Hundreds of masked members of the Patriot Front group marched in Washington, DC on Saturday ahead of Independence Day celebrations. The group posted on social media that it had about 400 members and Reuters photographers saw hundreds dressed in Patriot Front outfits traveling on DC Metro trains.
Videos shared on various social media platforms showed the group marching to drummers near the US Capitol and Union Station transit centre while wearing khaki pants, caps, blue shirts, white face coverings and sunglasses. Many carried the group’s flag, Confederate flags, and variations of the US flag, chanting “Reclaim America.”
Around midday, they boarded Metro trains and exited at New Carrollton, Maryland in Washington’s northeast suburbs.
The Metropolitan Police Department is tracking Patriot Front’s First Amendment activities, a spokesperson said, adding that there were no reports of arrests, complaints filed or calls for assistance associated with the group’s march.
Patriot Front, known for its uniforms, face masks and flash-mob style demonstrations, formed in 2017 after the deadly “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, breaking off from the Vanguard America white supremacist group that was at the centre of that protest, according to the Southern Poverty Law Centre.
A manifesto on Patriot Front’s website says, “Democracy has failed this once great nation,” and a “hard reset” is needed to “return to the traditions and virtues of our forefathers,” identifying them as European settlers. The group tries to paint itself as mainstream while touting “white supremacist and anti-immigrant ideological belief systems,” said John Cohen, who held various counterterrorism and intelligence roles in the Homeland Security Department during the Obama and Biden administrations.
Luke Baumgartner, a research fellow at George Washington University’s Program on Extremism, added that although the group’s symbolism tries to evoke patriotism with the red, white and blue colours of the US flag, its logo uses similar iconography to the “fascio” logo of Benito Mussolini’s National Fascist Party from Italy in the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s. At the root, they are indeed a white supremacist organisation that is basically campaigning through these public appearances, whether they are flash marches, flyering events, protests, banner drops over highways, trying to spread this message that America is a country by and for white people only,” Baumgartner said.