election when BuzzFeed reported that its members had been undergoing combat training in anticipation of civil unrest breaking out should Donald Trump lose, citing a cache of hundreds of messages exchanged between 280 members using an encrypted app.
The following summer, they attracted widespread ridicule after marching in front of Philadelphia City Hall during Fourth of July celebrations, only to be confronted and chased off by local residents.
“They started engaging with citizens of Philadelphia, who were none too happy about what they were saying,” city police officer Michael Crum told the media.
“These males felt threatened, and, at one point, somebody in their crowd threw a type of smoke bomb to cover their retreat, and they literally ran away from the people of Philadelphia.”
Having recovered their composure, they were back on the march in DC last December, sporting their now-familiar homemade uniforms, beating a drum and bearing banners reading “Reclaim America” as they passed the Lincoln Memorial.
“Get out of the country if you don’t like it!” one woman heckled.
They fared no better when they tried to join an anti-abortion march in Chicago, Illinois, in January this year with a banner reading “Strong Families Make Strong Nations.”
“You’re hijacking a pro-life movement!” one March for Life participant yelled at the white supremacists.
“Who the hell do you guys think you are?”
“You’re a bunch of f***ing clowns who never grew up!” another marcher told them.
