Dalton Russell Woodward (“Jesse AR”) is the current “Interview Coordinator” for Patriot Front (PF), a white supremacist organization operating across the US. Atlanta Antifascists first exposed Woodward as a white nationalist in 2019, while he was an active-duty Georgia National Guardsman stationed in Afghanistan. Following media attention and the return of Woodward’s unit to the US, the National Guard eventually removed him. Woodward currently lives in Chester, Arkansas.
As Patriot Front’s national Interview Coordinator, Woodward organizes the initial interview sessions in which applicants submit to questioning by trusted PF members. These first interviews are conducted over a voice call and aim to identify potential infiltrators and to ensure ideological consistency. If a prospective member passes this first test, an in-person meetup is scheduled for further scrutiny, including a physical search and examining the contents of their phone. Woodward’s work as Interview Coordinator is a key part of PF’s security structure and is crucial to maintaining PF’s internal culture of fascism, white supremacy, and antisemitism.
In January 2022, the Unicorn Riot media collective published a trove of internal Patriot Front communications, documents, images, and video footage. Soon after this leak, we received a tip linking Dalton Woodward to a PO Box in Chester, Arkansas that “Jesse AR” provided in a message. Leaked video from PF further confirms that Woodward is “Jesse AR.”
Before Patriot Front leader Thomas Rousseau announced Woodward as the organization’s new Interview Coordinator, Woodward held another prestigious role in PF: leader of the “vanguard” shield section for its December 2021 national rally in Washington, DC. Woodward’s military background is presumably one reason PF chose him for this role.
Woodward’s high-level position within Patriot Front is particularly concerning because of his ties to accelerationist neo-Nazism. Accelerationist neo-Nazis aim to collapse society through infrastructure sabotage and mass casualty events in the hope of building a new fascist order from the ruins. Although PF shares its origin with accelerationist groups like Atomwaffen Division (through the defunct Iron March forum), PF is not an accelerationist organization. This is a deliberate choice by Thomas Rousseau for PF’s short-term survival. Woodward, in his role as Interview Coordinator, ostensibly screens for candidates who seem over-eager for violence. Rousseau considers such individuals to be magnets for state repression. However, a review of leaked interview decisions across multiple PF regions shows that rejecting an applicant for violence is less common that rejecting an applicant for being insufficiently racist. Woodward’s prominent role within PF further suggests that the distance between the group’s membership and accelerationist circles is smaller than the group admits publicly.
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