I've actually been watching this organization (and the others around it) for about a decade.
First off, it's not too hard to find their web site, yet here we are 100 posts into the thread an one has posted it, or any other context just pure speculation. So, here's some of what I know:
They have a web site, it's here: Patriot Front On it they have posted a manifesto that explains what they are and what their aims are.
It begins with a quote from George Washington:
America stands at the crossroads of an era. An uncertain future lies in the hands of a new generation which has been given a simple choice between sovereignty and subjugation. America suffers under the rule of an occupied government. Tyrants, with delusions of infinite power, have declared the American people too weak to revolt. The damage done to the nation will not be fixed with the approval of the dysfunctional system which remains American in name only. Democracy has failed this once great nation. The resurgence of the American Spirit will bring with it the death of tyranny. The torch of revolution has been lit.When our pre-Columbian forefathers left their European homes, they found a savage continent. They held a variety of purpose, yet against the harsh life on the frontier and the common enemy in the strange and unexplored reaches of America yet to be touched by civilization, they found a common cause and a common identity as Americans. From the varied nations and cultures of Europe a new nation was forged in the flames of conquest. E Pluribus Unum was the new creed that bound our people together with their pan-European identity as Americans. To be an American is to be a descendant of conquerors, pioneers, visionaries, and explorers. This unique identity was given to us by our ancestors, and this national spirit remains firmly rooted in our blood.
Our mission is a hard reset on the nation we see today— a return to the traditions and virtues of our forefathers. The same spirit that urged our ancestors onward to create this nation will once again be brought to light, and a new America will be built within its current dilapidated, shameful iteration. Generation after generation lived in war and strife so that their descendants may know peace. It was their duty to give their lives in such a way. The torch is now passed to our generation, and it is our duty to make their sacrifices mean something.
Wikipedia has an article about them too. It's very negative, as you would expect, given that the Patriot Front are right wing, and Wikipedia has a very leftist tilt. With that backround in mind, here is how they are described:
Patriot Front is an American white nationalist and neo-fascist hate group.[5] Part of the broader alt-right movement, the group split off from the neo-Nazi organization Vanguard America during the aftermath of the Unite the Right rally in 2017.[1][6][7][8] The group maintains an Americana aesthetic, utilizing imagery of American culture, patriotism, and other widely accepted traditional American values to promote its ideology. According to the Anti-Defamation League, the group generated more than 82% of the racist, antisemitic, and other hateful propaganda tracked by the ADL in the United States in 2021, comprising 3,992 incidents distributed across every state except Hawaii and Alaska.[9]
Now, if you have been around Free Republic long enough this might sound familiar. I lurked here for many years before posting, and there are many posters who have been here for 20 years or more. FR was once accused of being a fascist, racist far-right place by these same groups (SPLC, ADL). Only the founder had the guts and wherewithal to fight back, and make them retract their bogus claims.
Free Republic is full of people wanting to "restore the Republic", who are very sincere, patriotic, god-fearing and traditionalist and conservative people. Most of us are Boomers (I don't know the average age of Freeper but I bet it's north of 60 years old). Twenty years ago, when the site was young it was more activist. Before the Tea Party even there were local events, where people would "Freep X", where X might be some preening liberal politician. And many Freepers were inovlved with the Tea Party movement when it started up, and many went to the Tea Party rallies in D.C. in 2009. Tea Party Protests
But a lot has changed in America since 1997, when Free Republic was founded. If you were 30 year-old the, and signed up on the new conservative site you are 55 years old now.
Most of us didn't experience what todays 20 year old kids did. We weren't told throughout our school years that "Only whites Can Be Racist" or that there is "Structural Racism" that whites uniformly benefit from. That whites are uniquely fragile ("white fragility"), that the only way to be a good person is to adopt strong "anti-racist" beliefs and denounce one's own heritage and ancestors for their supposed evil deeds.
But believe me, if you are 21 years old today, that means you were born in 2001. Your entire childhood was filled with this. Obama became President when you were 7 years old. Widespread awareness of something called Critical Race Theory among conservatives in this time frame was nonexistent, but already many of us could see things were going badly wrong in the schools. My daughter graduated public school in 2008. Already they were using Howard Zinn's hateful "A People's History of the United States" as the main American History textbook. (In a suburban district with a GOP Congressional Rep. at the time.)
So, young people who rejected the Leftism that was in the air they breathed growing up have had an extremely hard time. Almost any dissention from the Leftist credo is interpreted as "fascism" and "Nazism". Honestly, many kids, even from conservative homes give up an "go progressive", if just to avoid becoming an outcast. (We'd all like to think we'd never do that, but kids are social animals. It's not cool to be against gay marriage, you are "a bigot" in the minds of your peers, many will take savage delight in telling you that.
The Alternative Right was one attempt (or a group of approaches) tried out by groups of younger conservatives to address what they experienced and they saw growing up. (And the original thought leaders in that group are themselves approaching middle age now.)
One thing they shared from the start was a deep antipathy towards what they called "Conservatism Inc.", so they were ahead of a lot of Freepers. Let's face it in 2002 this play was full of a lot of people cheering on George W. Bush's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and carefully reading the National Review and the Weekly Standard to justify their support for those war. The anti-war right didn't have a place at the table either here, or in the pages of the mainstream conservative magazines. Everyone right-of-center rallied around Bush and the Bush presidency.
Even using the word "neo-Conservative" (which is a term created by they themselves to describe their movement) brought denunciations as "anti-Semite" here.
The first publication that took on Conservatism Inc. and pointedly asked the question "what have they conserved" and wrote frankly about the mass wave immigration and what it meant for America's future was The American Conservative, a (paper, how quaint) monthly magazine founded in 2002 by Pat Buchanan with Scott McConnell Taki Theodoracopulos to serve as a counter (an antidote) to what they saw as the weak, feckless, ineffective conservatism of The National Review (not to mention the Neo Conservatism of the Weekly Standard).
The American Conservative (TAC) is a magazine published by the American Ideas Institute which was founded in 2002. Originally published twice a month, it was reduced to monthly publication in August 2009, and since February 2013, it has been bi-monthly.[3]The publication states that it exists to promote a conservatism that opposes unchecked power in government and business alike; promote the flourishing of families and communities through vibrant markets and free people; and embrace realism and restraint in foreign affairs based on America's national interests, otherwise known as paleoconservatism.[4]
After a few years there was a falling out among the founders . Buchanan withdrew from editorial duties (but still occassioally write columns) and Taki Theodoracopulos (who had been the money guy at TAC) decided to start his own magazine, with a more playful and intellecutal take on the right. A HREF-"https://www.takimag.com/">"Taki's Magazine" was the result.
I think that it was the incubator for the Alt Right. Certainly the term originated there, in the title of an article by well known Paleoconservative writer Gotfried, and young editor Richard Spencer, who later became the infamous smirking face of the alt right. (The famous Washington DC Trump celebration rally was held in January of 2017, which probably marks the end of the Alt Right as a movement. The "Unite the Right" Rally of August 2017 was the funeral of the movement, which had already splintered and lost many people who had been interested or sympathetic with it.
But in that period they heavily explored the European New RIght, (originating in France as the "Nouvelle Droite" in the late 1960s) both in Taki's Magazine, and then in the later spin-offs that Spencer formed "The Alternative Right" website (now defunct) and Axios Publications (a book publisher, who specialized in English translations of little-known European New Right philosophers such as Alain Benoist, as well as works by American paleo-conservatives such as Sam Francis. (The firm exists as a much reduced skeleton of it's former self.
If you were a 16 year old white kid in 2015, tired of an entire school career full of Howard Zinn and White Guilt being pushed down your throat, where to turn? Probably tuning into Special Report with Brit Hume and listening to Fred Barnes and Bill Kristol isn't really something that feels interesting, or useful. After all "what did you conservatives manage to conserve?"
On the other hand the people and ideas around Taki Mag, the Alternative Right, Richard Spencer, Vox Day (the comic book publisher and political pundit), Milo, Brad Griffin's Occidental Dissent, Gamergate, and (for a time) even Steve Bannon (who at one time declared Breitbart was "the platform for the alt-right", before the movement fell into disrepute and imploded in 2017.
So that is where the Patriot Front guys come from. They have studied and attempted to model the European New Right youth movement, known as "Generation Identity", these are the adolescents and young adults in France who are pushing back against the creeping Islamism of France and Germany. From this see was created the "Identity Europa" group in America. Because everyone in it was under 30 they liked to do stuff (not just sit around posting on their websites.
Anyone who claims to be right (in any sense) will be harassed by the legal authorities. The patriot right (including many here at Free Republic) held the Stop the Steal Rally on January 6, and we see who the Institutional Left is still harassing everyone with even the most mild involvement in that.
So, one approach is to say "we can't do street protests anymore. It's counter productive". Well, that's a mature and probably realistic take on things. I know a lot of people who went to the Stop the Steal rally, none of them were trying to overthrow the government of the USA, but here we are.
But what if you don't want to be totally passive. What if you are 21, and you see that left-wing people your age can and do have mass rallies all the time.
The Patriot Front has tried to create a movement that can do protests, and not get destoryed by the combined forces of antifa and corrupt local law enforcement. (Remember Trump Rally attendees being made to walk a guantlet of vicious leftists in San Jose in 2016, none of whom were ever prosecuted).
Thus the uniform of Khaki pants and white polo shirts. (Plus kids drawn to activism like uniforms, it's always been that way). It's a sort of reversal of the "black blok" worn by antifa. Instead of looking threatening, it's supposed to look preppy. "We're normal, and we want a normal America back".
The heavy use of American iconography (American flags, red+white+blue everything) is a studied response to the problem of the "one guy with a Nazi flag" showing up at other right wing rallies. The Patriot Front (learning the lessons of Charlottesville) maintains discipline among it's members, requires everyone to work together and follow the plan. Marches are not announced in advance (no more Unite the Right rallies where opponents and police conspire to prevent your event from taking place). (The previous "Identity Europa" used black and yellow iconography, which is well known in Europe, but didn't mean anything here.)
On the Patriot Front website you can see the list of 40 events they have done over the years.
My take is that they are pretty much what they say and claim. There is a lot more evidence that the Oath Keepers (a group many on Free Republic spoke well of for years) are completely compromised by the FBI than that Patriot Front is.
It's so easy to smugly sit back and declare that KIDS who are appalled at the state of America and trying to do something are FBI Plants - just because they are healthy looking white guys under age 30.
What have you done lately? (Besides post on Free Republic). Let's face it: most of us are so old that we can probably survive the continuing decline of the USA for the 15 or 20 years we have left. Maybe we have to move to a more intact space.
Imgaine being a 20 year-old straight white male in America right now. Imagine you are strong enough mentally to have rejected Obamaism, Gay/Lesbian rights, BLM antics, the claims of Antifa and the Far Left, the attack on your heritage. You want to do something. You have to do something.
That's these guys, we should have more empathy with them. We can disagree with their specific points, we can think any type of street protest is counter productive for the right and that the streets rightly belong to the Left now, but let's at least give them their humanity. Stop calling them FBI agents with zero evidence to support the claim.
It's really beneath what this place used to stand for.