Patriot Front Once Again Rallies Alongside Anti-Abortion March For Life

I’ve been covering the March for Life rally for a couple years now. It’s usually the same scene, Catholics, and other Christian groups get in busses, school kids get a weekend in Washington DC to see a couple museums. The anti-reproductive rights rhetoric is off the charts with people comparing abortion to slavery or the Holocaust. But it’s essentially just a ra-ra-ra festival for a certain type of right wing Christian.

That is until Patriot Front started showing up.

What is Patriot Front?

Patriot Front’s founder Thomas Rousseau was leading white nationalist group Vanguard America’s representation at the Unite the Right rally in 2017. While they claim he was not a member of Vanguard America, James Alex Fields, the man that murdered Heather Heyer with his car, was marching with them at the start of the day. After the march Vanguard broke up and Rousseau started Patriot Front.

Patriot Front, until recently was just another white nationalist training group that produced videos of them marching, leafleting and play-fighting in the woods. They would rally and march at big events like March for Life and Pride events to get press and get yelled at by people… but it was mainly a content generator. There’s always two or three people with cameras filming them argue with lefties, the press or even sometimes conservatives that don’t like them showing up at their rally.

I first photographed them in Washington DC in 2020, just before COVID hit where they were allowed to march from the Lincoln Memorial to the Capitol steps - something I’ve never seen in my 23 years of covering protests there.

In the last year it seems they’re focusing their plans, growing their presence in Tennessee attending a white nationalist conference and building a compound there. [I recommend following and watching Phil Williams reporting on all of this.]

All of this expansion after they lost a civil rights case when a Federal judge awarded a Black musician they attacked in Boston in 2022 $2.75 million. From WBUR: U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani said the group, Patriot Front, violated the civil rights of 37-year-old saxophonist Charles Murrell III when members yelled racist slurs and assaulted him on Dartmouth Street.

PF & M4L

Every year, for the last couple years the March for Life rally has been joined by Patriot Front, a white supremacist group. This has ranged from marching along side M4L, to handing out flyers undercover, to rallying outside of the march and chanting slogans.

March For Life has distanced themselves from the hate group saying in 2022: “March for Life promotes the beauty, dignity, and worth of every human life by working to end the violence of abortion, We condemn any organization that seeks to exclude a person or group of people based on the color of their skin or any other characteristic. Such exclusion runs counter to our mission which recognizes that all human lives are equal from the moment of conception: equality begins in the womb.”

My experience covering the rally/Patriot Front is that the people that attend March for Life are supportive of them being there. I explained that they were a white Christian fascist group to one woman in 2022 and she told me, “Well, as long as they’re pro-life.” There are of course a number of MFL attendees who are angry at them but their complaints are mostly “It makes us look bad” or that they are “Feds.” Many members of Patriot Front have in fact been named - and no, they are not “Feds.”

This year Rousseau’s Khaki Klan was drowned out and mocked by comedian Walter Matheson, and a very consistent man with a very loud megaphone playing circus music on a loop… and when I say on a loop, I mean for the full two hours I was there filming them. [SOUND ON]

Thomas Rousseau is also not up for the job of debating the random people that come up and argue with him.

I wouldn’t consider Rousseau a Nazi, as I believe that’s a specific class of white supremacist he is a person whose beliefs align with a “pure” nation. Patriot Front does investigate peoples genetic background before allowing entry into the organization.

Their rally spend its time standing in place a hundred hard from the M4L security and allowing Rousseau to walk back and forth arguing with people that showed up. The man in the photo below was a M4L supporter who disagreed with their presence… he clearly wanted the more policy based white nationalism of the pro-forced-birth movement.

Eventually they marched to their U-Haul to drop off the flag poles, as these items are not allowed on public transport in DC.

The rest of the troops marched on to the publicly funded metro system that makes DC one of the great cities. As always Patriot Front, an explicitly racist/fascist organization that inherently calls for the overthrow of the democracy in America was protected by the local DC Metro police department. I spoke briefly to a commanding officer in the MPD on this march and he said that they do this for all marches. That is provably untrue. Every un-sanctioned march with left-leanings has not received police protection, but has received it’s violence. But their police force is infiltrated with cops that have Proud Boy leanings, so that’s of no surprise.

[Big photo drop on the other side of the E-mail… so make sure you click through]

Stories like this I cover regularly with no paid assignment as I believe it’s important to document the cross section of the “acceptable” far-right (M4L) and the un-acceptable far-right (PF). No one other than extremist reporters like myself and some photojournalists document this - I am one of the few people that are both [Ford Fischer being a noted exception]. Assignments in this world are few and far between, and when they do come it barely covers the expenses. I’m really hoping that you can support my work by subscribing here or at my patreon.

If you can’t do a monthly subscription, any support you can give via Venmo or CashApp is greatly welcomed. I am working on getting back to Minneapolis independently as well.