Memorial flowers and notes are left at the spot where Heather Heyer was killed and others were injured when a car plowed into a crowd of protesters during a rally. (Kim Kelley-Wagner/Shutterstock)
A network of Florida Republicans with links to hate groups and the violent 2017 Unite the Right rally is mobilizing to seat members on local government boards and run for elected office in the Sunshine State and beyond.
Members of American Restoration Coalition, or ARC, who count among their ranks a city council member and two planning and zoning board members, openly promote Patriot Front on their social media pages. Some of the Republican activists also belong to a secretive “white Christian fitness crew” with a paramilitary aspect that has shared a gym with white supremacist Active Clubs.
Members of the group, described by its executive director as “a strategic level organizing apparatus for Heritage Americans,” knocked on doors for Marshall Rawson in July and August, helping him win an upset victory in the Republican primary for a north-central Florida state House seat. Rawson attended the violent Unite the Right rally in 2017 and has a long history of involvement in the white nationalist movement, as previously reported by Talking Points Memo.
One of the “Heritage” activists, Jonathon Norris, who campaigned for Rawson and who sits on the Palm Bay Planning and Zoning Board, also attended Unite the Right.
The network’s links to Patriot Front and the Active Clubs, and Norris’ presence at Unite the Right are being reported for the first time by Raw Story.
ARC’s website describes it as a representing “the interests of Heritage America,” a euphemism for white people. During the men-only group’s launch in January to an audience assembled by private invitation, President David Outlaw outlined a strategy to “take up positions on planning and zoning committees, city councils [and] state representative [seats].”
“We’re restoring America back, you know — I’ll let you fill in how far back we’re going to restore it,” said Chandler Langevin, a Palm Bay councilman who serves as ARC’s executive director said at the group’s launch ceremony, prompting laughter in the audience.
Outlaw provided a more precise marker during his speech for how far the group wants to turn back the clock.
“We have walked in these wicked ways for the better part of a century,” Outlaw said, while decrying immigration, abortion and “sexual degeneracy.”
The coded meaning of “Heritage Americans” was revealed when an X user challenged Langevin by asking, “Are you pro white or racially conscious? If you believe in multiculturalism for citizens then I hope you fail. Diversity is not our strength, and our forefathers knew it.”
“What do you think a Heritage American is?” Langevin replied.
The racial framing of ARC’s position on immigration is also revealed in a recent post stating, “White South Africans can stay.” Another post, which displays a photo of German scientists recruited by the United States following World War II, states, “Old stock Europeans can stay.”
Some of the members’ rhetoric to Republican allies conveys support for upholding democratic institutions, but the group’s social media sends a different signal by sharing clips of white supremacists calling for revolution.
Stefan Hartmann, a physician assistant and ARC cofounder who plans to run for Melbourne City Council in 2028, said in a speech during an event hosted by a local Republican group that the United States is “entrusted to every generation” on condition that “citizens will rise from their occupations and assume again the duties of citizenship” when “its institutions are threatened” and “its liberties neglected.”
Hartmann’s speech contrasts with a video shared by ARC’s X account that shows a montage of speeches at the annual white supremacist American Renaissance Conference. Thomas Rousseau, the leader of Patriot Front, says: “The field is no place for democracy. The organization intentionally does not have a committee structure; it has a chain of command.” Eric Orwoll, leader of the whites-only Return to the Land project, states, “We are a nation without a state, and really without our actual territory.”
The call for a white power revolution is even more explicit in a video of Rousseau’s speech in Washington, D.C. on July 4.
“We wish for nothing less than and nothing short of a revolution,” he said. As described by the ADL Center on Extremism, Rousseau asserted in the speech “that America belongs exclusively to white men ‘by blood,” while singling out Jews (“Jewish cabals”), Latinos (“Mexican cartels”) and Black people (“African criminals”) as enemies.
ARC endorsed Rousseau’s call as “a powerful speech for our generation of men who are doing great things to save our civilization.”
Patriot Front’s manifesto calls “for the formation of a white ethnostate,” according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, while explicitly excluding people of color “from its conception of pan-European identity.” The manifesto claims that “an African” might be a “citizen,” but is still “not American,” adding, “The same rule applies to others who are not of the founding stock of our people as well as those who do not share the common unconscious that permeates our greater civilization, and the European diaspora.”
Described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as “a white nationalist hate group,” Patriot Front emerged after Unite the Right as a splinter group from another white supremacist group Vanguard America. James Fields Jr. marched with Vanguard America at Unite the Right. After leaving the rally, he plowed his car into a crowd of antifascist marchers, killing Heather Heyer and injuring others. The rebranded Patriot Front eschewed the Nazi symbolism on conspicuous display at Unite the Right, while pitching its vision for a white ethnostate through rhetoric extolling Americana that was calculated to appeal to mainstream conservatives.
Langevin has also expressedsupport for Patriot Front on his X account.
Rawson, the Republican candidate for the Florida House of Representatives, is not the only member of the pro-white network who attended Unite the Right. Following publication of the Talking Points Memo story about Rawson’s attendance, the candidate admitted to a Republican group: “One of the things that was true though is me and my wife were at Charlottesville with another couple to defend the memory of Robert E. Lee and in the home of Thomas Jefferson.”
In 2017, the comics fandom website Bleeding Cool published a series of stories about Jonathon Norris’ wife, reporting that the couple had attended Unite the Right. According to the outlet, Norris’ wife posted on wrote on her Facebook page: “When Jonathon told me he was going to Unite the Right, I had no idea the true magnitude of what it was. He was riding there with another couple from Florida, and I said I didn’t have a desire to go.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Rawson responded, when asked if Jonathon Norris and his wife were the other couple at Unite the Right. “Jonathan Norris is a friend,” he added, before abruptly hanging up the phone.
Norris can be seen, alongside his wife, in an archived YouTube video republished by Talking Point Memo wearing a bike helmet and carrying a homemade shield. The video opens with someone off camera saying, “Marshall’s finally here,” and showing Rawson leaning in for a hug. The video shows the two couples milling around with a group of people wearing shirts and helmets displaying the insignia of League of the South, an antisemitic group that promotes the secession of the southern U.S. states and seeks to establish a white ethnostate.
Norris, who was appointed to his seat on Palm Bay Planning and Zoning Board by Langevin, did not return emails for this story.
Langevin likewise did not respond to emails and could not be reached at a phone number provided by the city. But he posted a comment on X complaining that a “scumbag Marxist reporter with awful physiognomy is reaching out to my guys who helped on the Marshall Rawson campaign to label everyone a neo-Nazi.”
The Florida white “Heritage” activists’ social media accounts also reveal an alliance with Active Clubs, described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as “a network of white supremacist groups that operate in Europe, North America and Australia.”
Like Patriot Front, with whom it maintains close ties, the Active Club network emerged as an effort to reposition the white power movement in response to the legal and public relations debacle after Unite the Right. Robert Rundo founded the Active Club network while in Europe facing federal rioting charges. Rise Above Movement, a group that Rundo had previously led, fell by the wayside as more than half its members faced charges for attacking counterprotesters at Unite the Right at other pro-Trump events, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Active Clubs recruit young, white men through appeals to physical fitness and brotherhood, while providing opportunities for mixed martial arts events, banner drops and other propaganda efforts and pushing a sense of racial grievance.
ARC’s X account describes Rundo as “a legend” in a July 12 post showing the Active Club leader speaking at American Renaissance. Hartmann and Norris have met Rundo in person, as documented in a post on Hartmann’s Instagram earlier this year. The photo shows the three posing shirtless along with a fourth unidentified man at a fitness and wellness facility attached to Hartmann’s medical practice in Indialantic.
Norris and Hartmann are also members of a secretive “white Christian fitness crew” called Avalon Group that has shared a gym with four branches of Florida Active Clubs. A photo of four men with blurred out faces posted on the Avalon Group X account earlier this month shows a set of flags and other interior details in the background that match footage of balaclava-clad men lifting weights in a video posted on the Florida Active Clubs Instagram account in March. The Florida Active Clubs post advertises “a statewide power lifting tournament hosted by Avalon Gym.”
Norris’ involvement in the Avalon Group is revealed through a photo of a man with a white T-shirt with red lettering that depicts the historic Coast Artillery regiment at Fort Morgan in Alabama. Photos on a public-facing Facebook page show Norris wearing the same shirt. In another photo posted on Facebook, he can be seen wearing a black sleeveless shirt with the Avalon Group logo.
Hartmann can also be seen in a photo of three Avalon Group members posing with assault rifles at shooting range. One of the men in the photo with a blurred-out face wears a red wrist brace, black pants and white T-shirt with a rifle and sling. A video posted on Hartmann’s Instagram page shows him with his face revealed wearing the same wrist brace, pants, T-shirt, rifle and sling at a gun range with matching blue partitions.
Hartmann, who is currently on vacation in Italy, did not respond to messages from Raw Story. Instead, he wrote in a post on X: “Sorry can’t comment for Marxist chuddpaper I’m too busy Euromaxxing.”
The Avalon Group X account, which appears to be run by Norris, includes a handful of posts praising Active Clubs or youth affiliate groups. A post earlier this month depicts members attending a mixed martial arts fight featuring Gypsy Crusader aka Paul Nicholas Miller, a notorious racist livestreamer, while another defends the livestreamer Chud the Builder aka Dalton Eatherly, who faces attempted murder and other charges.
Posts on the account have become increasingly aggressive in recent days.
In response to a question from an X user asking what kind of weapon is most suitable for dealing with “Black teen” violence, the Avalon Group posted on Sept. 16: “We’re building the networks and training now, so we can help and support each other later.”
On Wednesday, the account posted: “The time for debate is over.” Then: “We are in a physical war.”
While members of the Florida white nationalist network project a paramilitary posture behind masks, blurred digital photos and pseudonymous X accounts, their electoral mobilization project is moving into high gear while pledging to expand into other states.
“Throughout the year we’ve been in a trial phase in Florida… networking, building, and identifying a few key races we thought were winnable,” Langevin posted on X last month, following Rawson’s primary victory. “We’ve already achieved multiple wins at the local level and last night one of our patriots won his primary for state House by 10 points.
“We have been quiet throughout this year as we build a foundation for our program, but we are getting to the point now of solidifying our gains and pushing outward.”