Courtesy of Michigan 161
Late July of this year I was walking the Clinton River in Mt. Clemens. Right on the river, near houseboat docks and a very lovely riverside walkway, is a small building that houses free showers and hygiene facilities – ostensibly for the house boaters although most often used by our houseless neighbors. I had just finished having a very nice conversation with one of the aforementioned houseless neighbors when I noticed that plastered on the doors of this building was a white supremacist stencil. Not just your run-of-the-mill swastikas or threats against minorities, but a very pointed dog whistle put there by Patriot Front.
I was shocked! Up to this point I was under the assumption that Michigan had ducked Patriot Front’s nonsense. After all I figured a relatively progressive state like ours, with a large black and Muslim population, would be inhospitable to an explicitly white ethnonationalist organization like Patriot Front. I was wrong, severely. Our state was targeted 355 times by white supremacist groups last year, a 132% increase from the year before. And of those 355 incidences, Patriot Front was responsible for 92% of it. Michigan has, in fact, not ducked Patriot Front’s hate campaign. We got slapped in the face with it! Patriot Front was most active in Massachusetts, Texas, and Michigan this year. We rank third in activity in their hate campaign.
Patriot Front has a habit of spreading their vitriol in a variety of ways, some more clandestine than others. They flew a banner from a railway overpass on Hamtramck’s city limits, repeatedly littered Detroit in the form of their stickers, and the previously mentioned incidences of graffiti all over the mitten. Most worrying to me, and what should be most worrying to you, is their manifestation in Augusta. According to their public Telegram chats, Patriot Front has a hand-to-hand combat rallying ground in Augusta, Michigan, a small town in Kalamazoo County.
This isn’t the first time Michigan has struggled with organized militant fascism. Last year a twenty-five-year-old man named Justen Watkins, a former U.S. army enlistee, was sent to prison in connection with his establishment of a neo-Nazi hate camp in Bad Axe on behalf of a white supremacist accelerationist militia by the name of “The Base”, ironically a direct translation of “Al-Qaeda” into English. At the Bad Axe hate camp Watkins’ cell of neo-Nazi insurrectionists trained in firearms usage and room clearing to further the goal of creating a genocidal white supremacist ethnostate. In addition to Watkins’ owned property in Bad Axe, The Base occupied the abandoned “Caro Center” asylum and allegedly used it as a safehouse. Following an incident at a home The Base had mistakenly identified as that of an anti-Fascist podcaster’s the group’s Bad Axe property was raided and the cell quickly fell apart.
With that history in mind, Patriot Front’s activity in Michigan isn’t exactly unthinkable. Birds of a feather, as the saying goes. However, what is entirely unthinkable is the flaccid anti-fascist response in our state. To wait for Patriot Front’s big, media-catching, attention-getting action is just waiting for them to do real, unreversible harm to individuals and our communities. Active opposition and rejection of their ethnonationalist ideology, on the ground, is not only needed but principally necessary.
The concept of direct action inherently works. Every successful on the ground opposition to Patriot Front and groups like it is not only a sweet PR failure for bigots, but also a tangible, material benefit to your community. By resisting these groups, you make your community safer.
Two weeks ago, I was walking the Clinton River in Mt. Clemens. Right on the river, near houseboat docks and a very lovely riverside walkway, is a small building that houses free showers and hygiene facilities – ostensibly for the house boaters although most often used by our houseless neighbors. I had just passed a group of those same houseless neighbors when I noticed that plastered on the doors of this building was that same white supremacist stencil from earlier, erased with black paint and superseded by a “161”, Anti-Fascist Action. Even this small act of objection to Patriot Front by an anonymous local anti-fascist has played a small but not insignificant role in making my community better. Dedicating yourself and your time to opposing these groups is not easy. It is not simple. But it is rewarding, it does create tangible benefits, and it shoves a big fat L in these losers’ faces. And isn’t that worth it?
Anonymous submission to Unsalted Counter Info.