Sticker Shock

It starts small.

Yesterday, walking across the parking lot of the Stop & Shop in North Haven, Connecticut, I noticed a postcard-sized sticker on the Instacart poster at the shopping cart return kiosk. American by Blood, written in red on a grainy photograph of a band of men in fatigues looking at a distant mountain. At the bottom was printed PATRIOTFRONT.US., which, when I got home, I googled. RECLAIM AMERICA flashed boldly on the landing page, along with images of masked men holding semi-automatics and American flags. Here’s a quote from the “Manifesto” section:

Our mission is a hard reset on the nation we see today— a return to the traditions and virtues of our forefathers. The same spirit that urged our ancestors onward to create this nation will once again be brought to light, and a new America will be built within its current dilapidated, shameful iteration.

Membership within the American nation is inherited through blood, not ink. Even those born in America may yet be foreign. Nationhood cannot be bestowed upon those who are not of the founding stock of our people, and those who do not share the common spirit that permeates our greater civilization, and the European diaspora.

I was stunned that a White nationalist neo-fascist racist homophobic misogynistic antisemitic brotherhood would advertise their hate group at the local supermarket. I mean, that’s fucked up. I called the store’s customer service department and told them about the sticker, and what it symbolized. “I’ll be sure to look into that,” said the woman who answered.

Her tone- breezy- made me skeptical enough to circle back a few hours later. Not only was the original sticker still there, but I found a second: “Not Stolen, Conquered.” See, a core belief of Patriot Front is that the Founding Fathers stole nothing from Native Americans- they simply conquered them and tamed their rugged land with God’s help, specially reserved for White Christian males.

I unstuck the stickers and went inside to confront the woman in customer service. “I spoke to you earlier…” I began.

“Oh, right. Where did you say you found these?” She reached for them, but I wasn’t about to hand over the stickers. Then, she summoned the manager, who nodded and said she’d let someone in Corporate know.

I left totally rattled about the stickers and the nonchalant reaction they elicited. When I got home, I reported the incident to the Anti-Defamation League, so they could make an official record of it. Meanwhile, back at Stop & Shop, I imagined tongues were wagging about the crazy lady making a WTF mountain out of a known hate group posting on a cart kiosk molehill.

I have the stickers here, on my desk, physical proof. They look small, insignificant, the way these things do, until they aren’t.