After masked white nationalist march, Kansas City should consider anti-masking law | Opinion
Kansas City doesn’t have an anti-mask law but maybe it should consider an ordinance that would discourage white nationalists from ever coming here again.
After watching online video footage of neo-fascist group Patriot Front marching through the streets of downtown Kansas City over the weekend, something has to be done. These neo-fascists may be gone now, but unless Mayor Quinton Lucas and the City Council act, nothing would prevent them from coming back.
It should never be OK for hundreds of khaki-wearing white supremacists — or anyone, for that matter — to parade around town marching and chanting hate all while concealing their identities.
In a statement, the Missouri chapter of the NAACP condemned what the organization described as the “unannounced invasion of the National World War I Memorial,” the statement read.
“This act was a calculated show of force meant to intimidate,” Missouri NAACP president Nimrod Chapel said.
According to Kansas City Police, department officials were unaware that these white supremacists were planning an hourlong protest march here. Thankfully no one was injured and no arrests were made, according to police.
Sure, even bigots have a right to assemble — Lucas said as much on X — but that does not preclude Lucas and the City Council from addressing this sort of grotesque behavior.
“Arriving in the back of several U-Haul trucks and marching in formation with flags and covered faces, their presence was not only threatening but a desecration of a public monument honoring Americans who died fighting tyranny,” Chapel said.
Hate groups with an unfettered ability to spread ignorance and intolerance cannot become the norm here. In fact, some public safety experts have argued that there’s no constitutional right to cover your face in public — but proponents of the First Amendment disagree.
Any proposed law that comes forth here must not stymie free speech — we all have a First Amendment right to protest — but Lucas and the full council must not turn a blind eye. Officials here have the authority to address these sorts of public gatherings and should.
No anti-masking law in MO, KS
At least 18 states and Washington D.C. have enacted anti-masking laws, according to the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law. States that penalize face coverings are: Alabama, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia.
Although Missouri and Kansas are not among these states, nothing prevents local municipalities like Kansas City from establishing their own. Nassau County in Long Island, New York, did so by banning face masks in public. Under the Mask Transparency Act there, the only exceptions are for health, safety and religious purposes.
Most important, the law — the first of its kind in the country post-pandemic, according to Time Magazine — also allows the use of masks during peaceful celebrations. Twelve of the 19-member, Republican-led legislature there cited protests of the Israel-Hamas war as reason for the new measure, according to the publication, so it has rightfully been met with skepticism.
Free speech advocates in New York state — the ACLU of New York and other chapters mainly — were opposed to the measure, but if applied lawfully and fairly here, I wouldn’t be against a similar ordinance. What I saw on video in Kansas City — the perversion of the American Flag and other symbols of freedom so close to Memorial Day — was beyond sickening.
Patriot Front is a hate group
By its very definition, Patriot Front is a white supremacist, neo-facist hate group, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights nonprofit organization based in Mobile, Alabama.
On Saturday, Patriot Front’s founder, Thomas Rousseau of Texas, spoke at a rally Saturday outside the WWI Museum and Memorial, The Star reported.
“It was remarkably successful, and we accomplished every single objective we set out to for the day,” Rousseau said in a video posted to X.
In its manifesto, Patriot Front “is also explicit in its exclusion of people of color from its conception of pan-European identity,” the SLPC’s website states.
“An African, for example, may have lived, worked, and even been classed as a citizen in America for centuries, yet he is not American,” the manifesto reads, according to SLPC. This sort of rhetoric is repulsive and shouldn’t be allowed to be spewed in public with anonymity.
Any act intended to harass, threaten or intimidate under the guise of protest should be outlawed here. And I can’t emphasize this enough: Masked white nationalists proudly marching through Kansas City chanting, “Reclaim America,” as this group reportedly did, is meant as a scare tactic.
Otherwise, participants wouldn’t use face masks, hats and sunglasses to shield themselves from scrutiny — a cowardly act if I ever saw one.
Face-covering laws aren’t new. Most were enacted between the 1920 and 1950s to address the Ku Klux Klan’s use of masks and hoods to conceal their identity, according to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.
The Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights reports that Missouri was the third most active state for Patriot Front activity in 2023. If the City Council doesn’t respond with force, more demonstrations are sure to follow.
And it would not be a good look for this city if Patriot Front, or any other hate group, takes center stage when the FIFA World Cup 2026 comes to town next year.
This story was originally published May 27, 2025 at 11:46 AM.
