One night earlier this month, men in black masks plastered posters bearing neo-Nazi messages on a utility box at Highway 26 and Centerpark Drive in Colleyville. The posters stayed there for hours or perhaps days, readily visible to drivers and pedestrians passing through the busy intersection. Then came Sara.
The 42-year-old veteran and mother of three was driving to a Girl Scout meeting from her home in Hurst when she saw the posters. She noted the location, just around the corner from Bransford Elementary School.
“I felt compelled to pull it down,” she said. “On the way home two hours later, I saw another two posters on AT&T utility boxes in front of the Walgreens.”
The first set came off easily, but the next two were stuck tight. Undeterred, she went into the drug store, bought cleaner and a brush, and scrubbed them away.
“Then further down 26 in front of the old 99 Cent store were two more on utility boxes, and I removed those as well,” she said.
Later, she learned on social media about additional posters in the area. Down they came.
She wasn’t done. “Since I had the time, I went and drove all the main streets I could think of in the Hurst area, and two more were on the utility boxes behind a strip center where there are two churches and a couple of restaurants.”
The posters had been placed by members of Patriot Front, a neo-Nazi group run by Thomas Rousseau, who grew up in Grapevine and graduated from Coppell High School. Though small, the organization is behind most of the visible hate messaging in the United States. In fact, it spreads 10 times as many hate messages as any other group, primarily through printed materials and unannounced, quickly disbanded flash rallies, says Jeff Tischauser, a research analyst at the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) in Montgomery, Alabama, who has spent years studying the group.
Besides its penchant for flyers, banners, and rallies, Patriot Front is distinguished by the relative subtlety and polish of its messaging. Rather than swastikas, for instance, its posters have American flags. Instead of “Seig Heil,” they proclaim, “Reclaim America.” The materials could almost be taken as coming from some moderately right-wing organization. Not so, Tischauser said.
“Patriot Front tries to sell themselves as just another patriot group,” Tischauser said, “but if you look closer, they’re not just another patriot group. These guys worship Hitler. They really think their blood is better. They believe in eugenics, the idea that racial differences between groups is based on scientific fact.”
The disconnect between public signals and secret beliefs is no accident.
“They’re trying to attract and appeal to people in the conservative movement,” Tischauser said, “but at the end of the day, it’s a neo-Nazi white nationalist group.”
Patriot Front is synonymous with Rousseau, a 27-year-old who founded it in 2017 after leaving a collection of unabashed neo-Nazis who called themselves Vanguard America. Rousseau led some members of that organization to participate in the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. During the event, one of his group intentionally drove his vehicle into a crowd, killing anti-racist protester Heather Heyer.
Under pressure after the killing, Vanguard America splintered. Rousseau, who was already making moves to oust the current chiefs, convinced some members to follow him into a new group. The name changed, and the messaging was altered to incorporate American themes along with fascist symbols. However, Patriot Front pursued the same goals as its predecessor.
Chief among these is promoting the spurious “great replacement” conspiracy theory that Americans of European descent are being replaced by nonwhite immigrants. Ultimately, the organization seeks to establish a whites-only fascist ethnostate within the United States. It also attacks Jews and LGBTQ+ Americans, and members tend to embrace causes such as opposing vaccination and abortion, promoting gun rights, and lauding the Jan. 6 rioters.
Patriot Front has survived since then, and messages like the ones it spreads are increasingly echoed by mainstream conservatives. It has not prospered, however. Despite nearly a decade of recruiting, the group has fewer than 300 members nationwide, Tischauser said.
A key factor limiting Patriot Front’s growth, based on Tischauser’s talks with former members, is the founder’s autocratic management style, which alienates members as fast as the slick messaging draws them in.
“There comes a point when they just get sick of him,” Tischauser said. “He comes across as charismatic and very welcoming, and he is a good mobilizer, but there’s really a cult of personality within the organization. If you’re not in that cult, you’ll not be heard. People get sick of it.”
The group appears larger than its actual size thanks to its postering, bannering, and rallying. It is by far America’s most active disseminator of hate flyers, Tischauser says. And, because of the group’s North Texas ties, the local chapter is the most active of several spread across the country. SPLC counted more than 2,400 flyer postings in Texas since 2018, including 95 in the first nine months of 2025.
Despite its extremism and high profile, Patriot Front’s activities prompt little official pushback. Posting messages of any kind on public property is generally against the law. Rousseau and two others were arrested in 2020 and charged with a misdemeanor for vandalizing public property in Weatherford.
The law may not be enforced as energetically in every jurisdiction, however, or when vandals deface private property, such as utility boxes. Public information officers at the Fort Worth and Colleyville police did not respond to repeated emails requesting information about the legality of placing or removing posters.
While the police may not be an issue, Sara likely faces a perceptible risk of retaliation by Patriot Front sympathizers. Journalists, police, and counter-protesters have all accused Patriot Front of doxxing or otherwise harassing them. In at least once case, members of the neo-Nazi group have sued former members who revealed information about the group, including members’ identities.
Indications are that Patriot Front sympathizers are vastly outnumbered by their opponents. A Reddit post Sara made reporting on her poster-removal activities generated dozens of uniformly positive comments. However, her last name is not being provided out of concerns for her and her family’s safety and security.
None of the other participants in the Reddit thread, while supporting her actions, reported actually taking down any of the hate posters themselves. Commenters contacted with requests for interviews either did not respond or declined, citing concerns about retaliation.
One Reddit commenter who declined an interview request didn’t mention worries about Patriot Front. Instead, they cited the fact that they had a disabled child who relied on Medicare as reason to avoid being quoted for publication.
Sara is aware of the possibility that her actions could have repercussions, from Patriot Front sympathizers or elsewhere. However, she has also been alert to the sometimes-confusing meaning of hate symbols because she was exposed to Vanguard America messaging several years ago.
And as a veteran and Girl Scout leader, she said she couldn’t let the posters stand.
“I feel a duty to my country and community,” she said. “I said, ‘I can’t just drive past this and hope to take care of it later. I’m just going to do it now.’ ”
