There are several audio and video files in the original post of this article by WA Nazi Watch that support the findings. You can find them on the original post, yet due to cross-posting limitations they are not included here.
Colton Michael Brown is a Network Director in the neo-Nazi, fascist group Patriot Front. He operates under the name “John WA” and lives in Ravensdale, WA.
As a Network Director, the highest leadership role you can obtain under national leader Thomas Rousseau, Brown enforces and contributes to Patriot Front’s white supremacist culture and hatred. Brown’s area of responsibility includes the officially-designated “Network 8” (often stylized “NW8” or “Network VIII”1) in western Washington state, plus the less-developed “clusters” in Oregon and Eastern Washington/Idaho.
His eagerness to spread Patriot Front’s white nationalist message is well-known among the other Network Directors, as Brown is often pushing to break records in placing stickers and dropping banners. He is known locally for setting the record for most cities stickered in a single day2, and has had his network post upwards of five banners in one trip.
His network’s chat is active and jovially discusses anti-semitic beliefs and racism, with explicit neo-Nazi references. Brown uses the chat to teach members how to commit hate crimes without getting caught.
He is unashamed to hold neo-Nazi beliefs and should not be welcomed in our community.
Brown was also identified by name in a massive Unicorn Riot exposé describing Patriot Front’s inner workings and sharing hundreds of gigabytes of private videos, images, and direct messages among members and leadership.
Background
Colton Brown was encouraged to join Patriot Front by his best friend, “Lawrence WA,” a previous “acting” Network Director in Washington.3 Brown quickly became known for being extremely eager, spending much of his free time placing stickers, participating in chats, and trying to boost membership by evangelizing for Patriot Front in right-wing Telegram groups4. Other members noticed the effort, even if the efficacy of his actions was questionable, as he would do things like climb a radio tower to place a sticker at the top.
Legal Issues
In May 2020, Colton Brown was spotted placing stickers in Maple Valley, WA by a local community member who followed Brown to his vehicle and reported him to the police.
Over the next few months, detectives with the King County Sheriff’s Office and the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force5 documented Patriot Front stickers being placed in the Maple Valley/Black Diamond area. In September, this culminated with a house visit by officers from several agencies including the FBI:
Brown was charged with malicious mischief in the third degree, a misdemeanor in Washington. The charges were eventually dropped and Brown bragged about his freedom in Patriot Front chats:
Brown used the case as a lesson. Wear a mask. Hide your vehicle.
Brown claims that his attorney on that case, Mark S Treyz, was enthusiastic about helping him and that it was difficult to find any other lawyer willing to help him out, given his affiliation with Patriot Front. Brown later gave out that law firm’s number ahead of the Olympia mural vandalism in case anybody were to get arrested for it.
You can read the King County Sheriff’s Office report here: PDF
Suspension
As detailed in our report on neo-Nazi James Julius Johnson, Patriot Front prohibits members from discussing personal gun ownership or shooting firearms together. After now-former member “Chad WA” took other members out shooting, the incident was reported to Thomas Rousseau and Brown was suspended for his involvement.
His suspension was temporary.
This suspension happened shortly before a march in Salt Lake City, Utah, in late February 2021. Since he wasn’t fully expelled from the organization, Brown was expected and forced to drive to the event in the snow, but then had to stay behind in a truck while the rest of the group marched.
Despite acknowledging the rules, Brown still fosters a culture in which members feel comfortable speaking about personal firearms ownership, occasionally using the word “redacted” as code for firearm accessories.
Brown has also talked with James Johnson about a video of Johnson shooting a Black Lives Matter sign with a shotgun. Both members are involved with the Telegram channel “NS Action,” which posts national socialist propaganda.
After James Julius Johnson was identified, Thomas Rousseau asked Brown that Johnson’s 3D-printed guns be “trashed or destroyed,” to which Brown responds that the guns were lost in a “boating accident.6“
Return of Network 8
In September 2021, months after Brown’s suspension and return, Network 8 had finally gained enough mass7 to be reinstated as an official network, and Colton Brown finally became its official Network Director. With the role came a new sense of responsibility as Brown wanted to pump up the output of banners and stencil actions.
Here Brown recognizes the re-designation of the Network as the result of members driving long distances and putting in hours of effort and hundreds of dollars into their nazi club. He uses this moment to sketch out how he wants to evangelize for the group.
The Network 8 chat is also Brown’s chosen venue to share sightings of Patriot Front hate crimes in the news or on social media.
Brown is in charge of collecting money for the group to submit sticker orders to Thomas’s home print shop. After the Salt Lake City action, Thomas was hospitalized in a car accident that killed Patriot Front member, “Ulysses NJ.” While Thomas was incapacitated, Patriot Front members were forced to create bootleg stickers in order to continue doing activism. One sticker, which Brown printed and told new members to hold onto, featured the Patriot Front logo over a Confederate flag:
Typically, however, members are prohibited from printing PF stickers without paying Thomas. Networks caught breaking this rule can be investigated and penalized, as this Patriot Front printshop grift is how Thomas makes money. Brown has to occasionally remind members that printing your own stickers is against the rules.
Brown also took seriously his responsibility of making sure that nobody else in his network got charged with a crime, as he did. He frequently pressed his underlings to follow his “#1 Rule” in committing hate crimes: “don’t get caught.” He uses frequent repetitions of this rule to reinforce the idea that actions should be planned through him, ultimately making him partly responsible for every hate crime committed in his network.
“Charles WA,” The 25% Non-White Underage High School Student
The Patriot Front membership application only allows applicants between the ages of 18 and 35. However, there are cases where younger applicants make it through the process. Brown was aware of one such member in his network. Not only did he allow the member to stay in the organization, he even pressured the underage member to lie to his parents about their nazi activities so the member could travel alone across the country to attend Patriot Front events.
The membership status of “Charles” was controversial in the network—not due to his age, but because other members did not believe “Charles” was white enough to be in the organization.8 His closest geographic neighbor in the group, “Anthony WA,” complained to Brown about “phenotypes” and used racist slurs to refer to “Charles” and his ancestry. Brown then asked other members their opinion on the younger member’s ethnicity and phenotype while waiting for “Charles” to respond to his request for more ancestry information.
After “Charles” submitted proof that he was white enough to join Patriot Front, Brown discussed the drama with “Ethan WA.” Brown felt uncomfortable that “Charles” would be allowed to date a white woman under the rules set up by Nazi Germany but assuaged that feeling by noting that he would be less comfortable with a Black man dating a white woman. In the process of explaining this (see audio clip), Brown uses a slur and makes horrible racist mentions of domestic violence. “Ethan WA” notes that “Charles” often expresses anti-Asian sentiment despite being a quarter Filipino.
Before Patriot Front’s DC march in December 2021, “Charles” felt compelled to tell his parents that he was a member in order to go to the event without lying to them. He reported that his father was on board with the organization, but his mother was not. His mother contacted Thomas Rousseau through the Patriot Front website, and “Charles” left the group. Brown encouraged him to reapply when he had moved out of his parents’ house.
“Charles WA” is one of two members in NW8 who were underage. The other was “Grant WA,” who secretly joined at sixteen but was not active in the group. “Grant” quit on August 22nd, 2021, admitting that he was so young, but Brown gave him permission to come back as soon as he turns seventeen. This would still be months too early for Patriot Front membership.
He also expressed concerns that the infiltration would lead to the arrest of members involved in local hate crimes.
As Network Director, Brown is responsible for the final vetting interview for new applicants in his network. He is also responsible for vetting potential network leadership, and, as a shield team leader, vetting members of his shield team.
On all of these matters he failed.
Brown did the final membership vetting interview for the infiltrator, and passed him. He submitted the infiltrator’s name to Thomas as a candidate for a network leadership position, describing the infiltrator as one of his most “well-behaved” members.9 Brown offered the infiltrator a prestigious position on a shield team for the national event in December.10 He allowed the infiltrator to be the network’s photographer beginning with his first banner drop, and even had the infiltrator help run interviews for some prospective applicants.
Brown moved all of his Patriot Front materials into another member’s home, afraid that he would get a knock from authorities due to the multiple hate crimes he partakes in.
Beliefs
Brown holds the typical assortment of awful and intellectually-myopic beliefs required to be a member of Patriot Front. Naturally, this includes antisemitism, homophobia, and racism, and Brown believes that Patriot Front is the best means through which to actualize those bigoted views.
Antisemitism
It’s a core belief among Patriot Front members that white people need to “wake up” and embrace antisemitism, including denying the Holocaust and believing conspiracy theories. Brown thinks that Patriot Front is the best opposition to what he sees as a “fake crony system.”
Brown even believes his grandmother is starting to engage in Holocaust denial.
Members will blindly attribute anything they don’t like to their antisemitic theories, from sexual preferences to technology and privacy concerns to DNA collection done by businesses that interpret ethnicity based on volunteered DNA samples.
A running joke in the Network 8 chat involves an app that allows financing pizza, which, surprise, Patriot Front members also blame on Jews.
Many PF members, including Brown, believe that Jews are attempting to eliminate white people by promoting interracial marriages or contraception.
Homophobia
Brown’s antisemitism is closely connected to his homophobia. He believes that homosexuality is a plot pushed by “the media” to keep white people from reproducing, which, in his mind, is so successful that it’s easier to be gay than it is to be a gamer.
Brown is unafraid to harass workers in stores over his misguided, bigoted beliefs.
He also targets people with propaganda based on his false opinions of LGBTQ identities.
Brown has documented signs and flags that he has stolen, with a good percentage of his usual haul being pride flags. Similarly, he uses his experience to advise other members on how to steal pride flags from a campus while minimizing the risk of getting caught.
Racism
Brown frequently posts racial slurs and talks about Patriot Front being a white supremacist organization.
He is very worried about losing his white privilege.
The topic of Nuremburg laws comes up on occasion in regards to who members marry and date.
Brown cites the founding fathers to support the Patriot Front belief that the United States should be a white ethnostate.
Anti-Democratic and Nazi Views
Brown is very clear that he doesn’t believe in equality, especially when it comes to voting. He wants fascism, and believes that the solution to America’s problems would be to have a racist and bigoted nationalist ethic.
Brown rants to members about his belief that the answer doesn’t come through politics, but through white nationalist organizing.
After other members reference a neo-Nazi Telegram channel called “The Hammer,” Brown offers a monologue on the problems he sees with white nationalist streamers and popular accounts. Along the way, he makes it clear that he thinks these less-serious Nazis are “desecrating the swastika.”
Brown also references some esoteric, occult Nazi views, including the belief that there is a progenitor of an Aryan race called the “Hyperboreans.”
Colton Brown’s views occasionally approach “accelerationism,” to the dismay of Thomas Rousseau. While typically hopeful about the future—or “whitepilled”—Brown has expressed concerns that collapse is coming and that white nationalists should be prepared.
Several members of Patriot Front own and wear skull masks, popularized by the armed neo-Nazi groups Atomwaffen Division and The Base, groups responsible for multiple murders. Patriot Front members are asked to not wear these masks while organizing together, but it sometimes comes up in conversation. Brown owns one of these masks and likes to wear it while grocery shopping.
In addition, Brown makes reference to working with a previously-identified Seattle Proud Boy who has moved to Florida. Based on that description, plus his affinity for neo-Nazi symbols, this Proud Boy is likely Sean-Michael David Scott, who was identified on Puget Sound Anarchists and further exposed on our own site.
Sean-Michael David Scott notably also wore a skull mask and used his Twitter to reference the Atomwaffen Division.
Notable Appearances With Patriot Front
Promoting Patriot Front: Banners and Posters
Brown has been placeing banners for a long time, all over Puget Sound. His protocol for new members is to train them in sticker placement, then banners, then posters. Members often meet in public parking lots, condense into one or two vehicles, and do banner drops before returning to the original lot.
Banner drops are often hours-long affairs, as Brown has the group make several banners intended to be placed in one day.
Occasionally, Brown will direct extra members to fly flags on the overpass. These flags include the 13-star “Betsy Ross” and the fascist Patriot Front flag, the latter of which elicits occasional honks from drivers who likely aren’t able to differentiate the symbol or meaning while on the highway.
Brown hunts for covered pedestrian bridges and climbs on top of the fencing to place banners in a way that he believes will keep the public from taking down the banner quickly.
In one video, Brown even encourages members to climb on a pedestrian bridge that is protected with barbed wire. The Patriot Front network is frustrated with how quickly anti-fascists take down their banners, but this banner also was taken down quickly.
Brown is also spreads fascist propaganda by wheatpasting posters to utility boxes.
Defacing George Floyd Mural in Portland
On July 25th, 2021, Colton Michael Brown and other Patriot Front members defaced a George Floyd mural in Portland, OR.
The Portland Police Bureau posted truly unwatchable grainy security camera footage of the incident in which several people can be seen placing stencils on the wall. Since Brown was typically the leader and photographer for these earlier actions, it’s likely that the person holding the phone on the left in this picture is him:
Brown made a point to call the police “anti-white” when they asked for tips regarding the incident.
In any case, Patriot Front members, and Brown in particular, admit involvement in the hate crime and celebrate the fact that community members planned a rally to protest them.
When their work appeared in local Portland news, members noted inaccuracies in the reporting, potentially due to an incorrect clock on security cameras.
They then continue to plan similar actions, with Brown admitting that they used banner stencils for the act.
Brown feels no remorse or guilt for his actions. He celebrates and laughs about the hate crime…
…and weeks after the act, Brown even tells James Julius Johnson that he wishes he could vandalize murals for a living.
Camp Muir Hike
In late August 2021, Network 8 hosted a camping event in the Mt. Rainier area, including a hike to Camp Muir, which was attended by current and former members from Washington, Oregon, and California.
Patriot Front puts on events like these largely for propaganda purposes: they believe that showing their members enduring difficult hikes will demonstrate that Patriot Front is an organization that values brotherhood and has the strength to overcome challenges. These events usually include speeches, as well as casual chats in which members repeat racial slurs, express admiration for fascism and Hitler, and share conspiracy theories about Jews.
Colton Brown gave one such speech, in which he talked about his Patriot Front beginnings and ranted against immigration and “hook-nosed” bankers. He described the anti-immigration history of conservationist John Muir and linked that to Brown’s own bigoted views that immigrants are destroying the land.
Brown was photographed on the hike wearing a Patriot Front “Reject Poison” shirt and carrying a Betsy Ross flag. Patriot Front members carry the Betsy Ross as an alternative to flying the fifty-star American flag because of their beliefs in the “Zionist-occupied Government” conspiracy.
He was also seen in his Patriot Front jacket with Network 8 patches at the group’s campsite.
Patriot Front and Swastika Stenciling in Enumclaw
In preparation for a hate crime to be committed in Olympia, Colton Brown brought his members to a bridge near Enumclaw to practice using banner stencils in hate crimes. Here Brown teaches members how to quickly apply a white base coat to walls to cover up existing artwork, before applying banner stencils.
After painting the wall with Patriot Front stencils, Brown went to the other side of the bridge to paint swastikas.11 His members struggled to paint that basic shape under his supervision.
Defacing “Respect & Love” Rainbow Mural in Olympia
Around 3:00 a.m. on Saturday, October 16th, members of Patriot Front vandalized a “Respect & Love Olympia” mural, covering it with white paint before stenciling over it with their nationalist slogan and links to their Nazi website. This effort involved weeks of planning with members from across the entire Pacific Northwest contingent of Patriot Front members, as well as knowledge and assistance from Thomas Rousseau.
The Rainbow mural was created in 2014 as a community statement against hate crimes happening in Olympia, including several violent attacks outside Jake’s, then Olympia’s sole gay bar, according to Schlecht. (archive)
Colton Michael Brown was a pivotal organizer of this action, overseeing Jacob Sundt as he planned the action.
While planning details of the hate crime in the chat, Brown referred to another incident in which BLM artwork near the “Respect & Love Olympia” mural was vandalized, hinting that he also committed that smaller act. He posted a picture of that incident.
About a week before the “Respect & Love Olympia” action, Colton Brown held a call with Sundt and Thomas Rousseau to discuss tactical details of the mural cover-up. This call had limited attendance as the details of the operation were strictly “need to know.”
Network 8 members, plus members of local non-network clusters, rehearsed the vandalism late on October 15th, 2021, at an abandoned brewery in Tumwater, WA.
Members trespassed at this meeting, but they didn’t spray any stencils in the brewery. Brown had his team simulate preparing the cans of spray paint, walking onto the scene, covering the LGBTQ message with white paint, and placing the white nationalist stencils over the mural. Brown can be heard on video instructing the group to watch out for anti-fascists and police.
(Note: His comment about a “homeless Black person” “vaccinating” is meant to be received as a racist joke about shooting up drugs.)
Brown’s plan has him parking his truck near an alley that the group will use to walk to the mural unobserved. Brown can be seen here leading the way.
On videos of the incident, Brown is heard leading the group past a fence that was previously cut by Jacob Sundt. Brown then directs other members’ efforts on whiting out the mural before the stencils are placed. One of those members is Lawrence “Frederick OR” Norman, an Oregon member already identified by Corvallis Antifascists.
Brown doesn’t just give orders. He can be seen here using banner stencils and red spray paint to vandalize the mural.
After the hate crime, Brown celebrated the fact the mural was taken down because of the incident. The decision to take down the mural was seen as a win by Patriot Front, who cite this incident as proof that their methods are effective.
Since the Portland and Olympia stenciling hate crimes, Patriot Front members have not done another such act in the Pacific Northwest. That’s because they will first have to recreate all of their banner stencils. Anti-fascists recovered almost all of the local network’s materials, including the banner stencils used in these hate crimes, and burned them in a New Year’s Eve bonfire.
Drilling and Sparring in Tumwater
In preparation for the December event in Washington DC, Network 8 members did drilling and sparring meetups. Members practiced marching and shield work, essentially trying out for the shield teams present at some PF marches.
Brown was photographed practicing his boxing with other PNW Patriot Front members. For the first half of training, during nicer weather, he is wearing a sweatshirt gifted to him by “David WA” displaying a Nazi sonnenrad.
The “black sun” symbol that Colton Brown wears on his shirt famously appears in a castle owned by the head of the Nazi SS:
Brown, displaying some severe deficits in boxing skill, trains under fellow member and neo-Nazi James Julius Johnson.
Brown exaggerates the fighting skills of himself and his members to the rest of the organization. At previous engagements he mentioned going to boxing classes, but later admitted that he had attended for barely more than a couple of weeks. You can judge his skills for yourself in this video of a sparring session:
March on Washington, DC
Colton Brown has attended several Patriot Front marches and events across the nation, including in Salt Lake City and Philadelphia. Most recently, Brown attended the fascist march in Washington DC on December 5th, 2021.
It was Brown who packed Burger King crowns for his members to use at the airport. Jacob Sundt was spotted in the airport wearing one of these crowns, a reference to a viral video in which a man on a JetBlue flight gets into multiple altercations after shouting the n-word.
Network 8 members arrived in Newark, NJ on the Friday before the march, and had to drive four hours to the campsite in Virginia due to some “operational security” measures put in place by Thomas Rousseau.12 After some unexpected logistical issues, members found themselves stranded at Arlington Cemetery when their box trucks did not arrive to retrieve them in a timely manner. This caused Brown and other Network 8 members to have a long, very late drive back to Newark where they barely made their early morning flight back to Seattle.
Identifying Information
Full name: Colton Michael Brown
As of July 2020, WA Department of Licensing reported Brown to be 6’1″ and 145 lbs.
Birthday: 10/12/1998
Address: 34909 SE 257th St, Ravensdale WA
Colton Brown lives with his father, and used this address to receive and store Patriot Front materials, including flags with their fascist logo and stencil templates sent by Patriot Front member “Benjamin WI.” Brown frequently complains about his father being married to someone who is not white, and has to hide his white supremacist materials around the house, in his home gym, or under a tarp in the back of his truck.
Brown’s home gym has a Patriot Front flag on the wall.
Phone Number: 253-315-1489
Social Media Telegram: @SolarFash (Brown will sometimes also use the username @AryanCowboy1776)
Employment
Brown builds homes at MGM Construction.
Brown frequently complains to other Patriot Front members about working alongside and under the supervision of people of color. He has invited other Patriot Front members onto MGM worksites to transfer Patriot Front materials or discuss future hate crimes.
Politely ask MGM Construction if Brown is the kind of person they should employ:
MGM Construction LLC P.O. Box 3071 Bellevue, WA 989-3071
License plate: WA C51500Y. In anticipation of this report, Brown changed his plates13 from WA C84804G. The vehicle was registered to his father until Colton got in trouble when his vehicle was spotted near a banner drop in Everett, WA.
Notes
1 Something you can put in your file labeled, “Was Thomas Just Bullied a Bunch as a Kid?” would be Patriot Front’s dorky insistence on using Roman numerals, even for clearly ridiculous purposes like putting dates on maps.
2 Twenty, if you were curious. “Jason NY” beat that record at the end of July 2021 with twenty one. One rumor in the org is that “Jason” thought he needed the exercise.
3 When there is no officially-designated Network Director for a region, a member may be chosen to temporarily fill the role. “Lawrence” became acting director after the previous director, “Felix WA,” left the state. “Lawrence” has since moved to Florida and lives with his dad, an Amazon executive. He is now the Network Director of Network 16 and goes by “Lawrence FL.” We’re guessing we’ll hear more about this human “piss wagon” later.
4 Recently, this has included Brown reaching out to various “White Lives Matter” telegram chats and the “fashed out” nazi Seattle Proud Boys chapter. Previously Brown has stated some very insulting opinions about the WLM crowd but he is desperate for membership after his network was fully infiltrated.
5 Brown has been mostly transparent about his legal troubles, but we’ve never seen him admit, at least to general membership, that he has encountered and been a subject of interest for the FBI. Patriot Front is notoriously concerned with feds; in public, they fight to maintain that they aren’t secretly federal agents, and in private they avoid actions they believe would draw federal attention. Hilariously, we discovered this among Brown’s high-school photos:
6 Losing guns in a “boating accident” is a common meme among gun owners. It refers to hiding one’s gun ownership in the case that the government comes looking.
7 Keep in mind that “mass” in this context still means a Network membership of under ten people. Patriot Front puts a lot of energy into putting out promotional materials, but it’s a small number of people doing a lot of work, typically with very minor returns. Groups like Patriot Front are fragile and vulnerable, and they know it.
8 The official minimum is 75% “white” ethnicity but it’s not stated in any written documentation available to the average member. The application process involves questions of ancestry.
9 The WA infiltrator was nominated for Network Quartermaster, the member responsible for holding all of the network’s supplies. The role went to “Ethan WA” since the infiltrator had already been given the role of network photographer and his location was not as central geographically—or so Brown believed. Since the infiltrator ended up with all of the photos and the quartermaster’s stored materials anyway, we have no complaints. 🙂
10 The infiltrator didn’t end up taking a shield team position because he had already been hand-picked by Thomas Rousseau to be a photographer for the Washington DC march in December, another prestigious role that suggests a high degree of trust.
11 Brown’s subordinates have previously noted that their leader Thomas Rousseau wouldn’t approve having swastikas painted so close to the Patriot Front artwork, but Brown didn’t care.
12 We wrote more on those travel difficulties in our Jacob Sundt article: https://wanaziwatch.com/jacob-stephen-sundt/
13 Patriot Front guidelines for information and operational security advise members to get new plates if they get doxxed. After finding out that his network was infiltrated, Colton Brown recommended members falsely report their plates as stolen in order to get new license plate numbers to better hide their vehicles from the public. Antifascist activists are on alert to monitor and report back if any Patriot Front member changes his license plates.
reposted from WA Nazi Watch
There are several audio and video files in the original post of this article by WA Nazi Watch that support the findings. You can find them on the original post, yet due to cross-posting limitations they are not included here.
Colton Michael Brown is a Network Director in the neo-Nazi, fascist group Patriot Front. He operates under the name “John WA” and lives in Ravensdale, WA.
As a Network Director, the highest leadership role you can obtain under national leader Thomas Rousseau, Brown enforces and contributes to Patriot Front’s white supremacist culture and hatred. Brown’s area of responsibility includes the officially-designated “Network 8” (often stylized “NW8” or “Network VIII”1) in western Washington state, plus the less-developed “clusters” in Oregon and Eastern Washington/Idaho.
Brown has organized several hate crimes in the Pacific Northwest, with the approval and frequent supervision of Rousseau. Brown targeted a mural of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor in Portland in July 2021, and participated in the vandalism of the “Respect and Love Olympia” mural in October 2021, among others.
His eagerness to spread Patriot Front’s white nationalist message is well-known among the other Network Directors, as Brown is often pushing to break records in placing stickers and dropping banners. He is known locally for setting the record for most cities stickered in a single day2, and has had his network post upwards of five banners in one trip.
His network’s chat is active and jovially discusses anti-semitic beliefs and racism, with explicit neo-Nazi references. Brown uses the chat to teach members how to commit hate crimes without getting caught.
He is unashamed to hold neo-Nazi beliefs and should not be welcomed in our community.
Brown was also identified by name in a massive Unicorn Riot exposé describing Patriot Front’s inner workings and sharing hundreds of gigabytes of private videos, images, and direct messages among members and leadership.
Background
Colton Brown was encouraged to join Patriot Front by his best friend, “Lawrence WA,” a previous “acting” Network Director in Washington.3 Brown quickly became known for being extremely eager, spending much of his free time placing stickers, participating in chats, and trying to boost membership by evangelizing for Patriot Front in right-wing Telegram groups4. Other members noticed the effort, even if the efficacy of his actions was questionable, as he would do things like climb a radio tower to place a sticker at the top.
Legal Issues
In May 2020, Colton Brown was spotted placing stickers in Maple Valley, WA by a local community member who followed Brown to his vehicle and reported him to the police.
Over the next few months, detectives with the King County Sheriff’s Office and the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force5 documented Patriot Front stickers being placed in the Maple Valley/Black Diamond area. In September, this culminated with a house visit by officers from several agencies including the FBI:
Brown was charged with malicious mischief in the third degree, a misdemeanor in Washington. The charges were eventually dropped and Brown bragged about his freedom in Patriot Front chats:
Brown used the case as a lesson. Wear a mask. Hide your vehicle.
Brown claims that his attorney on that case, Mark S Treyz, was enthusiastic about helping him and that it was difficult to find any other lawyer willing to help him out, given his affiliation with Patriot Front. Brown later gave out that law firm’s number ahead of the Olympia mural vandalism in case anybody were to get arrested for it.
You can read the King County Sheriff’s Office report here: PDF
Suspension
As detailed in our report on neo-Nazi James Julius Johnson, Patriot Front prohibits members from discussing personal gun ownership or shooting firearms together. After now-former member “Chad WA” took other members out shooting, the incident was reported to Thomas Rousseau and Brown was suspended for his involvement.
His suspension was temporary.
This suspension happened shortly before a march in Salt Lake City, Utah, in late February 2021. Since he wasn’t fully expelled from the organization, Brown was expected and forced to drive to the event in the snow, but then had to stay behind in a truck while the rest of the group marched.
Despite acknowledging the rules, Brown still fosters a culture in which members feel comfortable speaking about personal firearms ownership, occasionally using the word “redacted” as code for firearm accessories.
Brown has also talked with James Johnson about a video of Johnson shooting a Black Lives Matter sign with a shotgun. Both members are involved with the Telegram channel “NS Action,” which posts national socialist propaganda.
After James Julius Johnson was identified, Thomas Rousseau asked Brown that Johnson’s 3D-printed guns be “trashed or destroyed,” to which Brown responds that the guns were lost in a “boating accident.6“
Return of Network 8
In September 2021, months after Brown’s suspension and return, Network 8 had finally gained enough mass7 to be reinstated as an official network, and Colton Brown finally became its official Network Director. With the role came a new sense of responsibility as Brown wanted to pump up the output of banners and stencil actions.
Here Brown recognizes the re-designation of the Network as the result of members driving long distances and putting in hours of effort and hundreds of dollars into their nazi club. He uses this moment to sketch out how he wants to evangelize for the group.
The Network 8 chat is also Brown’s chosen venue to share sightings of Patriot Front hate crimes in the news or on social media.
Brown is in charge of collecting money for the group to submit sticker orders to Thomas’s home print shop. After the Salt Lake City action, Thomas was hospitalized in a car accident that killed Patriot Front member, “Ulysses NJ.” While Thomas was incapacitated, Patriot Front members were forced to create bootleg stickers in order to continue doing activism. One sticker, which Brown printed and told new members to hold onto, featured the Patriot Front logo over a Confederate flag:
Typically, however, members are prohibited from printing PF stickers without paying Thomas. Networks caught breaking this rule can be investigated and penalized, as this Patriot Front printshop grift is how Thomas makes money. Brown has to occasionally remind members that printing your own stickers is against the rules.
Brown also took seriously his responsibility of making sure that nobody else in his network got charged with a crime, as he did. He frequently pressed his underlings to follow his “#1 Rule” in committing hate crimes: “don’t get caught.” He uses frequent repetitions of this rule to reinforce the idea that actions should be planned through him, ultimately making him partly responsible for every hate crime committed in his network.
“Charles WA,” The 25% Non-White Underage High School Student
The Patriot Front membership application only allows applicants between the ages of 18 and 35. However, there are cases where younger applicants make it through the process. Brown was aware of one such member in his network. Not only did he allow the member to stay in the organization, he even pressured the underage member to lie to his parents about their nazi activities so the member could travel alone across the country to attend Patriot Front events.
The membership status of “Charles” was controversial in the network—not due to his age, but because other members did not believe “Charles” was white enough to be in the organization.8 His closest geographic neighbor in the group, “Anthony WA,” complained to Brown about “phenotypes” and used racist slurs to refer to “Charles” and his ancestry. Brown then asked other members their opinion on the younger member’s ethnicity and phenotype while waiting for “Charles” to respond to his request for more ancestry information.
After “Charles” submitted proof that he was white enough to join Patriot Front, Brown discussed the drama with “Ethan WA.” Brown felt uncomfortable that “Charles” would be allowed to date a white woman under the rules set up by Nazi Germany but assuaged that feeling by noting that he would be less comfortable with a Black man dating a white woman. In the process of explaining this (see audio clip), Brown uses a slur and makes horrible racist mentions of domestic violence. “Ethan WA” notes that “Charles” often expresses anti-Asian sentiment despite being a quarter Filipino.
Before Patriot Front’s DC march in December 2021, “Charles” felt compelled to tell his parents that he was a member in order to go to the event without lying to them. He reported that his father was on board with the organization, but his mother was not. His mother contacted Thomas Rousseau through the Patriot Front website, and “Charles” left the group. Brown encouraged him to reapply when he had moved out of his parents’ house.
“Charles WA” is one of two members in NW8 who were underage. The other was “Grant WA,” who secretly joined at sixteen but was not active in the group. “Grant” quit on August 22nd, 2021, admitting that he was so young, but Brown gave him permission to come back as soon as he turns seventeen. This would still be months too early for Patriot Front membership.
Getting Infiltrated, aka “Am I Getting Demoted?”
In December 2021, after Washington and Oregon members started getting publicly identified, Patriot Front realized that they had been infiltrated. In messages obtained by Unicorn Riot from Patriot Front’s private communications, Colton Brown took responsibility for what he calls the worst infiltration that Patriot Front had seen so far.
He also expressed concerns that the infiltration would lead to the arrest of members involved in local hate crimes.
As Network Director, Brown is responsible for the final vetting interview for new applicants in his network. He is also responsible for vetting potential network leadership, and, as a shield team leader, vetting members of his shield team.
On all of these matters he failed.
Brown did the final membership vetting interview for the infiltrator, and passed him. He submitted the infiltrator’s name to Thomas as a candidate for a network leadership position, describing the infiltrator as one of his most “well-behaved” members.9 Brown offered the infiltrator a prestigious position on a shield team for the national event in December.10 He allowed the infiltrator to be the network’s photographer beginning with his first banner drop, and even had the infiltrator help run interviews for some prospective applicants.
After the infiltration was over, Brown conspired with Thomas and other members to retaliate. In a message to Thomas, Brown admits to surveilling what he mistakenly believed was the infiltator’s residence:
Brown moved all of his Patriot Front materials into another member’s home, afraid that he would get a knock from authorities due to the multiple hate crimes he partakes in.
Beliefs
Brown holds the typical assortment of awful and intellectually-myopic beliefs required to be a member of Patriot Front. Naturally, this includes antisemitism, homophobia, and racism, and Brown believes that Patriot Front is the best means through which to actualize those bigoted views.
Antisemitism
It’s a core belief among Patriot Front members that white people need to “wake up” and embrace antisemitism, including denying the Holocaust and believing conspiracy theories. Brown thinks that Patriot Front is the best opposition to what he sees as a “fake crony system.”
Brown even believes his grandmother is starting to engage in Holocaust denial.
Members will blindly attribute anything they don’t like to their antisemitic theories, from sexual preferences to technology and privacy concerns to DNA collection done by businesses that interpret ethnicity based on volunteered DNA samples.
A running joke in the Network 8 chat involves an app that allows financing pizza, which, surprise, Patriot Front members also blame on Jews.
Many PF members, including Brown, believe that Jews are attempting to eliminate white people by promoting interracial marriages or contraception.
Homophobia
Brown’s antisemitism is closely connected to his homophobia. He believes that homosexuality is a plot pushed by “the media” to keep white people from reproducing, which, in his mind, is so successful that it’s easier to be gay than it is to be a gamer.
Brown is unafraid to harass workers in stores over his misguided, bigoted beliefs.
He also targets people with propaganda based on his false opinions of LGBTQ identities.
Brown has documented signs and flags that he has stolen, with a good percentage of his usual haul being pride flags. Similarly, he uses his experience to advise other members on how to steal pride flags from a campus while minimizing the risk of getting caught.
Racism
Brown frequently posts racial slurs and talks about Patriot Front being a white supremacist organization.
He is very worried about losing his white privilege.
The topic of Nuremburg laws comes up on occasion in regards to who members marry and date.
Brown cites the founding fathers to support the Patriot Front belief that the United States should be a white ethnostate.
Anti-Democratic and Nazi Views
Brown is very clear that he doesn’t believe in equality, especially when it comes to voting. He wants fascism, and believes that the solution to America’s problems would be to have a racist and bigoted nationalist ethic.
Brown rants to members about his belief that the answer doesn’t come through politics, but through white nationalist organizing.
After other members reference a neo-Nazi Telegram channel called “The Hammer,” Brown offers a monologue on the problems he sees with white nationalist streamers and popular accounts. Along the way, he makes it clear that he thinks these less-serious Nazis are “desecrating the swastika.”
Brown also references some esoteric, occult Nazi views, including the belief that there is a progenitor of an Aryan race called the “Hyperboreans.”
Colton Brown’s views occasionally approach “accelerationism,” to the dismay of Thomas Rousseau. While typically hopeful about the future—or “whitepilled”—Brown has expressed concerns that collapse is coming and that white nationalists should be prepared.
Several members of Patriot Front own and wear skull masks, popularized by the armed neo-Nazi groups Atomwaffen Division and The Base, groups responsible for multiple murders. Patriot Front members are asked to not wear these masks while organizing together, but it sometimes comes up in conversation. Brown owns one of these masks and likes to wear it while grocery shopping.
In addition, Brown makes reference to working with a previously-identified Seattle Proud Boy who has moved to Florida. Based on that description, plus his affinity for neo-Nazi symbols, this Proud Boy is likely Sean-Michael David Scott, who was identified on Puget Sound Anarchists and further exposed on our own site.
Sean-Michael David Scott notably also wore a skull mask and used his Twitter to reference the Atomwaffen Division.
Notable Appearances With Patriot Front
Promoting Patriot Front: Banners and Posters
Brown has been placeing banners for a long time, all over Puget Sound. His protocol for new members is to train them in sticker placement, then banners, then posters. Members often meet in public parking lots, condense into one or two vehicles, and do banner drops before returning to the original lot.
Banner drops are often hours-long affairs, as Brown has the group make several banners intended to be placed in one day.
Occasionally, Brown will direct extra members to fly flags on the overpass. These flags include the 13-star “Betsy Ross” and the fascist Patriot Front flag, the latter of which elicits occasional honks from drivers who likely aren’t able to differentiate the symbol or meaning while on the highway.
Brown hunts for covered pedestrian bridges and climbs on top of the fencing to place banners in a way that he believes will keep the public from taking down the banner quickly.
In one video, Brown even encourages members to climb on a pedestrian bridge that is protected with barbed wire. The Patriot Front network is frustrated with how quickly anti-fascists take down their banners, but this banner also was taken down quickly.
Brown is also spreads fascist propaganda by wheatpasting posters to utility boxes.
Defacing George Floyd Mural in Portland
On July 25th, 2021, Colton Michael Brown and other Patriot Front members defaced a George Floyd mural in Portland, OR.
The Portland Police Bureau posted truly unwatchable grainy security camera footage of the incident in which several people can be seen placing stencils on the wall. Since Brown was typically the leader and photographer for these earlier actions, it’s likely that the person holding the phone on the left in this picture is him:
Brown made a point to call the police “anti-white” when they asked for tips regarding the incident.
In any case, Patriot Front members, and Brown in particular, admit involvement in the hate crime and celebrate the fact that community members planned a rally to protest them.
When their work appeared in local Portland news, members noted inaccuracies in the reporting, potentially due to an incorrect clock on security cameras.
They then continue to plan similar actions, with Brown admitting that they used banner stencils for the act.
Brown feels no remorse or guilt for his actions. He celebrates and laughs about the hate crime…
…and weeks after the act, Brown even tells James Julius Johnson that he wishes he could vandalize murals for a living.
Camp Muir Hike
In late August 2021, Network 8 hosted a camping event in the Mt. Rainier area, including a hike to Camp Muir, which was attended by current and former members from Washington, Oregon, and California.
Patriot Front puts on events like these largely for propaganda purposes: they believe that showing their members enduring difficult hikes will demonstrate that Patriot Front is an organization that values brotherhood and has the strength to overcome challenges. These events usually include speeches, as well as casual chats in which members repeat racial slurs, express admiration for fascism and Hitler, and share conspiracy theories about Jews.
Colton Brown gave one such speech, in which he talked about his Patriot Front beginnings and ranted against immigration and “hook-nosed” bankers. He described the anti-immigration history of conservationist John Muir and linked that to Brown’s own bigoted views that immigrants are destroying the land.
Brown was photographed on the hike wearing a Patriot Front “Reject Poison” shirt and carrying a Betsy Ross flag. Patriot Front members carry the Betsy Ross as an alternative to flying the fifty-star American flag because of their beliefs in the “Zionist-occupied Government” conspiracy.
He was also seen in his Patriot Front jacket with Network 8 patches at the group’s campsite.
Patriot Front and Swastika Stenciling in Enumclaw
In preparation for a hate crime to be committed in Olympia, Colton Brown brought his members to a bridge near Enumclaw to practice using banner stencils in hate crimes. Here Brown teaches members how to quickly apply a white base coat to walls to cover up existing artwork, before applying banner stencils.
After painting the wall with Patriot Front stencils, Brown went to the other side of the bridge to paint swastikas.11 His members struggled to paint that basic shape under his supervision.
Defacing “Respect & Love” Rainbow Mural in Olympia
Around 3:00 a.m. on Saturday, October 16th, members of Patriot Front vandalized a “Respect & Love Olympia” mural, covering it with white paint before stenciling over it with their nationalist slogan and links to their Nazi website. This effort involved weeks of planning with members from across the entire Pacific Northwest contingent of Patriot Front members, as well as knowledge and assistance from Thomas Rousseau.
From the Journal of Olympia, Lacey and Tumwater (JOLT):
Colton Michael Brown was a pivotal organizer of this action, overseeing Jacob Sundt as he planned the action.
While planning details of the hate crime in the chat, Brown referred to another incident in which BLM artwork near the “Respect & Love Olympia” mural was vandalized, hinting that he also committed that smaller act. He posted a picture of that incident.
About a week before the “Respect & Love Olympia” action, Colton Brown held a call with Sundt and Thomas Rousseau to discuss tactical details of the mural cover-up. This call had limited attendance as the details of the operation were strictly “need to know.”
Network 8 members, plus members of local non-network clusters, rehearsed the vandalism late on October 15th, 2021, at an abandoned brewery in Tumwater, WA.
Members trespassed at this meeting, but they didn’t spray any stencils in the brewery. Brown had his team simulate preparing the cans of spray paint, walking onto the scene, covering the LGBTQ message with white paint, and placing the white nationalist stencils over the mural. Brown can be heard on video instructing the group to watch out for anti-fascists and police.
(Note: His comment about a “homeless Black person” “vaccinating” is meant to be received as a racist joke about shooting up drugs.)
Brown’s plan has him parking his truck near an alley that the group will use to walk to the mural unobserved. Brown can be seen here leading the way.
On videos of the incident, Brown is heard leading the group past a fence that was previously cut by Jacob Sundt. Brown then directs other members’ efforts on whiting out the mural before the stencils are placed. One of those members is Lawrence “Frederick OR” Norman, an Oregon member already identified by Corvallis Antifascists.
Brown doesn’t just give orders. He can be seen here using banner stencils and red spray paint to vandalize the mural.
After the hate crime, Brown celebrated the fact the mural was taken down because of the incident. The decision to take down the mural was seen as a win by Patriot Front, who cite this incident as proof that their methods are effective.
Since the Portland and Olympia stenciling hate crimes, Patriot Front members have not done another such act in the Pacific Northwest. That’s because they will first have to recreate all of their banner stencils. Anti-fascists recovered almost all of the local network’s materials, including the banner stencils used in these hate crimes, and burned them in a New Year’s Eve bonfire.
Drilling and Sparring in Tumwater
In preparation for the December event in Washington DC, Network 8 members did drilling and sparring meetups. Members practiced marching and shield work, essentially trying out for the shield teams present at some PF marches.
Brown was photographed practicing his boxing with other PNW Patriot Front members. For the first half of training, during nicer weather, he is wearing a sweatshirt gifted to him by “David WA” displaying a Nazi sonnenrad.
The “black sun” symbol that Colton Brown wears on his shirt famously appears in a castle owned by the head of the Nazi SS:
Brown, displaying some severe deficits in boxing skill, trains under fellow member and neo-Nazi James Julius Johnson.
Brown exaggerates the fighting skills of himself and his members to the rest of the organization. At previous engagements he mentioned going to boxing classes, but later admitted that he had attended for barely more than a couple of weeks. You can judge his skills for yourself in this video of a sparring session:
March on Washington, DC
Colton Brown has attended several Patriot Front marches and events across the nation, including in Salt Lake City and Philadelphia. Most recently, Brown attended the fascist march in Washington DC on December 5th, 2021.
According to an image posted in the private “Shield Section Team Planning” chat in the Patriot Front server, Brown was expected to lead a “screen” team responsible for protecting flanks and camera operators, using small plastic shields. He would be overseen by previously-identified Kieran “Patrick TX” Morris, who lives with leader Thomas Rousseau in Haslet, TX.
It was Brown who packed Burger King crowns for his members to use at the airport. Jacob Sundt was spotted in the airport wearing one of these crowns, a reference to a viral video in which a man on a JetBlue flight gets into multiple altercations after shouting the n-word.
Network 8 members arrived in Newark, NJ on the Friday before the march, and had to drive four hours to the campsite in Virginia due to some “operational security” measures put in place by Thomas Rousseau.12 After some unexpected logistical issues, members found themselves stranded at Arlington Cemetery when their box trucks did not arrive to retrieve them in a timely manner. This caused Brown and other Network 8 members to have a long, very late drive back to Newark where they barely made their early morning flight back to Seattle.
Identifying Information
Full name: Colton Michael Brown
As of July 2020, WA Department of Licensing reported Brown to be 6’1″ and 145 lbs.
Birthday: 10/12/1998
Address: 34909 SE 257th St, Ravensdale WA
Colton Brown lives with his father, and used this address to receive and store Patriot Front materials, including flags with their fascist logo and stencil templates sent by Patriot Front member “Benjamin WI.” Brown frequently complains about his father being married to someone who is not white, and has to hide his white supremacist materials around the house, in his home gym, or under a tarp in the back of his truck.
Brown’s home gym has a Patriot Front flag on the wall.
Phone Number: 253-315-1489
Social Media Telegram: @SolarFash (Brown will sometimes also use the username @AryanCowboy1776)
Employment
Brown builds homes at MGM Construction.
Brown frequently complains to other Patriot Front members about working alongside and under the supervision of people of color. He has invited other Patriot Front members onto MGM worksites to transfer Patriot Front materials or discuss future hate crimes.
Politely ask MGM Construction if Brown is the kind of person they should employ:
MGM Construction LLC
P.O. Box 3071
Bellevue, WA 989-3071
(425) 652-9073
[email protected]
Brown also holds an electrical trainee license that expires in October 2022.
Pilot School
Colton Brown is training to be a pilot at Spanaflight Aviation. According to Brown, he flies out of both the Auburn and Puyallup locations.
Politely ask Spanaflight Aviation if Colton Michael Brown is the kind of person to whom they should be offering classes:
Spanaflight Aviation
16705 103rd Avenue Court East
Puyallup, Washington 98374
Puyallup (253) 848-2020
Auburn (253)833-9357
[email protected]
Vehicles
2016 Chevy Colorado
License plate: WA C51500Y. In anticipation of this report, Brown changed his plates13 from WA C84804G. The vehicle was registered to his father until Colton got in trouble when his vehicle was spotted near a banner drop in Everett, WA.
Notes
1 Something you can put in your file labeled, “Was Thomas Just Bullied a Bunch as a Kid?” would be Patriot Front’s dorky insistence on using Roman numerals, even for clearly ridiculous purposes like putting dates on maps.
2 Twenty, if you were curious. “Jason NY” beat that record at the end of July 2021 with twenty one. One rumor in the org is that “Jason” thought he needed the exercise.
3 When there is no officially-designated Network Director for a region, a member may be chosen to temporarily fill the role. “Lawrence” became acting director after the previous director, “Felix WA,” left the state. “Lawrence” has since moved to Florida and lives with his dad, an Amazon executive. He is now the Network Director of Network 16 and goes by “Lawrence FL.” We’re guessing we’ll hear more about this human “piss wagon” later.
4 Recently, this has included Brown reaching out to various “White Lives Matter” telegram chats and the “fashed out” nazi Seattle Proud Boys chapter. Previously Brown has stated some very insulting opinions about the WLM crowd but he is desperate for membership after his network was fully infiltrated.
5 Brown has been mostly transparent about his legal troubles, but we’ve never seen him admit, at least to general membership, that he has encountered and been a subject of interest for the FBI. Patriot Front is notoriously concerned with feds; in public, they fight to maintain that they aren’t secretly federal agents, and in private they avoid actions they believe would draw federal attention. Hilariously, we discovered this among Brown’s high-school photos:
6 Losing guns in a “boating accident” is a common meme among gun owners. It refers to hiding one’s gun ownership in the case that the government comes looking.
7 Keep in mind that “mass” in this context still means a Network membership of under ten people. Patriot Front puts a lot of energy into putting out promotional materials, but it’s a small number of people doing a lot of work, typically with very minor returns. Groups like Patriot Front are fragile and vulnerable, and they know it.
8 The official minimum is 75% “white” ethnicity but it’s not stated in any written documentation available to the average member. The application process involves questions of ancestry.
9 The WA infiltrator was nominated for Network Quartermaster, the member responsible for holding all of the network’s supplies. The role went to “Ethan WA” since the infiltrator had already been given the role of network photographer and his location was not as central geographically—or so Brown believed. Since the infiltrator ended up with all of the photos and the quartermaster’s stored materials anyway, we have no complaints. 🙂
10 The infiltrator didn’t end up taking a shield team position because he had already been hand-picked by Thomas Rousseau to be a photographer for the Washington DC march in December, another prestigious role that suggests a high degree of trust.
11 Brown’s subordinates have previously noted that their leader Thomas Rousseau wouldn’t approve having swastikas painted so close to the Patriot Front artwork, but Brown didn’t care.
12 We wrote more on those travel difficulties in our Jacob Sundt article: https://wanaziwatch.com/jacob-stephen-sundt/
13 Patriot Front guidelines for information and operational security advise members to get new plates if they get doxxed. After finding out that his network was infiltrated, Colton Brown recommended members falsely report their plates as stolen in order to get new license plate numbers to better hide their vehicles from the public. Antifascist activists are on alert to monitor and report back if any Patriot Front member changes his license plates.