A longtime far-right activist and defense lawyer with a history of making death threats, Jason Lee Van Dyke appears to be leading Brazilian jujitsu (BJJ) training efforts inside Patriot Front, according to social media posts reviewed by Hatewatch.
Training in martial arts like BJJ provides white nationalist groups such as Patriot Front a way to attract new and younger audiences who are fans of combat sports. It also provides white nationalist group members with fighting skills to use when confronting their perceived enemies in the streets. The group has used violence in the past, including attacking a Black musician during a 2022 demonstration.
Van Dyke, who has been the preferred lawyer for Patriot Front when its members are criminally charged or sued for their racist activism, announced June 1 on X that he had obtained a black belt in BJJ, writing that “going from white to black belt is, aside from becoming a lawyer, the hardest thing I have ever done.” Van Dyke’s X post included a photograph of him standing next to two unidentified people in a gym. The next day, June 2, an active club in Texas that Hatewatch revealed is secretly controlled by Patriot Front posted to Telegram to congratulate its “newly minted black belt, John” who “led” the group’s training that day. Previous Hatewatch reporting identified “John TX” as Van Dyke’s alias within Patriot Front.

While at the time Van Dyke denied to Hatewatch that he is the person behind the pseudonym, Hatewatch linked Van Dyke to “John TX” using leaked chats in which a user named “John TX” talked about motorcycles he owned. All the motorcycles “John TX” said he owned were the same motorcycles Van Dyke owned, according to data broker websites. A source with insider knowledge of Patriot Front also told Hatewatch about Van Dyke’s involvement in the group.
Hatewatch sent Van Dyke a series of questions via email about his involvement in Patriot Front, the ethical obligations of lawyers outside the courtroom and the strategy behind using BJJ to recruit. Van Dyke’s 1,000-word response to Hatewatch included denials, self-promotion and notes about the benefits of BJJ.
Van Dyke denied any involvement in Patriot Front, writing, “I am not now, nor have I ever been, a member of Patriot Front.”
Asked about his Patriot Front alias John TX, Van Dyke responded, in part, “If I was a member of Patriot Front, why would I have an alias. I’m a lawyer. I am an equity partner at my firm.”
He then mentioned all the places his name and contact information appear on his firm’s office supplies and asked, “Do you honestly believe, if I was in Patriot Front, that I would have an alias? What good would it do me? It’s comical, even for an organization as brainless as the SPLC (and you can certainly quote me on that).”
Everyone in Patriot Front has an alias, even people whose names and membership in the group are widely known. The only exception is Patriot Front’s leader, Thomas Rousseau.
The June 2 Telegram post included a photograph of eight people in a gym, six of whom have their faces poorly blurred, posing in front of a mural that reads, “America is dead, long live America.” The two people without blurred faces are well-known Patriot Front ringleaders Graham Whitson and Kieran Morris. Though Van Dyke’s face is somewhat blurred, he appears to be kneeling in the middle of the group. The facial hair and overall appearance of the person kneeling in the middle are identical to the facial hair and appearance of Van Dyke in the photograph he posted to X the day before.

In an email to Hatewatch, Abbe Smith, the Scott K. Ginsburg professor of law at Georgetown University who is an expert on legal ethics, told Hatewatch that lawyers violate their ethical commitments by associating with groups like Patriot Front “based on the [American Bar Association’s] Preamble to the Model Rules of Professional Conduct (and the Texas version).”
Smith then cited several passages from the preamble, including one that states, “A lawyer, as a member of the legal profession, is a representative of clients, an officer of the legal system and a public citizen having special responsibility for the quality of justice.”
Led by Rousseau, Patriot Front is the most active white nationalist group in the U.S. In 2024, the group posted more than 5,000 pieces of racist propaganda, such as flyers and stickers, across the U.S. That is 10 times more than the next group that uses this tactic. Patriot Front also holds flash rallies, trains in mixed martial arts and operates a compound in Tellico Plains, Tennessee, where the group hosts networking and fight club events.
Active clubs are a network of white nationalists without a single central leader that builds a brand around hypermasculinity and defending Western Christian culture. Hatewatch previously identified dozens of active clubs that Patriot Front secretly controls to boost its ranks. Patriot Front began pursuing this recruitment strategy as the group faced attacks from far-right influencers and legal challenges.
A longtime white nationalist
Van Dyke has a long history within the hate movement. Hatewatch first identified Van Dyke in 2007 when he helped organize events for the Michigan State University chapter of Young Americans for Freedom (MSU-YAF), which was a student-led group that openly associated with neo-Nazis and racist skinheads. That year, MSU-YAF became the first campus group to be listed on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Hate Map.
Although Van Dyke had left the university in 2000 without graduating, he organized events for the group on campus, including a “Koran Desecration” contest. YAF was initially a fiercely anticommunist group started in 1960 by conservative icon William F. Buckley Jr. By the time of Van Dyke’s involvement in YAF, the group was being promoted by the Leadership Institute, a nonprofit that seeks to build future conservative leaders. Van Dyke interned at the Leadership Institute in 2006 before helping to form MSU-YAF the following year, according to previous reporting by Hatewatch.
For two years, he was a leading member of the Proud Boys, a group founded by Gavin McInnes in 2016 that engaged in street fighting and went on to play a leading role in the violent events at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. In the group’s early years, Van Dyke acted as its de facto lawyer, routinely sending legal threats to journalists and news organizations. He briefly led the Proud Boys in 2018, after McInnes departed the organization when 10 Proud Boys were charged with attempted gang assault, attempted assault and riot for a brawl in New York City. Van Dyke ran the Proud Boys for just over a day, resigning after his social media posts came to light, which included racial slurs and death threats against journalists.
Van Dyke continued to hold trademarks associated with the Proud Boys until the group’s role in the events of Jan. 6, 2021, led to congressional investigations and criminal charges, including seditious conspiracy, for group members.
After resigning as chairman of the Proud Boys, Van Dyke was vetted for membership in the white nationalist accelerationist group The Base, according to Vice and a recording reviewed by Hatewatch. The group’s leadership reportedly denied Van Dyke’s attempt to become a member.
The State Bar of Texas briefly suspended Van Dyke in 2019 amid a series of legal disputes between him and his longtime rival Thomas Retzlaff. The back-and-forth legal challenges between the two stopped in 2021, when Retzlaff was found dead in his home in El Mirage, Arizona. The Maricopa County medical examiner ruled his death a homicide. His death generated a lot of attention online given that Retzlaff had previously accused Van Dyke of plotting his assassination.
In 2020, Hatewatch obtained recordings via a Freedom of Information Act request in which Van Dyke can be heard talking about two potential plans to murder Retzlaff, but Van Dyke has repeatedly denied any role in his death. Van Dyke has never been charged in connection with Retzlaff’s death, and Hatewatch is not aware of any evidence connecting him to the crime.
As stated on the State Bar of Texas website, lawyers are obligated to “maintain the highest standards of ethical conduct” inside and outside the courtroom. The State Bar of Texas rules of professional conduct also state that “a lawyer should demonstrate respect for the legal system and for those who serve it, including judges, other lawyers and public officials.”
Van Dyke responded to a question from Hatewatch about his ethical commitments as a lawyer, writing, “As a ‘guardian of the law’, the First Amendment is something I take very seriously. I strongly support the right of Patriot Front — as well as the Southern Poverty Law Center — to speak freely on issues which matter to them.”
Hatewatch asked the State Bar of Texas whether Van Dyke — who has spent nearly 20 years closely associating with violent hate groups that seek the collapse of U.S. society — breaks rules of professional conduct.
A representative of the State Bar of Texas told Hatewatch via email that the group does not comment on specific cases of potential lawyer misconduct.
Smith, the Georgetown University law professor, also said via email, “Lawyers are essentially the embodiment of the rule of law. We understand the relationship between the rule of law and the functioning of a free society and, as lawyers, we pledge to protect both. We count on lawyers to stand-up for the values underlying the U.S. Constitution, including equality, access to justice and individual dignity.”
Image at top: Far-right activist Jason Lee Van Dyke, who has been the preferred lawyer for Patriot Front when its members are criminally charged or sued, appears to be leading Brazilian jujitsu training inside Patriot Front. (Photo illustration by the SPLC)