This Patriot Front member got a stern ultimatum from his mom: 'Get out of my house'

On Saturday, May 11, White nationalist and Utah resident Jared Boyce was among the 31 members of Patriot Front who were arrested in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho for alleging plotting to attack a gay pride event being held there that day. One person who strongly disapproves of Boyce’s involvement in Patriot Front is his mother, Karen Amsden. According to the Daily Beast, Amsden gave her son a stern ultimatum: either give up Patriot Front, or get out of my house.

Patriot Front, not to be confused with a far-right militia group in the Pacific Northwest called Patriot Prayer, is an offshoot of the neo-Nazi group Vanguard America — whose members were among the participants in the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017. After that infamous event, White nationalist Thomas Rousseau — one of the people arrested in Coeur d’Alene — left Vanguard America and formed his own group, Patriot Front.

When the Daily Beast interviewed Amsden on Monday, June 13, she made it abundantly clear that she wants her 27-year-old son to discontinue his involvement with Patriot Front — and she was willing to throw him out of her house to make her point.

Amsden told the Beast, “I would love to do whatever I can to out him (as a Patriot Front member) so that he can’t be a part of it. And that they don’t want him to be a part of their group because his mom has loose lips and a big mouth and he’s never going to get away with anything.”

The 31 Patriot Front members arrested on May 11, including Amsden and Rousseau, have been charged with conspiracy to riot. According to police, the group members were armed with riot gear, shields and a smoke grenade.

Amsden told the Beast that after the arrests were made in Coeur d’Alene, she knew that her son was one of them.

“I could tell it was him,” Amsden recalled. “And I had tried calling his phone, and it was just going straight to voicemail — and then, later, I was able to access the jail website and confirm that he was one of the guys that was arrested. It’s a sick feeling.”

Amsden has been trying to get her son to leave Patriot Front, and she is hoping that being arrested and facing criminal charges will be a “wake-up” call for him.

“He’s so misguided and bought into all their rhetoric,” Amsden told the Beast. “It just makes me sick…. This is not who I raised. This is not the example that was set for him.”

In the past, according to Amsden, Boyce had a tattoo of Buddha and talked about “not letting anger rule you.” But that was before he joined Patriot Front.

“He totally changed when he found this group,” Amsden told the Beast. “I first understood how far he’d gone when he was denying the Holocaust — and one of my personal heroes is Anne Frank. And when he told me that, I thought he was kidding. Like, how can you? I just didn’t even know what to say.”

Boyce has been released on bail. And when Amsden gave him her ultimatum, he chose Patriot Front.

Amsden explained, “I told him, ‘Well, then you can’t live here. You can choose between Patriot Front and your family.’ And he’s like, ‘Well, I can’t quit Patriot Front.’ I’m like, ‘Well, then, you've just chosen. So, pack your stuff and get out of my house.’”