Updated (6/28/2018, 3:44 p.m.) with additional comments from Oren Segal.
White-supremacist propaganda on college campuses is rising sharply, according to data released on Thursday by the Anti-Defamation League.
During the 2017-18 academic year, the ADL’s research arm, the Center on Extremism, recorded 292 instances of white-supremacist propaganda on campuses. That’s a 77-percent increase from the 165 cases it documented in the 2016-17 academic year.
The white-supremacist activity mainly took the form of posters and fliers, the ADL found. In the past year, high-profile controversies at Texas State University, the University of Virginia, and Michigan State University have sparked concern that colleges and universities were becoming targets of the far right.
“Our data shows that white supremacists’ propaganda campaign continues to accelerate, both on and off campus, online and on the ground,” said Oren Segal, director of the Center on Extremism, in a news release. “The alt-right segment of the white-supremacist movement remains a driving force behind this activity.”
College campuses, Segal said, are key to the alt-right’s recruiting.
“The existence of this movement is dependent upon growing its ranks, and they’re looking for younger people who might be disaffected to do that,” Segal told The Chronicle. “College campuses, in many ways, are viewed as bastions of multiculturalism and liberalism, maybe PC culture — all these sort of elements that white supremacists oppose because they feel that those elements are, in part, responsible for their demise.”
Disseminating propaganda on campuses, Segal said, is a way to protest college culture and spread paranoia among students.
“Somebody might come across that on the quad or on a bulletin board, and think to themselves, ‘Jeez, are these people actually living in my dorm, or are they in the community?’” Segal said.
The propaganda cited by the ADL included attacks on blacks, Jews, Muslims, immigrants, the LGBTQ community, and other minority groups. The propaganda was focused on campuses in Texas and California, where the white-supremacist groups Identity Evropa and Patriot Front are most active, according to the ADL.
Since 2016 the ADL has documented 478 incidents of propaganda on 287 campuses in 47 states and the District of Columbia. Identity Evropa was behind nearly half of those cases, the ADL said, while Patriot Front, which was founded in August 2017, accounted for 70 cases.
Segal said the ADL derives its data from news reports, complaints filed to its regional offices, and the white-supremacist groups themselves, who often publicize their activities. Segal’s staff works to confirm each incident through third parties.
Other sources have corroborated a concerted focus by white supremacists on college campuses. BuzzFeed News reported last year that it had confirmed more than 150 cases of hate speech and violence on 120 campuses in the 10 months since President Trump’s election.
“They are not just sort of doing as a tactic on the ground, in terms of the dissemination of message,” Segal said, “but they are echoing the concerns that are in our headlines and in the public discussion every day.”
