By Sebastian Porreca
As a window into the Patriot movement’s inner workings, here are brief profiles of many lesser-known Patriot websites and organizations.
Editor’s note: The Patriot movement first exploded in the mid 1990s, as activists formed hundreds of armed “citizen militias” around fears that globalist elites were plotting to disarm the American people, overthrow the Constitution, and impose a dictatorship. The movement quickly collapsed, largely because of backlash following the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, but rebounded even stronger after Barack Obama was elected president in 2008.
The Patriot movement has always been a weirdly and distinctively American mix of political influences, including white nationalism, theocratic Christianity, gun rights, John Birch Society-type conspiracy thinking, libertarianism, the anti-environmental “Wise Use” movement, county supremacy, and “abortion is murder” patriarchal militancy. From the beginning, many critics warned that the Patriot movement was a direct outgrowth of the 1980s Nazi-Klan convergence, but others argued that the two were basically distinct phenomena with some overlap. A few leftists, such Alex Cockburn, even saw the militias as potential allies. But debates about whether the Patriot movement was “really” fascist or non-fascist tended to miss a key point: it was the first U.S. movement since World War II where fascists and non-fascists interacted and worked in coalition on a mass scale.
The resurgent Patriot movement made headlines with the 2014 Bundy Ranch standoff (where hundreds of armed activists forced federal police to back down) and the 2016 armed occupation of the Malheur Wildlife Refuge in Oregon. In recent years, Patriot groups have become major promoters of Islamophobia and anti-immigrant nativism, and they have tended to cheer Donald Trump more enthusiastically than alt-right or other white nationalist groups. But the Patriot movement’s racial politics have always been more conflicted than many critics recognize, and even some of its most prominent figures have criticized Trump.
The Patriot movement has always been highly decentralized, and this presents challenges to antifascist researchers. Some of the biggest organizations—Oath Keepers and the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association—are relatively easy to monitor, but once you get past them the task becomes much more difficult, with a shifting array of groups, websites, and competing (but often similarly named) factions. Yet these smaller outfits give us an important window into the movement’s inner discussions and unguarded pronouncements. In this guest post to Three Way Fight, antifascist researcher Sebastian Porreca offers a quick introduction to seventeen of the smaller and lesser-known Patriot movement sites. (URLs are provided but not active links.) Included are militias, Three Percenter groups, sovereign citizen-oriented groups, and others.
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| Three Percenters, a subset of the Patriot movement, take their name from a belief that only 3% of colonists took up arms against Britain in the American Revolution |
American Patriots the III% (https://www.apiii.net/). This III%er website last put out a newsletter in April 2019. (You can’t access it without buying a $5 subscription.) Other than that, there is not much info on the site other than some stuff they did in 2018 and various mission statement/recruitment materials. There is a tab that says “Blog” but it doesn’t actually have any posts.
Citizens Militia of Mississippi (https://citizensmilitiaofmississippi.com/blog/). This blog hasn’t had any new posts since October 2018, but there are still some useful articles. Some are just reflections on nature and the founding fathers, but there are a number of articles discussing gun rights, how the press can’t be trusted, and “truth.” The posts on this blog are actually a bit more thought out and well written than those on many other Patriot movement sites, but there is still paranoia about liberal media and modern liberal values.
Constitution Party (https://www.constitutionparty.com/). The national Constitution Party’s website has a lot of useful stuff. Their twelve key issues talk about how necessary militias are to the 2nd Amendment and the nation’s defense, and also affirm state power over federal power, anti-immigration, abolishing Social Security, and isolationism. It basically is a unified political party version of the Patriot movement. A recent blog post rails against “cultural Marxists” and how the left is basically a big brother-esq thought police. But the Constitution Party folks are also very critical of and opposed to Trump and the Republicans, almost as much so as they are to the left. Many other Patriot sites/groups are anti-government but show a fair amount of sympathy and support to right-wing Republicans, but the Constitution Party does not.
Constitution Party of Mississippi (https://www.constitutionpartyms.com). This state affiliate of the Constitution Party has a very interesting website. The “We’re Different” tab goes on a rant about how both the Republicans and the Democrats are corrupt and making big government, and also rails against taxes. The news page links to mostly far right media sites, such as Breitbart.
Freedom Yell (https://www.freedomyell.com/). This conspiracy theory website is closely aligned with Patriot movement ideology. The site denounces modern banking and believes the U.S. government is secretly a corporation. Very all over the place but seems to lean closer to sovereign citizen type ideology than mainstream militia.
Lightfoot Militia (http://www.lightfootmilitia.com/index.html). This group’s website doesn’t have much in the way of blogs or updates, but it contains a lot of information on how to join, and a map that shows all the chapters, with links to their Facebook pages. There are links to dozens of Facebook groups and pages, although many of them have been taken down.
Missouri Citizens Militia (https://missouricitizensmilitia.com/). MCM appears to be a bigger, more active militia, with close organizing roots to various III%er groups and Oath Keepers. Apparently MCM members and their founder Aaron Penberthy attended the 2014 Bundy Ranch standoff. Their home page is full of blog posts about their activities, updates in leadership, and interactions with other groups.
Minuteman Project (http://baesic.net/minutemanproject/). Started by Jim Gilchrist and Chris Simcox and operating out of the Southwest (mostly Arizona and New Mexico), this was one of the main “minutemen” groups formed in the early 2000s to patrol the border for migrant border crossers. Co-founder Chris Simcox, while not mentioned on the website, is currently serving a 20-year jail sentence for child molestation, and has also worked with neo-nazi murderer and militia activist J.T. Ready. The site itself is interesting. The group’s heyday was around 2005-2006, but nonetheless, the site has maintained posting through July 2019. Most of the posts seem to be authored by Gilchrist, but there are some republished articles from other media sites as well. The news page is very rich in information. On immigration, the majority of the posts are articles detailing horrible crimes supposedly done by immigrants like homicide and voter fraud. There are also the expected rants against unpatriotic liberals such as Bernie Sanders and Barack Obama, complete with conspiracy theories that implicate Hillary Clinton in trying to frame Trump for Russian collusion and Democrats in framing Brett Kavanaugh. The posts are very anti-elitist and carry a populist “drain-the-swamp”-esq ring to them, and there is an aversion to all government authority except Trump. There are also a number of interesting anti-immigrant press releases by Congressmember Steve King. Overall, the page carries the typical Patriot movement politics, but give a very good insight into the whole minutemen movement, which focuses particularly on xenophobia and anti-immigrant racism over many of the other issues that militias champion. Also, hilariously, there is a Hate Mail tab which just lists angry political emails sent to Gilchrist, which may or may not be a subtle nudge to his readers to dox the senders.
My Militia (https://www.mymilitia.com/militias/). This site is a WEALTH of information. It is a kind of social media/chat room site for various militias. The “Links” tab lists militias by state and provides links to a lot of militias in any given state. Most seem to be smaller-scale militias, which could be extremely useful if you’re looking for a specific militia group or militias in a specific area. Also there is a calendar of militia events.
Natural News (https://www.naturalnews.com/). Listed on SPLC’s anti-government militia list, this conspiracy theory/pseudo-enviromental news site run by Mike Adams is apparently beloved by the Patriot Movement. Aside from advocating for a ton of bunk natural remedies and supplements, it also pushes a ton of anti-government conspiracy theories. Recently, for example, it touted an article about how Jeffrey Epstein isn’t actually dead and either the deep state or the Clintons have him.
Roll Call – Civil Disobedience Division (https://www.facebook.com/pg/whowilldecide/posts/?ref=page_internal). A Facebook page that uses lots of III%er imagery but is a lot more extreme. Lots of anti-government conspiracy theories, even against Trump, talk of FEMA concentration camps, and extreme racism/xenophobia toward immigrants. Some original postings/rants, but as a Facebook page also a large number of reposts.
Sovereign Education and Defense Ministry (SEDM) (https://sedm.org/education/official-ministry-blog/). A Christian-oriented sovereign citizen website, SEDM features mostly (pseudo)legalistic posts about the processes of becoming a sovereign citizen, with links to various forms and legal advice, and general advice on how to deal with things like ownership, property, and Social Security while being a sovereign citizen. There are also several articles opposing birthright citizenship.
Stand Up America US (http://www.standupamericaus.org/sua/about-sua/). Not to be confused with the anti-Trump group Stand Up America, this is a news/conspiracy media site started by Paul Vallely that seems to heavily influence/or be influenced by Patriot ideology. Very anti-government/anti-regulation, overtly nativist, and extremely anti-leftist. A number of the articles are internationally focused, especially on communist China. The “America First” tab is very long but gives a lot of the group’s anti-federal government, xenophobic, and anti-leftist ideology. Also with a quick search of “Islam” a number of paranoid, Islamophobic articles popped up. Ideas range from shutting down the departments of Education and Energy, the EPA, and the IRS to arming civilians to combat Islam and Sharia law.
Three Percenters – Original (https://www.thethreepercenters.org/blog). This is the first III% website that comes up with a quick google search. This website claims to represent the “original” III%ers and has a huge webstore for merch sales, complete with sticker/shirt/patch designs advocating violence (one sticker says “throat punch donor”) and Islamophobia (the classic “Infidel” patch). It has the group’s supposed by-laws, and a sizable blog. The blog is really interesting, as it is basically authored by mostly one person (“Jack W.”), at least in recent posts, and it closely covers Democratic Party politics. There are a number of articles on the Democratic Party debates, the Green New Deal, and of course the wrongs of socialism. The majority of the coverage of mainstream Democrat party politics involves discussion on how the Democratic party is veering toward an anti-American socialism. Going back to 2018, there are blog posts with people’s full names: Monica Weets, Boyd Martin, Thomas Mosser.
The Three Percent Clan (https://www.wearethethree.com/). I only want to include this so people know to ignore it. While it uses similar language and the same symbol as III% militia groups, this is actually the website and chat room for a videogame, “Clan,” that doesn’t seem to have any actual ties with the III%ers.
III Percent Patriots (https://iiipercentpatriots.wordpress.com/) and (https://www.iiipercentpatriots.com/). The websites of this group seem to be among the oddest and most extreme so far. There are many references to infighting among III%ers, much anti-government rhetoric, a LOT of references to killing commies, and tons of strange esoteric references and articles. There are numerous links to a website called Kerodin (http://kerodin.com/), which apparently refers to III%er Christian Allen Kerodin, best known for spearheading the unsuccessful III Citadel project to build a semi-autonomous enclave for Patriot Movement adherents in northern Idaho. (See the Southern Poverty Law Center’s “Behind the Walls.”) Also notable is the semi-ironic use of Klu Klux Klan imagery on a website sidebar.
III% Security Force (III%SF)
The III%SF is a more extreme faction of the III%ers that is led by a man named Chris Hill. It has come into conflict with other more established III%er groups due to its confrontational and violent rhetoric. ”Statement Against III% Security Force” (https://www.thethreepercenters.org/single-post/2018/03/13/STATEMENT-AGAINST-III-SECURITY-FORCE) is an interesting article on the “Three Percenters – Original” site disavowing the more extreme III% Security Force. Oddly enough, the post cites Islamophobia (laughable when coming from a website that sells “Infidel” patches) and anti-government extremism. It seems III%SF got a little too blatant and frank with their rhetoric. III% Security Force’s website (http://www.iiisecurityforce.com/media.html) and Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/GSFIII/) feature a lot of Confederate flags and calls for violence against leftists. Their Twitter account is currently suspended. It should also be noted that several members of the III% Security Force members were convicted for plotting a bomb attack against a community of Somali/Muslim immigrants in Kansas.
As of early September, there has been a major split within the III% Security Force, according to an SPLC report.