First, I just wanted to share a few of my recent columns with you in case you missed them. I spoke with Lesléa Newman earlier in the month about her book “Heather Has Two Mommies” being taken off the library shelves in Pennridge School District.

Read: Pennridge School District dehumanizes LGBTQ+ parents, students.

Then on Thursday I wanted to remind everyone that another dark anniversary (in addition to the Jan.6 insurrection) recently passed us by: It has been 20 years since the opening of a modern-day Gulag at Guantánamo Bay.

Read: It's time to make Guantánamo Bay prison history.

Unicorn Riot (UR) released more than 400 gigabytes of private, unedited videos and direct messages from the white nationalist hate group Patriot Front that reveal a campaign to organize acts of racial hatred while indoctrinating teens into Nazism. According to UR, “The recent leak also reveals that Patriot Front preys on teenagers, recruiting members through the internet who are still legally minors, indoctrinating them with white supremacist ideology and even encouraging them to lie to their parents so the group can transport them across state lines for fascist events.”

Here is the link for local recruitment which shows nazis plastering their propaganda around Bucks County.

Brett Sholtis @BrettSholtis

Feasterville, Trevose, Langhorne, Levittown: Index of /patriotfrontleaks/2021/Mega.nz Files N-Z/PA_Posters/vault.unicornriot.ninja

The group also marched in Philly this summer. According to an article in The Philadelphia Inquirer:

“Organizations monitoring extremist groups and hate speech are troubled by the appearance of a large contingent of Patriot Front members in such a public manner on Independence Day weekend. They say the group — which traces its roots to the violent 2017 riots in Charlottesville, Va. — has become increasingly active in Pennsylvania in recent months, and is staging actions such as Saturday night’s march in Philadelphia in an attempt to spread its message and bolster its ranks.”

Apparently, they were right to be worried about increasing recruitment and activity in the region.

Tina 😷 💉💉💉 @tmelissen1219

Watchdog groups warn that Patriot Front’s march through Philly reflects increasing recruitment, activity in the region

Watchdog groups warn that Patriot Front’s march through Philly reflects increasing recruitment, activity in the regionThe white supremacist group arrived in Center City late Saturday and clashed with a handful of counterprotesters.inquirer.com

Patriot Front is not the first neo-nazi group to recruit in Bucks County. I wrote about a New Jersey-based hate group posting materials in posted materials in Bristol, Croydon, Penndel, Levittown, Trevose, Tullytown, Morrisville, Yardley and Newtown in the summer of 2020.

Cyril Mychalejko @cmychalejko

2/2 Here is a June 2020 article I wrote about a NJ neo nazi group's recruiting efforts in #BucksCounty #PA01: "White supremacists seek ‘Summer of Hate’ in Bucks County"

Guest Opinion: White supremacists seek ‘Summer of Hate’ in Bucks CountyThe racist backlash against the “Black Lives Matter” movement is creeping into the area. A New...theintell.com

Here is an example of their vandalism. Patriot Front members in Pennsylvania defaced a mural calling for tolerance in Boyertown, Pennsylvania. Boyertown is in Berks County. There is also video of them defacing the mural.

Will Congressman Brian Fitzpatrick show any leadership on this issue? Probably not, because we know he counts the Proud Boys among his supporters. And … but Antifa!

Speaking of PA01 Congressman Brian Fitzpatrick, he actually made it into The Guardian: Michael Flynn allies allegedly plotted to lean on Republicans to back vote audits.

Ex-whistleblower and Pennsylvania Senatorial candidate Everett Stern, who has talked to the both House Jan. 6 panel and the FBI, “told the Guardian he spent several hours in November telling House panel investigators about the alleged drive by Flynn associates who sought campaign finance and other dirt on Pennsylvania’s senator Pat Toomey and congressman Brian Fitzpatrick to win their support for an audit to bolster Trump’s debunked charges that Biden’s win was fraudulent.”

I wonder what dirt was found, and who has it. Did Jim Worthington help?

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Now, more than ever, the world needs more poets. Joyce Davis has a cool column in Penn Live highlighting some Pennsylvania poets and explaining why.

joyce davis @byJoyceDavis

We need powerful poets to expose brutal truths | Social Views

We need powerful poets to expose brutal truths | Social ViewsThe Harrisburg area can boast of its fair share of talented writers, dramatists and playwrights who are as powerful and profound as anywhere on the planet.pennlive.com

Mark Engler and Paul Engler ask in their article for Waging Nonviolence: Should we disrupt the Democratic Party or try to take it over? Should movement folks exclusively raise hell from the outside? Should there be an outside-inside strategy? The authors examine the work of Frances Fox Piven and Daniel Schlozman, who represent opposite poles of this debate. If you have the time to read the article, let me know what you think in the comments …

Beyond the Bubble: After Ayotzinapa

Reveal has a new three-part podcast investigation that digs into what happened to the 43 disappeared Ayotzinapa students:

“It has been over seven years since 43 students from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College in Guerrero, Mexico, were taken by armed men in the middle of the night. They were never seen again. Their disappearance sparked mass protests, as the 43 became symbols of Mexico’s unchecked human rights abuses. In recent decades, tens of thousands of people have gone missing in Mexico, and almost no one has been held accountable. The culture of impunity is so ingrained that families often don’t go to police for help, believing they’re either corrupt or too afraid to investigate.

In a three-part investigation of the Ayotzinapa case, Reveal’s Anayansi Diaz-Cortes and Kate Doyle from the National Security Archive take us inside the investigation into the attack on the students. They have help from Omar Gómez Trejo – the man the Mexican president tapped to prosecute the crime. For more than a year, he kept audio diaries and had regular conversations with Diaz-Cortes and Doyle, giving them insight into a massive coverup by the previous Mexican administration and efforts by current investigators to piece together the details of the attack and bring to justice those responsible.”

Here is an interview with John Gibler, author of I Couldn’t Even Imagine That They Would Kill Us: An Oral History of the Attacks Against the Students of Ayotzinapa (City Lights, 2017), who will be featured in episode 2 which comes out Saturday.

It was the State.

Bucks County Progressive

Fascist Patriot Front Recruits in Bucks…