Right-wing podcaster Patrick Bet-David interviewed Patriot Front founder Thomas Rousseau and perhaps inadvertently showed YouTube viewers how to join the white nationalist group. 

In the episode, titled “‘White First’ - Patriot Front Founder Thomas Rousseau Admits TRUTH About Fed Connection” and uploaded to YouTube, Bet-David questioned Rousseau about his extremist group and Rousseau’s own white nationalist beliefs and asked how someone can join the group. He showed viewers the website for Patriot Front and walked through the step-by-step process of filling out an application.

YouTube’s hate speech policy prohibits content that promotes “hateful supremacism,” including “content containing hateful supremacist propaganda, such as the recruitment of new members.”

Patrick Bet-David hosts the PBD Podcast, which regularly provides a safe space for right-wing guests to promote bigotry and conspiracy theories. PBD Podcast routinely uploads episodes to a YouTube channel with about 1.8 million subscribers.

Patriot Front is a white nationalist hate group with a history of disruptive and confrontational activity, including attempting to disrupt a 2022 pride event in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, with shields and a smoke grenade as well as attacking an anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement protest camp in San Antonio, Texas. Rousseau previously led members of fascist group Vanguard America during the deadly Charlottesville Unite the Right rally and has been indicted for his role in another hate march through the University of Virginia in 2017.

Bet-David opened the polite, but not necessarily friendly Rousseau interview, which was uploaded to YouTube on May 31, with clips of conspiracy theorists such as Joe Rogan incorrectly claiming Patriot Front members are actually federal agents and asked Rousseau to address the claims. Throughout the interview Bet-David repeatedly asked Rousseau about any potential ties between his organization and federal agencies like the FBI.

Bet-David also asked Rousseau about the recruitment process while his producer filled out the application live. Going question by question, Bet-David had Rousseau go into detail on the full process. Bet-David showed the application on screen and talked with Rousseau about the steps of the application and the questions it included, such as questions screening for political affiliation, exercise habits, and religious affiliation. 

Bet-David questioned Rousseau about why they screened for religious affiliation to which Rousseau replied in part: "We do not permit members who are Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, Judaic. We believe that would come into conflict with our sort of America First principles.” 

“OK. Fair enough,” Bet-David responded.

He then read questions asking why the person wants to join, what skills the person can bring to the organization, how they heard about the group, and whether they’ve read Patriot Front’s manifesto, and then discussed the next steps for joining.

Later in the interview, Bet-David said Patriot Front gets labeled white nationalist because of its exclusion of Black people. 

“One may watch this and say, it's not America First. You're white first,” Bet-David told Rousseau, “because, there's a big difference. Because if you say America First, some people may, on the left, they may find a way to use you and pull you in other America First organizations.”

He also asked why Patriot Front doesn’t take Black members. Rousseau said: “I believe that the interests of Blacks in the United States and the interests of who I call Americans are distinct, I don’t believe they’re always contradictory, but we only recruit members who are of the European race and of the American nation.”

“So then that’s why they call you white nationalist. Are you OK with that disposition or no?” asked Bet-David.

“America was living by that standard, essentially, from 1620 to 1960,” said Rousseau.

“Not that there’s anything wrong with that,” interjected Bet-David.

Rousseau also pushed white nationalist ideology and argued against describing non-whites as Americans. 

“Blacks have been very much culturally, economically, socially, and even legally distinct from what we call white Americans, or I simply refer to as Americans,” Rousseau told Bet-David. 

Rousseau added: “Many communities are largely one or another population. I believe these differences are so distinct that we ought to consider them as different nations perhaps within the same government.” 

When Bet-David, an Iranian American, asked what Rousseau considered him, he responded, “You are a citizen. … However, I would say that you are distinct from an American.”