What might appear as disparate targets by white supremacists and other far-right extremists, hate group trackers say, are all part of one aim: dismantling democracy in order to establish a white ethnostate. "So it's not surprising to see them step out front in the current moment." The far-right's latest target fits the same old, hateful agenda "Groups like Patriot Front and the Proud Boys have relied on misogyny and homophobia as a core of their brands," said Devin Burghart, president of the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights. And the particular events the extremists chose to target that Saturday had in recent weeks drawn negative attention among the far-right online networks that fuel their hate activism. So, why would members of a white supremacist group - many of whom, in the case of the Idaho event, had traveled from other states - choose to target a local Pride event?Įxtremism researchers say the far-right activists are seizing on an opportunity of heightened attention around cultures that they have always seen as a threat to their hateful interests. The same day, alleged members of the far-right Proud Boys crashed a children's drag queen storytelling event and shouted homophobic and transphobic slurs, in what Alameda, Calif., sheriffs are now investigating as a possible hate crime.Įarlier iterations of Patriot Front and the Proud Boys were among the neo-Nazi factions who sought to intimidate the Charlottesville, Va., community at the "Unite the Right" rally in 2017. Two incidents in which far-right extremists targeted LGBTQ events earlier this month marked what appeared to be a shift in focus for white supremacist activists.Ī group of men with ties to the white nationalist Patriot Front was arrested outside a Pride event in Coeur D'Alene, Idaho.
Members of the white supremacist group Patriot Front were seen marching near the National Archives in Washington, D.C., in January.