What The Hell America!

The white nationalist hate group Patriot Front is trying to boost recruitment by secretly controlling a large swath of the active clubs network, according to audio messages and a leaked document posted to Telegram that Hatewatch verified.

The audio messages and leaked document reveal that Patriot Front is the hidden hand behind about a dozen active clubs across the country. The leaked document, which appears to be an internal report created to update Patriot Front leadership on a new recruitment tactic, refers to these active clubs as “subsidiary recruitment projects.” Other active clubs are referred to as “cooperative” and “highly cooperative.”

Patriot Front, led by Thomas Rousseau, is the most active group in the white nationalist movement. In 2024, Patriot Front members used flyering to post more than 5,000 pieces of racist propaganda across the U.S., which is 10 times more than other groups that use this tactic, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Map of Hate Group Flyering. Active clubs are a loose network of white nationalist groups without a central leader that seek to build a brand around hypermasculinity, chauvinism and Western culture.

Hatewatch attempted to contact Rousseau multiple times to ask about the strategy and challenges of using active clubs to try and boost recruitment but received no response. Hatewatch’s outreach efforts included sending questions to Rousseau’s personal email address shared by a source close to the group. Rousseau’s phone number, which appeared on Patriot Front’s website registration form, was disconnected. Hatewatch also attempted to contact Rousseau using the contact form on his group’s website.

Rousseau’s apparent move to quietly control active clubs comes as Patriot Front’s brand has been damaged from high-profile acts of vandalism committed by group members, years of lawsuits and backbiting within the far-right movement that maligns Patriot Front as federal agents or plants.

Over the last several years, Hatewatch has monitored the close relationship between some active clubs and Patriot Front. The leaked document corroborates Hatewatch’s observations and provides a detailed look at how these relationships reflect Patriot Front’s changing tactics as its brand has faced setbacks. For example, in a Feb. 4, 2024, post to Telegram about an anti-LGBTQ+ rally, an active club chapter refers to being “alongside” Patriot Front at the event. However, the document shows that Patriot Front directly controls the active club chapter that participated, which suggests that Patriot Front organized the rally.

The inclusion of an active clubs chapter to what is essentially a Patriot Front rally raises questions about whether these active club members knew they were being groomed by Patriot Front leadership. It also suggests a new strategy Patriot Front has implemented to compete for recruits as the group faces criticism and suspicion from powerful far-right influencers. Some have claimed the group is full of undercover federal agents or is otherwise collaborating with federal law enforcement — a common accusation in the paranoid world of the organized white power movement.

‘Subsidiary recruiting projects’

In October, on a since-deleted Telegram channel of a competing neo-Nazi group, an anonymous user posted what appears to be a report sent to Patriot Front leadership that reveals the number of active clubs directly controlled by Patriot Front. The report also evaluated the active clubs that are friendly and unfriendly toward Patriot Front.

The report includes a spreadsheet with verifiable information about the Telegram channels of the active clubs included in the report, such as follower numbers and the number of shares for specific content. The information in the spreadsheet matches information found on the Telegram channel of the groups listed. The report also corroborates other evidence that shows close relationships between Patriot Front and certain active club chapters.

For example, the Tennessee Active Club (TAC), led by Sean Kauffmann, has regularly attended rallies, trainings and fight club events alongside Patriot Front, including ones at Lewis Country Store in Nashville, Tennessee. The report describes TAC as “ran by member. Heavily cooperative.” In a Feb. 2 audio message to a Telegram chat room in which people were accusing members of Patriot Front of being federal agents, Kauffmann confirmed his membership in the group. He said: “I have worked heavily with Patriot Front. I have been part of Patriot Front. Shit like this could not be further from the truth.”

The report outlines Patriot Front’s relationship with active clubs and provides an assessment of Patriot Front’s use of active clubs to increase its membership. The report categorizes active clubs into four groups: “subsidiary recruiting projects,” “cooperative independent clubs,” “non-cooperative or contacted clubs” and “inactive.” According to the report, Patriot Front oversees nine subsidiary recruiting projects, including Parker County Active Club in Texas, an active club in St. Louis and an active club in central Texas. Seven active clubs were labeled cooperative, including one in Montana and one in Portland, Oregon. Four active clubs were labeled “non-cooperative or contacted.”

After defining and categorizing active clubs, the report states, “The point of this is to stress that over-doing this tactic is near at hand if not already present, and the amount of recruited individuals from all of this may be fewer than the amount of ACRP’s [sic]. I hope that changes.” ACRP appears to stand for active clubs recruiting project.

Spencer Sunshine, an independent scholar and author of Neo-Nazi Terrorism and Countercultural Fascism: The Origins and Afterlife of James Mason’s “Siege,” told Hatewatch by email that it is uncommon for white supremacist groups to covertly control other groups. He said, “It’s more common to absorb them whole or struggle for leadership.”

Sunshine pointed to other political movements, particularly on the left, for examples of groups who “cross-recruit” and “poach members, rather than take over or split the group itself.”

The spreadsheet included in the report tracks how friendly active clubs are toward Patriot Front on Telegram. Columns include counts of “pf fowards,” “wlm forwards,” and “wlm v pf ratio” for each active club listed. WLM is the acronym for White Lives Matter, which is a loose affiliation of racist activists that arose in response to Black Lives Matter activists. The location of each active club is included, as well as the first and last day the group posted to Telegram.

Will2Rise and Media2Rise are also listed in the spreadsheet. Will2Rise is a white nationalist clothing company established by Robert Rundo and Grady Mayfield, while Media2Rise is a propaganda outlet Rundo started to document white nationalist rallies, marches and fight club events. In the spreadsheet, the location listed for these two groups is labeled “command center,” which is a location not attributed to any other organization on the list. Documents leaked to Unicorn Riot, a nonprofit media organization, identified Graham Whitson as Rousseau’s roommate in 2022. Whitson is in Rousseau’s inner circle and closely associates with Will2Rise and Media2Rise. This suggests that at some point in the last three years, Will2Rise, Media2Rise, Patriot Front and the nine active clubs identified in the documents as “subsidiary recruitment projects” were being overseen by Rousseau and his inner circle in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

Patriot Front’s move to control active clubs comes as the group has faced legal challenges in civil court for its racist activism. From 2020 to 2022, Patriot Front members destroyed dozens of murals that celebrated famous Black Americans, Black and Brown victims of police murder, LGBTQ+ Pride, Hmong culture and Chicano culture.

In Richmond, Virginia, a group of residents sued Patriot Front and several of its members for destroying a mural of tennis legend and local hero Arthur Ashe at a park in a historically Black neighborhood. The residents alleged a conspiracy to violate civil rights and racial harassment when Patriot Front members destroyed the mural. In December 2024, five members of Patriot Front settled the lawsuit. The details of the settlement are confidential.

In January, a federal judge awarded $2.75 million to Charles Murrell, a Black musician, after members of Patriot Front attacked him during a march in Boston in July 2022. Rousseau and other Patriot Front members refused to comply with court orders to appear in the case, in which they were accused of yelling racial slurs and assaulting Murrell. 

In March, Rousseau and a Patriot Front chapter leader in Minnesota settled a case stemming from an incident in which members of Patriot Front destroyed a mural at the International Market Plaza in Fargo, North Dakota. The settlement included Rousseau and his lieutenant paying an undisclosed amount for damages caused, apologizing to Fargo’s migrant community and agreeing to not cause this type of harm again in the area.

‘Their little generic Rob Rundo’

Hatewatch received Telegram audio messages that provide a window into the challenges Patriot Front has faced using active clubs as a recruitment vehicle. The source requested anonymity due to concerns about their safety.

The audio messages feature a member of Rousseau’s inner circle, Kieran Morris, and the founder and former leader of the Parker County Active Club, Rhett Loftis. Morris, Rousseau and other members of Patriot Front’s inner circle reside in and around Parker County, Texas, as does Loftis, according to people-finding websites. The anonymous source told Hatewatch that the audio messages were sent in early 2024 and posted to Telegram.

In the audio messages, Morris complained that Loftis was not doing enough to increase Patriot Front’s ranks.

Hatewatch attempted to contact Loftis using an email address found on a data broker website but received no response. Phone numbers associated with Loftis were disconnected.

Morris ridiculed Loftis for wasting his time by sending Patriot Front undesirable recruits, including one whom Morris called “non-European.” Morris criticized Loftis for complaining about Patriot Front’s vetting process in the “AC leads chat,” an apparent chat room of Patriot Front members who oversee active clubs.

Hatewatch contacted Morris using Telegram direct message. Despite an indicator on the direct message that showed Morris saw the message, Hatewatch did not receive a response.

Morris asks Loftis, “Is our organization something you are totally committed to, or are you going to be the active club guy doing your own thing?”

In an audio message sent later, Morris continued to berate Loftis for his commitment to active clubs over Patriot Front. “I have what I consider the correct, righteous position, that is total absolute chauvinism of our primacy and supremacy and domination,” Morris said. “Frankly, the motivation for guys to start their own little two-bit dollar store bullshit active club and not join PF, why is that? It’s because … they would rather take their little generic Rob Rundo, easy, convenient ‘all I gotta do is make a Telegram post’ route, and I think that is pathetic.”

Ideological and financial ties between Patriot Front and active clubs

Patriot Front and active clubs share ideological commitments to white nationalism that focus on the alleged superiority of white people and the alleged inferiority of people of color. Patriot Front and active club members train in mixed martial arts (MMA) and seek to build a brand around a perceived warriors’ ethos. Both groups also use similar tactics to pursue their bigoted political agenda, including holding flash rallies, posting racist propaganda in communities and participating in MMA-style fighting events.

What seemingly separates Patriot Front and active clubs is the structure of each organization. Rousseau and a handful of his trusted loyalists oversee the activities of Patriot Front from their headquarters in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Rousseau and his inner circle tightly control the group’s public image. Patriot Front has chapters across the U.S. and relies on key individuals to coordinate activities between members and Patriot Front leadership.

In contrast, active clubs have no central leadership and are largely autonomous groups of activists. Rundo helped found the active clubs network in 2021 while in Serbia, after he fled the U.S. to avoid felony charges for assaulting protesters.

While he continues to be an influential figure within the network, Rundo does not maintain a clear leadership role. In March 2023, Romanian authorities arrested Rundo, who was extradited to the U.S. to face federal conspiracy to riot charges. Rundo was sentenced to two years of time served and released in December 2024.

Patriot Front and active clubs have worked closely together for years. Members of both groups have attended the same rallies, fight club events and trainings, according to posts on the groups’ Telegram channels.

Additionally, a leaked banking document obtained by Unicorn Riot revealed financial ties between Patriot Front and Will2Rise. A member of Patriot Front’s inner circle, Graham Whitson, established a bank account for Will2Rise and a projected monthly income of $10,000, according to the document. Whitson has also worked as a photographer for a white nationalist propaganda outlet created by Rundo.

Illustration at top by the SPLC.