“Don’t look towards the politicians or the elected officials to be your savior,” Jenkins says. “You are your savior. Your people are your savior.”
Joshua Scheer
Masked white supremacists marching through the nation’s capital on the Fourth of July are disturbing enough. But the deeper danger, anti-fascist researcher Daryle Lamont Jenkins argues, is the political environment increasingly allowing groups like Patriot Front to operate in public, generate propaganda and retreat with their identities concealed.
In a wide-ranging conversation with Black Agenda Report Executive Editor Margaret Kimberley, Jenkins, founder of the One People’s Project, examines Patriot Front’s evolution from the white nationalist movement surrounding the deadly 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville. The organization has since refined its tactics: unannounced “flash mob” marches, masked members, carefully staged visuals and rapid exits designed to maximize online attention while limiting organized opposition.
For Jenkins, Patriot Front is first and foremost a propaganda operation. Its members appear suddenly, march for a short period, produce the images needed for social media and disappear. The masks are not merely aesthetic. They protect members who may hold jobs, professional positions and ordinary public lives from being identified with an openly fascist, white-centered political movement.
Daryle Lamont Jenkins is a veteran antifascist researcher and the founder of One People’s Project, a watchdog organization built around the slogan “Hate Has Consequences.” For decades, Jenkins has tracked white supremacists, neo-Nazis, Klan members and other far-right extremists, identifying people he believes are attempting to organize anonymously and exposing their ties to extremist movements.
Jenkins says his interest began in childhood with a fascination about where groups like the KKK operated and how they organized. His experience as an Air Force police officer sharpened his observational skills, while years of recording public appearances, studying transcripts and learning extremist terminology helped him recognize the coded language and networks of far-right groups. The internet and social media later became central tools in his investigations.
Jenkins has published names, workplaces, schools and, particularly in cases involving violent threats, addresses. He argues that this is not revenge, but the dissemination of public information intended to impose consequences on people participating in hate movements. Critics warn that doxxing can cause serious real-world harm and that mistaken identifications can be nearly impossible to fully undo online. Jenkins himself has acknowledged past errors and says he has become more selective about publishing addresses.
A 2017 WIRED story raised the question of whether doxxing fascists and Nazis is ethically justified. Jenkins argues that traditional institutions have repeatedly failed to stop extremist organizing and challenges critics of his tactics to find a more effective alternative. The article portrays him as both a highly effective antifascist investigator and a figure whose methods raise difficult questions about privacy, vigilantism and whether fighting extremists with their own tools risks reproducing the same harms.
Of course, this was 2017. What we know now—and what we can see unfolding in front of us—is that white supremacist plans are no longer hiding in the shadows. They are being put into effect, while a surveillance apparatus is being built that would be the envy of almost every historically tyrannical government in the world. Maybe if more people had listened to Jenkins then—and actually done something—we wouldn’t be in this mess.
As Jenkins said in this interview, “Don’t look towards the politicians or the elected officials to be your savior. You are your savior. Your people are your savior.”
It’s a sentiment even Obama echoed during the 2016 convention. Yet so many of us—myself included—continue to sit and hope for elections that might finally do something, might finally stop the downward spiral.
This is where Jenkins’ words become even harder to ignore: “Don’t look towards the politicians or the elected officials to be your savior. You are your savior. Your people are your savior.”
Many of us—myself included—have spent years hoping the next election might finally stop the downward spiral. Meanwhile, organizers like Jenkins have been warning that fascism is not defeated by simply waiting for the right person to win office. It has to be confronted, exposed and resisted where it is organizing.
So once again, we look to the too few who actually get out there and do the work—to those willing to help, organize, confront power and call out our downward spiral toward fascism before there is even less space left to stop it.
To speak to our modern situation, I turn now to another interview with Jenkins.
On this July 8 2025 edition of Hard Knock Radio, host Davey D speaks with Jenkins, the veteran antifascist organizer and founder of One People’s Project, about a political landscape that increasingly resembles the future he spent decades warning about. Their conversation examines the massive expansion of ICE funding and the danger that far-right extremists—including members or sympathizers of groups such as the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers and Patriot Front—could find a home inside an expanding immigration enforcement and surveillance apparatus.
But the conversation is also about political failure. Jenkins and Davey D take aim at centrist Democrats who appear more willing to crush progressive challengers than confront the forces pushing the country further toward authoritarianism. They discuss the influence of corporate money and AIPAC-aligned political networks, attacks on movement candidates, the normalization of openly racist and even eliminationist rhetoric, and social media campaigns designed to divide Black communities from immigrants.
With Jenkins directly taking aim at centrist Democrats, contrasting their attacks on socialists and progressives with their failure to confront Trump:
“You’re talking about how socialists and progressives are scaring people. People are scared because you’re not doing anything.”
This conversation is a warning, but it is also a call to action. Davey D and Jenkins argue that we are not powerless. From confronting masked ICE agents and demanding transparency to building independent political movements and resisting attempts to divide communities, the work is already happening. The question is whether enough of us are finally willing to listen—and join those who have been sounding the alarm for years.
His final message is not an appeal to elected officials or institutions. It is an argument for popular power.
“Don’t look towards the politicians or the elected officials to be your savior,” Jenkins says. “You are your savior. Your people are your savior.”
“The stronger you are in the streets, the stronger you will be in those halls.”
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