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A US racist and neo-fascist hate group that has become a public fixture in recent years has descended on central Texas in a stunt it claims is part of the “disaster relief” efforts under way after the devastating flash floods hit the region last week.
Patriot Front, founded following the deadly 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, after which its leader, Thomas Rousseau, a Texan, was later charged for his participation, has claimed on its Telegram app channel that it has shown up in the areas near Camp Mystic, where 27 young campers lost their lives.
“Patriot Front is here in central Texas,” Rousseau declares in a video statement, amid the backdrop of what sounds like buzzing chainsaws in the flood-ravaged community, “responding to the flooding, which has destroyed communities and taken the lives of scores of Americans.”
Rousseau goes on to claim that his so-called “activists” are distributing supplies to survivors, but clarifies that his group is prioritizing their “people” and “European peoples” in those operations.
The far-right compulsion to disguise racist actions under the terms of humanitarianism has its roots in Adolf Hitler’s autobiography, Mein Kampf, in which he prescribes to his readers to take pride in keeping their collective communities strong as a not-so-hidden metaphor for cleansing it of what is deemed other, undesirable peoples.
Similarly, American hate groups, second amendment-oriented militias and neo-Nazi street gangs have long shown up as community relief cadres across the US, in a sort of ploy to whitewash their images as dangerous forces in the country.
After hurricanes struck the Carolinas and Florida in fall 2024, Patriot Front also exploited the moment during a particularly polarizing presidential campaign season, showing up to clear debris in badly hit communities.
“It’s not surprising to see Patriot Front inserting itself into disaster relief in Texas,” said Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, who has researched rightwing extremism in the US for decades.
“The group was founded there, and like other extremist groups, they want to take advantage of relief efforts to mainstream their ideas, present themselves as non-threatening and helping the community, and ultimately use what they hope will be positive PR to recruit and grow,”
Beirich noted that everyone from Klansmen to armed militias have seen value in public appearances providing disaster aid.
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“We’ve seen David Duke do this in the past, and more recently Veterans on Patrol inserted themselves into the relief efforts in Asheville after last year’s hurricane,” she said. “The concern is that it works – and Patriot Front’s white supremacist agenda gets laundered as positive, and that helps them spread hate and recruit.”
Last week, Patriot Front caused a stir in Louisville, Kentucky, over the holiday weekend when its masked members marched to the beat of drums in downtown streets while holding a Confederate banner – which has become a commonplace demonstration for the group, having previously appeared in Boston around the Fourth of July weekend in 2022.
Patriot Front’s Rousseau has sometimes tried to soften his image in public statements, referring to himself and his crew merely as political “activists”. But recent Guardian reporting shows the group has increasingly allied itself with the neo-Nazi Active Club movement and the white supremacist leader Robert Rundo.
