A white supremacist march in D.C. was pushed by a fake Twitter account, experts say

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A white supremacist march in D.C. was pushed by a fake Twitter account, experts say



Members of the white supremacist group Patriot Front march down the National Mall on Dec. 4. (Robert Miller/The Washington Post)

By Ellie Silverman
Yesterday at 7:26 p.m. EST

The new Twitter account looked like it came from a smiling blond woman who lives in D.C., retweeting neighborhood news about a Thanksgiving giveaway, a bald eagle sighting and bike lanes near Lincoln Park.

She wrote in her bio that she was a journalist who recently got a dog and loved avocados. She included the hashtag “#DCStatehood.”

Then she finally sent the first tweet of her own: “HAPPENING NOW,” she wrote on Saturday. “About 500 men with riot shields are marching in #WashingtonDC.”

But this was not just a march on the National Mall, a common occurrence in a city accustomed to protests. The men were part of Patriot Front, a white supremacist group that rebranded after one of its members plowed his car into a crowd of protesters in Charlottesville in August 2017, killing anti-racism protester Heather Heyer. And the Twitter account that announced the march wasn’t real, anti-hate group and disinformation researchers say.

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The group also staged a march in Philadelphia on July 4 and one in Pittsburgh last month, according to SITE Intelligence Group, which studies online extremism. But on Saturday, they traveled from Virginia to the Mall, passing the Lincoln Memorial and marching to the U.S. Capitol, where its leader, Thomas Ryan Rousseau, gave a speech.

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Rousseau’s supporters, including Mike Peinovich, more commonly known by his pseudonym “Mike Enoch,” a popular far-right podcast host, praised the rally. But many other right-wing figures had their doubts.

They alleged, without evidence, the men with their faces covered were actually federal agents and the entire rally was an FBI trap, experts said, illustrating the true failure of the propaganda effort: The very people they hoped to recruit doubted the event was even real.

By Ellie Silverman
Ellie Silverman covers protest movements, activism and local news. At The Post, she has also covered local crime and courts. She has previously reported on retail, breaking news and general assignment stories for the Philadelphia Inquirer, her hometown paper. She graduated from the University of Maryland, where she reported for the Diamondback. Twitter https://twitter.com/esilverman11