The Shadow Army

How Trump Is Undermining Control Over the Threat Within

Our investigation leads deep into the heart of a movement that no longer hides in the shadows. It trains, marches, and recruits in the open. This is no loose network of far-right ideologues, it is a disciplined formation, preparing for a moment it sees as inevitable: the collapse of civil society. The group calls itself Patriot Front. Born from the bloodshed of Charlottesville, splintered off from Vanguard America, it no longer flaunts swastikas, but uniforms, symbols, flags, and combat boots. What was once brown is now olive green, beige, and tactically choreographed.

In the southern United States - Tennessee, Alabama, Texas - their presence is growing. They march in formation, practice hand-to-hand combat in remote forests, and operate training camps whose existence official institutions pretend not to see. Their rhetoric is old, but their aesthetic is modern. In leaked chat logs published by Unicorn Riot in 2022, members spoke openly of violent fantasies targeting Jews, Black Americans, and leftists. And yet, their potential for violence has been systematically underestimated, or consciously downplayed.

They recruit with precision: young white men, often athletic, sometimes military-trained, nearly always adrift. Their propaganda is sleek, digital, consumable: videos, music, memes, stickers, highway banners. And it resonates, because the state is retreating. Under Donald Trump’s second presidency, this retreat has become institutionalized - not loud, but quiet. In March 2025, came another surgical cut: the national database tracking domestic terrorism, run by the University of Maryland and funded with $3 million from the Department of Homeland Security, was shut down. Quietly. Without debate. With it vanished the structural foundations that once allowed authorities to monitor right-wing violence. And with them, the possibility of state oversight.

This wasn’t a neutral act. It belongs to a long pattern. As early as 2018, the Trump administration defunded counter-extremism programs—among them “Life After Hate.” In 2020, a DHS whistleblower alleged that reports on white supremacist violence were altered or deleted on orders from the White House. And even after DHS Secretary Chad Wolf testified under oath that white supremacists remained “the most persistent and lethal threat to the homeland,” nothing changed. No new programs. No decisive action. Just inertia, by design.

And so, in 2025, we return to a policy of active invisibilization. The public has grown used to it. The machinery of government has adjusted. And at the margins of this silence, something has taken shape, something that may soon no longer hide. In Tennessee, for instance: a secluded compound, more than 300 acres, surrounded by forest, filled with wooden training halls and makeshift barricades. Our investigation reveals men in uniform, armed with shields, tactical vests, and helmets. Red circular patches on their sleeves—militant, coded, anonymous. They are not training for fitness. They are training for violence.

“They’re happy to pose for photos,” one of our contacts said. “As long as you don’t tell them who you really are. Even during combat drills, they don’t care. One of them told me, ‘It just makes us tougher.’” And a chill ran down the spine.

One image shows four men outside a self-constructed wooden structure. One lifts weights, shirtless, sunglasses reflecting the light of the makeshift hall. Another stands calmly beside him, seemingly civilian. The third wears a mask, a cap with horn-like protrusions, and a black long-sleeve shirt emblazoned with a white rune-like symbol, a stylized, modern variation of the Odal rune, threaded with a spear. It echoes the Wolfsangel, the Sonnenrad - symbols of blood-and-soil mythology. Not chosen by accident, but encoded deliberately. This is a polished, postmodern semiotics of hate, one that updates the past without abandoning it.

The fourth man wears a shirt that reads Worship Warrior, a phrase circulating in the far right as a blend of religious mission and militant readiness. Behind them, a wall of stickers and propaganda slogans. One reads FREE, flanked by stylized fonts and symbols familiar to anyone who’s studied Hatecore, neofascist fitness subcultures, or extremist online aesthetics. It is a microcosm of self-empowerment, violent masculinity, and ideological clarity.

Now imagine if they were someone else. A Muslim community. A Black neighborhood defense group. The state would respond with force, immediate, overwhelming, absolute. But Patriot Front—or its offshoots under the catchall name H8 - continues, unimpeded. They wrap themselves in the language of patriotism, call themselves a “movement,” hide behind banners that mimic revolution while repackaging old hate for a new audience. The president? Says nothing. Or deflects. Or redefines vandalism at a Tesla dealership as “domestic terrorism,” while ignoring real militant infrastructures.

This is the language of power: whoever controls the words, controls the reality. And in this new reality, the dangerous ones are no longer those who hate, but those who name the hate. The ones who protest, not the ones who parade. The ones who spray a wall, not the ones who train for insurrection.

To believe Trump is unaware of all this would be naïve. Far more likely is that he sees it, and accepts it. Perhaps even needs it. Not as an army in the formal sense, but as a possibility. A threat. A backdrop to a state of emergency waiting to be declared.

But what if there’s no declaration? What if it’s not a button pressed- but a fire spreading? What if that training ground in Tennessee becomes a symbol? What if one day, the shadow army is no longer in the shadows?

Then we will look back and ask: when did it begin?

And the answer will be this: It began in silence. With a budget cut. A database deleted. A question never asked.

It was all there.
And we saw it - on a Saturday in March 2025, in Tennessee.