When the hurricane relief worker turns out to be a neo-Nazi
The contentious US presidential race that has sharply politicised the storms is providing a new opening for hate groups that were already on the rise.
The fit, helpful strangers who descended on Horseshoe Beach, Florida., after Hurricane Helene were a welcome sight. The men swiftly chopped through downed trees and cleared mounds of debris for distressed residents in the small gulf-coast town west of Gainesville.
These weren’t typical disaster-relief volunteers. They were members of Patriot Front, an organisation branded by the Anti-Defamation League as a white-supremacist group.
Neo-Nazi groups aggressively escalating their activity in recent months across the US have seized upon a potent new recruiting tool: the surging tide of misinformation surrounding hurricanes.
The contentious US presidential race that has sharply politicised the storms is providing a new opening for hate groups that were already on the rise.
Hurricane falsehoods about government malfeasance have spread rapidly on social media, often seizing on the hot-button debate of immigration by claiming relief funds are being diverted to migrants or favour minority victims over white applicants, which the Federal Emergency Management Agency denies.
Exploiting public confusion, grief and communication breakdowns, white supremacist groups are now showing up in vulnerable storm-ravaged communities in Florida and North Carolina. They blend in among the many legitimate church or other charity workers that have rushed in to help. But these militia groups offer aid while filming propaganda videos that both amplify falsehoods about the government response and help the groups remake their image as patriotic civic organisations for men.
Horseshoe Beach Mayor Jeff Williams said he didn’t realise, until after a call from a Wall Street Journal reporter, that the group was Patriot Front. Williams said he went online and looked them up after the call. “Plain as day, they are white supremacists,” he said, adding that he would have never known by their trim looks. “Typically when you see white supremacists, they are not as clean cut looking as what I saw.” “You’re seeing these hyper-localised militias, these antigovernment groups, who are able to use this massive distrust, the panic, the fear, the unrest, to recruit,” said Jon Lewis, a research fellow at the Program on Extremism at George Washington University. “It’s not surprising to see these groups trying to use these disasters for promotional efforts.” At Horseshoe Beach, where local officials say Hurricane Helene destroyed the town hall and more than 90 homes, a Patriot Front crew filmed its clean-up work and then posted a video to its 20,000 subscribers on Telegram.
A member, face obscured and his voice backed by the sound of buzzing chainsaws, introduced the workers as Patriot Front and said: “It is important for American men to gather and help fellow Americans in need, while the federal government is occupied ushering in foreigners and giving them homes and giving them food and giving them water.” “There is nothing here,” he continued, implying that the town’s only assistance consisted of “a couple of firefighters” and ordinary citizens.
“That’s wrong,” said Mayor Williams. He said at least 100 official workers from various agencies have come in. FEMA officials have been going to door-to-door doing damage assessments, said Blake Watson, public information officer for Dixie County Fire and Rescue, adding, “We have supply chains to all our coastal communities that we’ve supplied with water, tarps, MREs.” Williams condemned Patriot Front’s ideology, but said he’ll take all the assistance he can get.
“As long as they’re not here trying to press that on our people — I take the help,” he said. “I don’t care where they’re from.” Concerns about the election The number of white-nationalist groups reached a high of 166 in 2023, according to the latest information available from the Southern Poverty Law Center. The proliferation and visibility of the groups is adding to concerns about disruptions in the coming election, such as interference with voters at polling places and election workers counting ballots.
“It is just a question of how many, where they will be, and whether or not they will be stopped or prevented,” said Tammy Patrick, chief program officer for the National Association of Election Officials.
Already in Ohio, Clark County Democratic Party volunteers out canvassing for the election recently faced threats from groups such as the Proud Boys – the far-right group then-President Trump told to “stand back and stand by” from the 2020 debate stage – an official with the party confirmed. The Clark County harassment spurred some local citizens to show up in support outside the party’s office to provide a metaphorical shield.
The appearances have been ramping up for months. The Anti-Defamation League in September flagged a “sustained, high level of white supremacist activity,” including by contingents “inserting themselves into the anti-immigration debate in the lead-up to the 2024 election.” Some neo-Nazi groups recently fanned the false narrative, escalated by the campaign of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, of pet-eating Haitians in Springfield, Ohio. Over the last few months, organisations such as Patriot Front, Blood Tribe and the Proud Boys rallied in places like Tallahassee, Harrisburg, Pa., and Nashville, with some wearing masks and carrying rifles and swastika flags.
The Proud Boys have also touted their work travelling to recent hurricane sites. A self-declared member of a New York Proud Boy chapter wrote on Truth Social last week that the group was at the hurricane “clean-up site down south,” and that “I wonder where all those Democrats that love this country so much are.” The Proud Boys’ enduring presence has shown how the group has persisted despite its former chairman, Enrique Tarrio, and other leaders being convicted of seditious conspiracy and other criminal charges in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. Tarrio is serving a 22-year prison sentence – the longest handed down in the wave of cases related to the Capitol attack – but extremism researchers expect the Proud Boys’ local activities to continue.
‘Reclaim America’ Texas-based Patriot Front didn’t respond to requests for comment. The group formed after it broke off from Vanguard America in the aftermath of the deadly 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va. Patriot Front founder Thomas Rousseau said in a May podcast hosted by influencer Patrick Bet-David that to be “American,” one must be “a member of the European race.” “Do you think your bloodline is superior to Blacks?” Bet-David asked. “Superior in being American, yes,” Rousseau replied.
Earlier this year in Richmond, Va., where Patriot Front is the target of a federal civil lawsuit over the alleged vandalising of a mural honouring Black tennis icon Arthur Ashe, a lawyer for Patriot Front argued the group doesn’t advocate violence and its members aren’t white supremacists. Instead, he said, they are separatists advocating for a “white ethnostate,” believing that “good fences make good neighbours” and that “it is better for ethnic groups to have their own separate territory.” But the judge wrote in a March opinion that “the Court cannot reasonably infer that Patriot Front seeks separation for any reason other than white supremacy.” Patriot Front’s longtime slogan, Reclaim America, has been used by the Trump campaign – notably for the “Team Trump’s Reclaim America Tour” featuring Robert F. Kennedy Jr and former U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard.
Patriot Front recently highlighted the similarity on social media and said it is unclear if the Trump campaign is aware of the connection.
The Trump campaign said there was no link between its use of the slogan and Patriot Front’s and bristled at a reporter’s question about the phrase. “It is disgusting that you are trying to associate President Trump’s campaign, backed by tens of millions of Americans, with white supremacist groups. Shame on you,” said Karoline Leavitt, national press secretary.
Speaking on Bet-David’s podcast, Rousseau made the often-repeated suggestion that Democrats have allowed immigrants to enter the country illegally to vote for them. “You know, the Democrats are importing voters, right?” he said. Rousseau also said he disagreed with Trump’s support of Israel.
At a recent Michigan rally, Trump tied that same claim about Democrats to the government’s hurricane-relief efforts. “They stole the FEMA money, just like they stole it from a bank, so they could give it to their illegal immigrants that they want to have vote for them this season,” said Trump, whose statement was also shared by his campaign’s Truth Social account.
Immigrants in the country illegally or who are in the asylum system aren’t paid benefits by the federal government except in narrow circumstances, and risk deportation and jail for illegally casting ballots. Voter fraud by noncitizens is exceedingly rare, election experts have found.
The perfect storm The hurricanes have set off an unusual level of viral rumours on social-media sites such as Elon Musk-owned X. Among them are posts alleging the agency doesn’t have money because it has been siphoned off to help migrants. FEMA plays a role in border management but that pot of money is separate from funds for responding to natural disasters.
The militia groups are actively spreading these claims about a failed or corrupt government hurricane response across the internet, with some going farther in recent days by showing up in person to work at storm clean up, and then sharing videos and commentary online. Seven antigovernment and hate groups have shown up in North Carolina under the guise of helping, said Rachel Carroll Rivas, interim director of the Intelligence Project at SPLC.
The Wall Street Journal
