Propaganda posters for a white supremacist group were spotted on North Dakota State’s campus a mere week after celebrating Welcoming Week, a nationwide movement encouraging communities to bring together immigrants, refugees and native-born residents to raise awareness of the benefits of welcoming everyone.
“I found them this past Monday,” Mary McCall, assistant professor of English, said.
Walking from the staff parking lot to her office in Minard Hall, McCall cut through the Reineke Fine Arts Center and glanced at the bulletin board next to the coffee shop, quickly identifying the group’s logo.
McCall recognized the logo because of correspondence she’d had with faculty at her previous institution, Purdue University, where the group had already posted the same propaganda.
Their logo can also be seen embroidered on a T-shirt a white supremacist is wearing in a famous photo from the Charlottesville rally.
McCall took photos of the posters before notifying Elizabeth Birmingham, Chair of the English department at NDSU.
Birmingham removed the flyers and reported the posters to NDSU’s equity and diversity center, residence life and campus security.
Birmingham said the vice provost’s office responded within an hour of the report and is looking into the situation more in depth.
The flyers belong to Identity Evropa.
According to photos tweeted by the white supremacist group, the flyers were posted on multiple bulletin boards around campus including the basement of the West Dining Center, Minard Hall and the Quentin Burdick Building until they were removed.
Other universities have seen similar propaganda flyers from Identity Evropa on their campus this week alone and include Ohio State University, Sacramento State University, Georgia Institute of Technology, Nova Community College, New York University, University of Central Florida and Arizona State University.
At least a dozen other campuses reported sites of similar propaganda flyers during the first week of the current school year and 65 incidents during the 2016-2017 school year, per the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).
The ADL, whose mission is to secure justice and fair treatment to all, calls Identity Evropa “a white supremacist group focused on the preservation of ‘white American culture’ and (promotes) white European identity.”
The group has participated in events organized by other white supremacist groups in protests against Muslims and immigration.
Most notably, Identity Evropa members joined the Unite the Right rallies in Charlottesville in August and displayed banners in Atlanta in support of Trump’s repeal of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.
The organization is responsible for the “You will not replace us” chant.
Major corporations have taken a stance against the group.
Venmo and Visa have deleted the organization’s accounts and stopped all payments respectively. Amazon deleted the affiliate store of the group from their site.
Facebook, Twitter and Instagram have deleted most accounts associated with Identity Evropa.
There have been no reports of these flyers on campus since the flyers’ removal.