One of the nation’s largest white supremacist groups is rapidly expanding, adding hundreds of members in 49 states over the past two years. Internal documents leaked to USA TODAY show an organized recruiting effort facilitated by a step-by-step manual and a network of fight clubs where members meet to register new employees.
The files, provided by sources within Patriot Front, offer a rare glimpse into the inner workings of the group as it accelerates its growth. Known for its highly choreographed rallies, including lines of identically dressed men wearing blue shirts, chinos, and white face coverings holding American flags, the group has used disciplined optical techniques to increase its reach and profile nationwide.
A USA TODAY analysis of the group’s 72-page roster and other documents it obtained revealed the following:
- As of early 2026, the group has more than 540 members and covers every state except Hawaii.
- Since its establishment in 2018, it has approximately doubled in size every year, and over the past two years has seen a rapid increase in more than half of new members.
- It is affiliated with dozens of “active clubs” known for young white supremacists to practice mixed martial arts and meet together.
- The group closely controls its propaganda and marketing, following several guides that members must strictly follow.
And the Patriot Front has plans to continue growing rapidly.
In internal communications provided in the leak, the Texas-based group’s leader, 27-year-old Thomas Rousseau, urges members to get more involved, stay healthy and continue his relentless campaign of white supremacist propaganda. He is calling for 600 members by July 4, 2026.
“This is a chosen and dedicated people, far exceeding their domestic contemporaries,” Rousseau wrote. “These teams need dedicated members. Members who are willing to work for the cause, not just fight.”
This secret organization portrays itself as simply patriotic and fighting for “traditional” American values. But the documents obtained by USA TODAY provide new evidence of the intentions and future direction of the organization, which, as one of its applicants wrote, “works to secure a future for white children.”
“White supremacists are tired of seeing their homeland raped and pillaged by foreign invaders,” another Patriot Front candidate wrote in his application for membership.
USA TODAY is not identifying the source of the documents due to concerns for their personal safety. The Patriot Front did not respond to requests for comment. Indeed, the group publicly shies away from violence, and documents provided to USA TODAY include instructions for members to specifically avoid violent or aggressive confrontations.
“Suggestions or actions that might suggest, encourage, or advocate active violence by members themselves, or that encourage violence in others, are prohibited,” one document reads.
Dozens of Patriot Front members arrested while protesting the 2022 Pride Parade in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, have been charged with conspiracy to commit a riot. Five people were ultimately convicted. Other members are facing criminal damage charges for allegedly defacing the Pride mural at Olympia Washington and a monument in Richmond, Va., commemorating Arthur Ashe, the first black man to win singles tennis championships at Wimbledon, the U.S. Open and the Australian Open.
“The Patriot Front is the most active white supremacist group we track,” said Jeff Tyshauser, a senior research analyst at the Southern Poverty Law Center who has studied the organization since its founding. “What you have is internal documents of a very secretive white supremacist group, and the more we can get some documents about what’s going on within that group, the better we can inform the community about what’s going on inside this hate group.”
A new frontier: active clubs
One of the documents provided to USA TODAY is a list of “active clubs” across the country affiliated with the Patriot Front. Some clubs are listed in multiple states, for a total of at least 23 clubs across 32 states.
Clubs are essentially small groups of young men who organize online, meet in person for meetups, and train, spar, practice mixed martial arts, and other outdoor activities in the gym or outdoors.
The document suggests that the Patriot Front is appealing to these groups and seeking to forge alliances with them. It lists current club leaders and friendly Patriot Front members, as well as contacts within the club to approach.
The extremist group was founded days after a deadly 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, by former members of the neo-Nazi group Vanguard America.
Members of the group participate in demonstrations several times a year, which typically draw at least 100 participants. Recent rallies have made headlines in Washington, D.C., Kansas City, Des Moines and other cities, including a Memorial Day weekend protest in Virginia Beach. At these protests, Patriot Front members wear matching chinos, blue button-down shirts, and white face gaiters. They carry American flags as well as banners and flags with the group’s logo.
“No one has rebranded themselves as successfully as the Patriot Front,” said Carla Hill, vice president of investigations and research at the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism, which monitors the group. “They’re very good at optics. They have everything planned out in advance, they dress alike, their colors are consistent. Everything is planned out.”
Documents provided to USA TODAY reveal how organized and disciplined Patriot Front leaders are regarding their “optics.”
A multi-page PDF distributed internally tells Patriot Front members exactly how to behave in public, what shirts to wear at protests (work shirts with two breast pockets, rather than dress shirts with only one breast pocket), how to identify themselves online, and exactly how to share posts about their activities.
The document often reads more like a corporate compliance manual than the vitriolic platform of a more “traditional” white supremacist hate group.
The General Guidelines for Conduct state that “activists are at all times representatives of the organization, and in no circumstances are there exceptions for ‘personal’ or ‘informal’ situations.”
Tischauser, who authored a report last year linking the Patriot Front to the Active Club Network, said the Patriot Front has a reputation among white supremacists as a breeding ground for “Federal Bureau of Investigation” agents. As a result, the group has forged a new path in its recruitment efforts, he said. It is said to be an active club.
“The Patriot Front needs to use active clubs to get them involved in the movement,” he said. “It provides them with plausible deniability, and it also provides them with a path to an American conservative movement that doesn’t feature patriots.”
Patriot Front’s nationwide propaganda efforts exposed
You may have seen Patriot Front stickers, flyers, and banners in your neighborhood without even realizing it.
This propaganda is not far from what we see from brands that emphasize American patriotism. Using the fixed colors of red, white, and blue and incorporating the Patriot Front logo, flyers often use patriotic rhetoric like “America First” to appeal, along with images of strong-jawed, broad-shouldered white men.
Other examples use slogans like “Take America Back” and “Not Stolen. Conquered” to get closer to the Patriot Front’s true white supremacist ideology. The group is also openly anti-Semitic, with members holding banners at events that read “Zionist Opposition to Government.”
The Patriot Front has been responsible for distributing thousands of pieces of propaganda in recent years, and documents provided to USA TODAY show how organized and controlled the effort is.
The document includes guides on how and where to put up large posters promoting the group, including guides on how to make graffiti stencils and how to mix flour and water to make a flour paste to stick the posters on.
Another document details how to make Patriot Front banners, right down to how to tie the knots that secure the canvas.
Significantly, the document claims that members of the Patriot Front will only use propaganda containing slogans, logos, and images created by the group’s innermost leadership and approved by Rousseau himself.
“They’re trying to attract the widest possible audience, so they’re sending a patriotic message in that direction,” says researcher, author, and scholar JM Berger, co-author of a seminal 2020 study on Patriot Front propaganda efforts. “They’re trying to get people just by saying, ‘Hey, would you like to join the Nazi party?'” They’d say, “No.”
“Our mission is a radical reset of this country as we see it today – a return to the traditions and virtues of our forefathers,” the Patriot Front website says.
Although the word “white” does not appear in the manifesto, leaked messages and years of research on Rousseau and several other members of the group have allowed experts to establish the Patriot Front’s true goals across the board.
Despite all the restrictions on propaganda, conduct, and propaganda, researchers have known for years what Patriot Front leaders and members actually think and want. The leak of thousands of internal messages and audio and video recordings between Patriot Front members released by media group Unicorn Riot in 2022 revealed a true picture of the group’s inner workings.
And the leak to USA TODAY provides further evidence of the group’s careful misrepresentation, SPLC researchers said.
“I have no doubt that the Patriot Front is a white supremacist group trying to build a white ethnic state,” he said. “Leaked messages show that Patriotic Front members worship Hitler, joke about the Holocaust, use racial slurs, and are very willing to psychologically traumatize non-white groups. They are very comfortable being white supremacists in private.”
Will Carless covers extremism and emerging issues for USA Today and is host of Extremely Normal.
