Patriot Front fraud and fakery
White supremacist organization Patriot Front has a penchant for using bogus X/Twitter accounts for propaganda purposes
Political extremist groups use inauthentic social media accounts in a variety of ways, and white supremacist organization Patriot Front is no exception. Although the notion of online political astroturfing tends to conjure up images of massive swarms of bots, real-world instances of manipulation often involve simpler techniques, such as using a single bogus account to run an ad or bait journalists into amplifying desired content. Here’s a look at two inauthentic X accounts used by Patriot Front to spread their messaging: an account with an AI-generated face that masqueraded as a journalist in 2021, and a repurposed account with a blue checkmark that ran ads for Patriot Front on X in 2024.
On December 4th, 2021, a month-old X (then known as Twitter) account with the handle @SherylLewellen, a GAN-generated face, and a profile containing a dubious claim to be a journalist posted a video of a Patriot Front march in Washington, D.C. This post, which was amplified by multiple accounts with massive audiences, falsely claimed that roughly 500 people participated in the march. The actual turnout was around 100, but the greatly exaggerated claim spread far and wide for several hours due to the uptake from popular influencers who took the account and its claims at face value.
The very next day, the @SherylLewellen account underwent a drastic makeover. The GAN-generated face and alleged career in independent journalism were replaced with Patriot Front imagery and website links, and the display name was changed from “Sheryl Lewellen” to “Reclaim America - PatriotFront.US”. The account tweeted out multiple links to Patriot Front videos, before ultimately being suspended by Twitter.
A variety of speculation that the @SherylLewellen account was some sort of “false flag” intended to discredit Patriot Front ensued shortly after the account’s suspension. In January 2022, however, Patriot Front’s ownership of the account was confirmed when Unicorn Riot published leaks from a Patriot Front Discord server. One leaked message expressed appreciation for all the journalists and influencers who fell for the fake account and inadvertently promoted Patriot Front’s march as a result.
Fast-forward to September 2024, and you’ll find Patriot Front once again using an inauthentic account on X (formerly Twitter). This time, however, they’ve managed to slap a blue checkmark on an account with the display name “Whites Against Replacement”, and they’re running ads. The current Patriot Front account, @rd1vonn, was first flagged by researcher Kate Ross on X, who who posted screenshots of an ad from the account (including the one shown in the above collage) on September 9th, 2024. The link in the account’s profile leads to a Patriot Front website.
Strangely, the @rd1vonn account’s content includes frequent reposts of popular liberal accounts, a rather unexpected state of affairs for an account taking out ads for a white supremacist organization. A bit of digging reveals that the account has recently been redecorated, with the Patriot Front avatar and banner appearing, the display name changing from “Vonn Ponder” to “Whites Against Replacement”, and the link to the Patriot Front website first showing up in Wayback Machine archives on September 6th, 2024. The blue checkmark was added at some point between September 6th and September 9th.
This account, which has the permanent ID 1638973710651518999, also changed its handle at some point prior to January 22nd, 2024, the date it was first archived on Wayback Machine under the handle @rd1vonn. It appears to have first been created as @PonderVonn65561, matching the “Vonn Ponder” display name that it used until being transformed into a Patriot Front account in early September 2024.
