Natasha Vaughn is reporting for Columbia-Greene Media recruiting material for the white nationalist hate group Patriot Front was found in Palatine Park in Germantown, May 12. It has since been removed. A total of four such stickers or flyers have been found in Columbia County in recent months. “This is an anti-Semitic group,” local activist Michael Richardson said. “At a different time, Patriot Front would be the KKK, they are anti-Semitic, they’re anti-Catholic, they’re white nationalist.” According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, Patriot Front is a white nationalist hate group that formed in the aftermath of the August 2017, “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. The organization broke off from Vanguard America, a neo-Nazi group that participated in the Charlottesville demonstration. Patriot Front is the most active of the white nationalist groups to use the dissemination of flyers, banners and stickers as a recruitment tool, with more than 3,500 incidents reported in 2019 and 2020. Richardson said similar fliers or stickers have also been found in the villages of Chatham and Philmont. Richard runs the website "Hate Watch Report," a tool for receiving and reporting news about hate or extremist groups and informing the public about them. Germantown Town Supervisor Robert Beaury said the sticker was removed and destroyed by a maintenance crew when they saw it. “It must have been put up in the evening and the very next morning it was taken down,” Beaury said. The supervisor said it disturbed him that this kind of thing could happen in any community, and that it has no place in a civilized society. “Free speech does not mean you can incite violence with hate,” he said. According to Richardson, Patriot Front has a strong presence in Warwick, Orange County, and New Rochelle, Westchester County. He said he was surprised to see their materials this far north. Read the full story at HudsonValley360 [dot] com.