White nationalist group's banners hung throughout Queens
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Banners advertising white nationalist group Patriot Front were hung on several overpasses on the Long Island Expressway in Queens over the weekend. Photo by Amanda D’Ambrosio
By Jacob Kaye
Banners promoting the white nationalist group Patriot Front were hung from several overpasses along a major road over the weekend in Queens, the most diverse county in the United States.
The banners, each of which included a white nationalist message and the hate group’s website, were hung from at least three overpasses along the Long Island Expressway in the World’s Borough on Saturday.
One banner that was draped on a fence near the LIE’s Kissena Boulevard exit read, “America for Americans.” Another near the Borden Avenue exit read, “America first.”
The signs appeared to be advertisements for Patriot Front, a white nationalist, neo-fascist group that came into existence shortly after the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Patriot Front has been labeled a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
The banners were spotted by Queens residents throughout the day on Saturday and though most appeared to have been taken down by Monday morning, it’s unclear by whom.
Spokespeople for both the NYPD and the Department of Transportation told the Eagle that they had no record of complaints about the banners on file.
However, several Queens residents told the Eagle they attempted to file complaints about the banners with the city but were sent from agency to agency without any clear answer about who would address the issue.
James Flynn, a Kew Gardens resident, told the Eagle that he saw the banners hanging above the LIE while he was on his way back from a “No Kings” rally in Forest Hills. Finding the white nationalist advertisement “incredibly disturbing,” Flynn called 311. The operator there patched in a 911 operator who eventually sent him over to the Department of Transportation. That’s when Flynn says he was sent back to 311.
Despite the frustration of the rigamarole, Flynn said he found it important to file a complaint with the city so that someone would take the banners down.
“We can't let this kind of thing stand,” he said.
Patriot Front, whose members cover their faces with white masks, hats and sunglasses, advocates for the formation of a new U.S. built on what it calls a “pan-European identity” that refuses citizenship to foreign-born residents.
“Membership within the American nation is inherited through blood, not ink,” the group’s manifesto reads. “Nationhood cannot be bestowed upon those who are not of the founding stock of our people, and those who do not share the common spirit that permeates our greater civilization, and the European diaspora.”
The hate group also calls for the creation of a fascist government, claiming in its manifesto that “Democracy has failed in this once great nation.”
The banners that dotted the LIE on Saturday were hung in neighborhoods with large populations of Hispanic, Asian and Jewish New Yorkers.
A banner hanging from the Underhill Avenue overpass on the Long Island Expressway promoting the white nationalist group Patriot Front. Eagle photo by Jacob Kaye
Over 48 percent of Queens residents are foreign-born. Few counties in the U.S. have a higher percentage of foreign-born residents.
“We live in the most diverse borough in the United States, and yet we have something like this?” said Flynn, who was on his way to pick his daughter up from Japanese lessons when he saw the banners.
Saturday’s display was far from the first time Patriot Front has hung banners from overpasses. The tactic appears to be a common one for the hate group, which also holds marches and plasters signs in public places to get its message out there.
Similar banners were hung in New York City in 2020, when the signs were again hung on the LIE. The demonstration was part of a larger effort to place 20 banners in 13 states, the New York Post reported at the time.
The signs hung in 2020 were taken down by the DOT after they were notified about them, the Post reported.
It’s unclear if the city had any response at all to the banners hung this weekend.
Rachel Wilkes, a Brooklyn resident who saw the banners hanging on the expressway near the Queens Center Mall on Saturday, said that like Flynn, she had issues reporting the signs to the city.
After recounting a time she was told to call the police if she ever saw hate symbols posted in her neighborhood, Wilkes called 911, where an operator sent her to an automated 311 message. Wilkes then said she attempted to log a 311 complaint on the city’s app, but didn’t know where in the app to report the white nationalist advertisement campaign.
She then called the NYPD’s Hate Crime Division and was told that the police would look into the incident. The operator did not take her information.
Like Flynn, Wilkes said she thought it was important the city know about the signs.
“It’s disgusting,” Wilkes said. “You’re not allowed to just do advertising for your neo-Nazi group on the LIE.”
Queens Borough President Donovan Richards, who didn’t know about the banners until the Eagle asked him about them on Monday at an unrelated press conference, was incensed by the signs.
“I'm a Black borough president, what do you think my reaction is to white nationalists hanging banners in Queens?” Richards said. “There's a fine line between First Amendment rights, so I also want to honor that. But this has no place in Queens.”
