Newsmax host John Bachman on Monday played footsie with the belief that white nationalist hate group Patriot Front’s weekend march was a false flag operation by the FBI.
Though he did not outright declare it to have been so, Bachman felt the need to ask such questions because “we’ve had these issues with the feds” before.
Neo-fascist, white supremacist org Patriot Front broke off from the prominent neo-Nazis in Vanguard America in the aftermath of the deadly “Unite the Right” rally in 2017—largely in an attempt to rehabilitate the image of white nationalism. According to the Anti-Defamation League, the Texas-based group was responsible for at least 80 percent of the antisemitic and racist propaganda the ADL tracked last year.
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Following Patriot Front’s march through downtown D.C. on Saturday, which featured at least a hundred of the group’s masked members chanting “Reclaim America,” prominent Republicans and right-wing pundits began to claim the group was fake and the rally was just an attempt to make conservatives look bad. Others went so far as to call it a “false flag event.”
Bringing on an editor of a fringe-right website and a Republican strategist, Bachman first said on Monday that he’d “never heard of these guys before,” despite the fact that ProPublica reported in 2019 that Patriot Front “is perhaps the most active white supremacist group in the nation.” (For what it’s worth, the organization has long had its own Wikipedia entry.)
Ari Hoffman, associate editor of fringe outlet The Post Millennial, declared that he, too, had no idea what Patriot Front was and that he “had to Google them” before coming on TV. After claiming the only information he could find about the group was from the Southern Poverty Law Center, Hoffman suggested the march was “staged” because members traveled there in U-Hauls instead of buses.
“This has all the earmarks of a Lincoln Project attempt,” he added, referencing the anti-Trump political group’s deliberate hoax during the Virginia gubernatorial election.
“Exactly!” Bachman reacted. “That’s the whole thing. We’ve got the Lincoln Project—what do you call that, performance art, whatever that was—you’ve got the accusations made by the defendants in the Michigan kidnapping case of Gretchen Whitmer. They feel like they were set up.” (Those accused of planning to kidnap the Michigan governor have since alleged the plot was actually dreamed up by FBI informants and that this was a case of entrapment, with the feds acting as “moving forces” behind the action.)
Bringing up video evidence of a suspect planting pipe bombs at the Republican and Democratic headquarters ahead of the Jan. 6 riots, Bachman then wondered aloud why “the FBI hasn’t been able to track that person down” despite capturing them on camera.
The Newsmax host wasn’t done just asking questions, of course.
“And I’m not saying that the feds are behind this march this weekend, but a lot of people are raising that issue because we’ve had these issues with the feds recently,” Bachman declared.
“Yeah, absolutely,” GOP strategist and podcaster Bobby Eberle replied. “The whole thing looks sketchy. I mean, the only thing we’re missing is the Tiki torches. I mean it. The whole thing just seems bogus.”
Eberle added that the members of the white supremacist group masking their faces make the march seem “suspicious,” asserting that those who believe strongly in their cause don’t “hide in shame” and instead “come on shows like this” to talk about it.
“You make such a good point,” Bachman responded. “No patriot who really wants to redress—face his government down and talk to them—would show up wearing a mask. That’s not how it’s done.”
Bachman added that “everyone’s curious about this” and suggested there won’t be many future marches from Patriot Front.
