White supremacist banners and signs from Patriot Front appear up and down Berkshire County

This sign was found on Yokum Pond Road in Becket. Others were found around the Berkshires on Sunday and Monday. Experts warn that Patriot Front is the most prominent of white supremacist groups in the nation right now.

PHOTO BY AMY PERLMUTTER

Signs promoting a white supremacist group have been showing up around the Berkshires in recent days, sparking concerns from residents and passersby. 

The handmade signs were spotted Sunday and Monday in North Adams, Becket, Lee and near the Pittsfield-Lenox line. In Pittsfield, two flyers were pasted onto a light pole outside the Colonial Theatre in Pittsfield.

Two of the signs were banners, with one hung on an overpass in Lee over the Massachusetts Turnpike. Another was placed on the fence bordering a flood chute near Brayton Elementary School in North Adams.

Both banners said “Victory or Death, Patriot Front US.”

Patriot Front US is a reference to an extremist group founded in 2017 that promotes fascism and the creation of a white ethnostate.

These flyers appeared on a light pole outside the Colonial Theatre in Pittsfield.

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Greg Roach, who lives close to the site of the sign near Brayton Elementary in North Adams, said it was an upsetting turn of events.

“I’m not happy about having to talk about Nazis in my backyard,” Roach told The Eagle. “I was angry when I saw it. The Patriot Front is just a rebranding of the American Nazi movement, and they are not patriots.”

Roach said that the group’s efforts to attract new members in the Berkshires, by tying themselves to Nazi Germany, would ultimately fail.

“When they saw that wasn’t helping, they start using words like patriot and wrapping themselves in the United States flag,” Roach said. “They are almost childish, but with dangerous implications if they reach a critical mass.”

Hanging signs and banners like the ones found recently in the Berkshires is a requirement of belonging to the Patriot Front and a way to recruit new members, according to Morgan Moon, investigative researcher with the Anti-Defamation League. 

There are around 400 Patriot Front members nationwide, with about a dozen or so in Massachusetts, she added.

Patriot Front is the most prominent white supremacist group in the country, Moon said, encouraged by the election of Donald Trump in 2016 and the outsize volume of their posts on social media.

Members are required to achieve a certain number actions every month, including hanging signs, social media posts and conducting flash demonstrations. If not, they face expulsion.

“They want to give folks the idea that there are more of them than there really are,” she said. “They like to target young white college students for recruitment and radicalization by putting up flyers on college campuses.”

There’s been a rise in recent years in the number of antisemitic events in Massachusetts. In 2022, the number of incidents increased 41 percent over 2021 levels, rising from 108 to 152, according to information provided by Jonah Steinberg, regional director of ADL New England.

ADL also documented 34 white supremacist events in the state in 2021 and 2022, including protests, meetings, flash demonstrations, banner drops and marches.

White supremacist propaganda distributions are also increasing in Massachusetts. In 2022, ADL documented 465 instances of white supremacist propaganda distribution across the state, an increase of 71 percent from 2021.

The groups responsible for the majority of the incidents include Patriot Front, NSC-131 and the Goyim Defense League.

Massachusetts ranks second in nation in extremist propaganda, according to the ADL.

Moon said Patriot Front is more potent than other white supremacist groups because of their level of commitment. They are willing to take time off from work, and willing to travel to conduct their propaganda exercises.

Patriot Front is divided by regions. Network 7 encompasses all New England states.

According to figures on the ADL website, from 2021-22, ADL documented one extremist attack in Massachusetts, resulting in two deaths. According to the latest FBI hate crime statistics for 2021, there were 412 reported hate crimes in Massachusetts, an increase of 33 percent from the 310 incidents recorded in 2020.