On Saturday more than a hundred masked white fascists snapped open the rear doors of a convoy of U-Haul trucks and spilled onto the steps of Kansas City’s World War I Memorial. Faces hidden by white masks, they unfurled inverted U.S. flags and Confederate banners and marched a tight downtown loop through the crossroads while chanting “Reclaim America.”
Leading the march in Kansas City was white supremacist Patriot Front founder Thomas Rousseau.
Rousseau, a figure who goes to great lengths (to little avail) to exude paramilitary bravado, is the only individual in the group without their face covered.
“Do you know anything about the group that was marching?” Filmmaker & community organizer Bret Hamilton asked a veteran outside the Liberty memorial in a video posted to Twitter/X. “I don’t know anything about them,” the vet responded, “other than that they were cowards because they had masks on.”
The flash-mob-esque military-style performance might appear comedic—if not for the fact that the group is a rapidly growing neo-Nazi organization responsible for organizing violent street actions, celebrating mass murder, and spreading white supremacist propaganda across the country.
Missouri is fertile ground. An Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights audit ranks the state third-highest for Patriot Front activity.
The white supremacist group originated as a splintered faction from the more openly neo-Nazi outfit Vanguard America, after 2017’s infamous Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, where fascist white terrorist, James Alex Fields—wearing Vanguard America insignia—murdered peace protester Heather Heyer by ramming her with his Dodge Challenger vehicle.
Rousseau, split from Vanguard America after the incident and its resulting widespread negative PR, and rebranded to Patriot Front. The new group changed its name but kept their ultimate goal intact: a whites-only ethnostate.
Patriot Front & Children of the KKK: by the Numbers
In 2022, the group marched through Boston with over 100 masked men, violently attacking Black artist and musician Charles Murrell in broad daylight. Police stood by. As Murrell later described, the men wore masks and carried shields, and beat him when he attempted to document their presence.
Civil-rights veteran Rev. Kevin Peterson describes the Patriot Front as “children of the KKK,” in his DemocracyNow interview following the racist Boston attack.
Thus far, Kansas City’s local media outlets largely referred to the masked men as “white nationalists”—a term that, while technically accurate, functions as a euphemism. It flattens and sanitizes what is, in reality, a violent, fascist movement rooted in the genocidal ideology of neo-Nazism. Even ProPublica—in its deep investigation into Patriot Front—described the group plainly as part of a “fascist cause.” It is no stretch to describe them as ideological heirs to Nazism and Klan terror, organized and deliberate in their aims.
Patriot Front members have openly celebrated acts of white supremacist terror, including the mass killing of 22 people—mostly Latino—in El Paso, Texas in 2019. Their internal chat logs and propaganda framed the massacre as a form of “defense” against demographic change, reinforcing their commitment to the so-called “Great Replacement” theory.
The Mayor Who Won’t Say Their Name
Hours after the march, Mayor Quinton Lucas tweeted;
While the First Amendment provides the right to bring any message to Kansas City, we know that our diversity, our welcoming community, and our respect for the rights of all reject whatever hate and cowardice come our way.
— Mayor Q (@QuintonLucasKC) May 24, 2025
Two weeks earlier Lucas fired off a very different tweet about illegal ATV riders: “All in Kansas City are tired of the bullsh*t from these offenders. Expect more enforcement and arrests.”
The juxtaposition is instructive and unsurprising. Strongman, War on Drugs-era carceral bravado for teenagers on four-wheelers; yet soft neutrality for an organized white supremacist fascist formation that has inflicted terror attacks against Black people.
In a statement to The Defender, The Missouri NAACP called Saturday’s silence “a calculated show of force meant to intimidate” and warned that official passivity “speaks volumes.”
Why the Blitz Tactic Matters
Patriot Front’s strategy is comprised of showing up to various cities unannounced (surprise denies locals time to mobilize). Capture propaganda video. Clips are fed into Telegram channels to recruit what one analyst calls “broken young men.” Exit before confrontation.
Their discipline evaporates when communities show up in force, as Boston anti-fascists proved in 2022 when members assaulted a Black artist and were driven off the streets. Saturday’s march followed the same script.
WHAT HAPPENS NOW
In my interview with Bret Hamilton who traveled to the scene after hearing of the arrival of the fascist group, Hamilton told me that “a community response had already developed when they got close to downtown,” and that “Kansas City community members were shouting for the fascists to leave and that they are not welcome here.”
In my own reporting, various sources I’ve spoken to who are active in the organizing community (who will remain anonymous for reasons of safety), say that organizers were “surprised but un-intimidated by the college republican cosplay” and that “if Patriot Front decides to return they can expect a show of force that will make their khaki uniforms scatter.”
This is a developing story.
