(I never get tired of showing the classic Philadelphia welcome Patriot Front got a few years ago when they decided to march in our city on July 4th.)
But they’ve softened their tactics. Now the neo Nazis are showing up to help white storm victims in Florida. The seeds have been sown there for the past several years, after all. Via the Wall Street Journal:
Exploiting public confusion, grief and communication breakdowns, white supremacist groups are now showing up in vulnerable storm-ravaged communities in Florida and North Carolina. They blend in among the many legitimate church or other charity workers that have rushed in to help. But these militia groups offer aid while filming propaganda videos that both amplify falsehoods about the government response and help the groups remake their image as patriotic civic organizations for men.
Horseshoe Beach Mayor Jeff Williams said he didn’t realize, until after a call from a Wall Street Journal reporter, that the group was Patriot Front. Williams said he went online and looked them up after the call. “Plain as day, they are white supremacists,” he said, adding that he would have never known by their trim looks. “Typically when you see white supremacists, they are not as clean cut looking as what I saw.”
“You’re seeing these hyper-localized militias, these antigovernment groups, who are able to use this massive distrust, the panic, the fear, the unrest, to recruit,” said Jon Lewis, a research fellow at the Program on Extremism at George Washington University. “It’s not surprising to see these groups trying to use these disasters for promotional efforts.”
The big right-wing schtick is that the federal government only shows up to help “those” people. Even though it’s not true:
At Horseshoe Beach, where local officials say Hurricane Helene destroyed the town hall and more than 90 homes, a Patriot Front crew filmed its cleanup work and then posted a video to its 20,000 subscribers on Telegram. A member, face obscured and his voice backed by the sound of buzzing chain saws, introduced the workers as Patriot Front and said: “It is important for American men to gather and help fellow Americans in need, while the federal government is occupied ushering in foreigners and giving them homes and giving them food and giving them water.”
“There is nothing here,” he continued, implying that the town’s only assistance consisted of “a couple of firefighters” and ordinary citizens.
“That’s wrong,” said Mayor Williams. He said at least 100 official workers from various agencies have come in. FEMA personnel have been going to door-to-door doing damage assessments, said Blake Watson, public information officer for Dixie County Fire and Rescue, adding, “We have supply chains to all our coastal communities that we’ve supplied with water, tarps, MREs.”
We have a real crisis in this country, even if Harris wins. Neo Nazis never sleep, and it’s impossible for normal people to keep up with the constant barrage of propaganda they’re pumping out.
Now Patriot Front is a nice social service organization, like the Lions Club or the Rotary Club. Go figure.
