You no doubt saw that the racist-wingnut group Patriot Front staged a march in downtown Nashville recently. A question: What’s the difference between Patriot Front members and Tennessee Republican legislators?
Patriot Front members like wearing masks. Too harsh?
And contrary to what you might have thought, the march was a “resounding success.” I know this because I read an account of it on the Patriot Front website. Why would they lie?
“With one of the largest columns fielded by the organization, the nearly 2-mile procession was met with virtually zero opposition and a great deal of positive reception on the ground,” it states. And, as the cherry on top, “Not a single incident of violence or interaction with law enforcement took place.”
No interaction with law enforcement, despite the fact that the group had no permit for the march. Interesting.
The event featured a speech by the group’s founder, Thomas Rousseau, a 25-year-old Texan with an overdeveloped sense of ownership in American history and heritage.
“We lay ultimate claim to the pride of our mighty nation’s legacy,” he asserted at Legislative Plaza. “Because without the race of men that built America, without the ironclad resolve of our ancestors, there would be no America.”
If you wonder what he’s teasing out with the “race of men that built America” reference, I point you to the group’s manifesto on its website: “Those of foreign birth may occupy civil status within the lands occupied by the state, and they may even be dutiful citizens, yet they may not be American,” it states. “Membership within the American nation is inherited through blood, not ink. ... Nationhood cannot be bestowed upon those who are not of the founding stock of our people.”
The founding stock? “Americans are descendants of Europeans.” That’s code for “white people.” Descendants of others, by the Patriot Front rationale, need not apply.
I invite you to explore the whole website, for as long as you can stomach it.
“America is a bleeding carcass bereft of the moral foundations which made it powerful,” it states at one point, which gives you an idea of the tone. It even includes an explanation of why members conceal their faces with white balaclavas and sunglasses, invoking the Boston Tea Partiers, some of whom posed as Mohawk or Narragansett Indians.
“Anonymity protects the lives and efforts of those speaking out against tyranny,” Rousseau says, “and promotes a selfless quality in messaging. We are not doing what we do to gain fame or profit for ourselves, but simply for the fact that it is right.”
He continues: “Our activists can be anyone. They are the American Everyman, in revolt against intolerable conditions.”
Outside observers, I would suggest, might intuit altogether different reasons for Fronters’ hiding their identities.
Some on social media have claimed the whole Nashville event – and others like it – was actually staged by undercover federal agents, perhaps F.B.I., to sow discord and show the right wing in a bad light. Evidence, that is, of how conspiracy-minded and gullible some folks are. (I could use stronger words to describe them but am resisting.)
As for me, I don’t know the difference between the Patriot Front and the Proud Boys or other groups of that ilk. But I have a knee-jerk reaction to many uses of the word “patriot” because it wants to imply an association with the aims and ideals of the Revolutionary period. As such, the Patriot Front website prominently includes quotes from George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Samuel Adams and Thomas Jefferson sprinkled throughout the manifesto.
I suspect any of those actual patriots would cringe at seeing their words co-opted by such a bunch of dimwits. (Oops. There’s one of those stronger words.) I also mistrust companies that incorporate the word in their name, like MyPatriotSupply and 4Patriots, with their survival gear, solar generators and emergency bunker food items (gluten-free available, of course).
I confess that I drive a Jeep Patriot. But I feel conflicted.
Joe Rogers is a former writer for The Tennessean and editor for The New York Times. He is retired and living in Nashville. He can be reached at jrogink@gmail.com