I-Team: Patriot Front has long history in Massachusetts
BOSTON - Members of the Patriot Front, a white supremacist organization, boarded an Orange Line train in Boston on Saturday.
The men, all wearing white gators covering their faces, sunglasses, baseball hats, khaki pants and blue shirts, headed back to Malden from downtown Boston, where they marched in the streets, waving flags and a banner that read "Reclaim America." Thomas Rousseau, the leader of the group, told the men to be considerate and be respectful, but the group itself wouldn't say much about where they were going.
Robert Trestan, the executive director of the Anti-Defamation League of New England, told the I-Team, the protest "really has all the indicators of an act of defiance and act of intimidation."
The Southern Poverty Law Center calls the Patriot Front a white nationalist hate group that formed after the deadly "Unite the Right' rally in Charlottesville in 2017.
It is also the same group that turned up in Idaho. Rousseau, the self-proclaimed leader, was arrested along with 30 men for conspiracy to riot at a Pride parade after the group was spotted getting out of a UHaul Truck.
The ADL said the Patriot Front has been active in Massachusetts as well, tracking more than 600 incidents involving the group since 2017. In 2019, three members of the group were arrested on weapons and assault charges after distributing racist flyers in East Boston.
On the group's website and manifesto, it claims its European ancestors conquered America and bequeathed it to them. It also claims to have been involved with 141 incidents of activism in the Commonwealth this year alone.
"They don't just hide their faces; they're actually hiding their anti-Semitism, their racism, their white supremacy," Trestan said,
While the men arrested in Idaho were not from the Boston area, two of the men charged in the East Boston incident were from Massachusetts.
