A US racist and neo-fascist hate group that has become a public fixture in recent years has descended on central Texas in a stunt it claims is part of the “disaster relief” efforts under way after the devastating flash floods hit the region last week.

Patriot Front, founded following the deadly 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where its leader, Thomas Rousseau, a Texan, was later charged for his participation, has claimed on its Telegram app channel that it has shown up in the areas near Camp Mystic, where 27 young campers lost their lives.

“Patriot Front is here in central Texas,” Rousseau declares in a video statement, amid the backdrop of what sounds like buzzing chainsaws and a flood ravaged community, “responding to the flooding, which has destroyed communities and taken the lives of scores of Americans”.

Rousseau goes on to claim that his so-called “activists” are distributing supplies to survivors, but clarifies that his group is prioritizing their “people” and “European peoples” in those operations.

  • theneverfox@pawb.social
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    1 day ago

    Yeah… But I say let them try. Let them try to brush over people they can help, to their face

    It’s not so easy to look them in the eyes. The suicide rate among concentration camp guards, and even the SS (who were picked for fanaticism), was insane

    If they actually go and try to help, a lot of them are going to realize something. It’s easy to be a fascist in the abstract, it’s not so easy to confront the logical conclusions of fascism directly

    • flandish@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      I suspect they’re trying only to get more people they “approve” into their ranks. They already know they are hated. So they’ll try to convince the hurt and poor folks they already approve but which are not yet members. A numbers game so to speak.

      • Mirshe@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        This is strategic. You’ll remember there were a lot of white supremacist orgs helping after the hurricane in NC/WV/SC, mostly to scare black and brown people away from actually finding help.

      • theneverfox@pawb.social
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        1 day ago

        I’m sure they’re going to try… But if they’re coming in with supplies, they’ve got to give them out. If they’ve got chainsaws, they’ve got to clear debris

        You can’t just larp around a disaster area, not only is it hard to do as a human, survivors are not going to take kindly to it to say the least

        Maybe they’re just going to go camping nearby and take some pictures. But if they do try to actually help, they’re find to see things that tend to bring out the humanity in people

        • flandish@lemmy.world
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          1 day ago

          that’s it though. they will take joy in “seeing” and being “in the shit”. then drop “conveniently” placed nuggets of info on how to make this never happen again but of course with nazi blood and soil rhetoric.

          there are large cohorts of people, I have physically met them, who have given away their humanity to cosplay as heroes. A lot of them are cops, but that’s nothing new.

          For an example of course without the outward racism, see also that kid who went home and got his guns to head back to a protest then killed some folks. I have purposefully forgotten his name. There was no need except to feel “in it.”

          • theneverfox@pawb.social
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            1 day ago

            I mean yeah, radicalization is real, violence is real

            But there’s a world of difference between violence and suffering. They’re full of hatred. They get off on the violence.

            There’s not many people who can look at someone starving and feel nothing. There’s not many people who could start rescuing someone, then go “oh sorry, you’re black so I’m not going to finish digging you out”

            I’m not even appealing to their better nature, I’m saying it’s genuinely traumatic. People get PTSD even from rescuing people in a flood.

            I just don’t think most of these fucks have the stomach to see their ideals play out in front of them

              • theneverfox@pawb.social
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                1 day ago

                Oh I totally agree with that… Just that these kinds of morbid people are drawn to death already. And only a fraction of them could deal with causing the death directly, especially en masse

                But they’re outliers, they don’t make up the rank and file of Nazis or ICE. There’s no amount of ideology that makes a person like this… They’re basically high functioning serial killers, people who both want to watch (or participate in) people being tortured to death, but also have the executive function to do it in quasi legal ways

      • theneverfox@pawb.social
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        1 day ago

        They’re having trouble recruiting brownshirts. Sure, there’s a wave of them who joined eagerly… Initially. But once all the wannabe cop rejects signed up, it’s gotten a lot harder to convince people. They cover their faces for a reason… We all know there will be consequences on some level

        We will see a lot of attrition as this goes on and they’re tasked with progressively more horrible things. It takes training to dehumanize a group, and even then everyone has some degree of cruelty they can inflict (directly) before breaking