White supremacist groups amplified their propaganda campaigns on campuses in 2019, targeting 433 colleges and doubling their efforts from the previous year, according to a recent report by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).
Of the 2,713 White supremacist propaganda incidents in 2019, as many as 630 took place on college campuses – nearly double the 320 tallied in 2018. This is the highest number of propaganda incidents ADL has ever recorded, the report stated.
“Although White supremacists have always leafleted U.S. campuses, their campaign targeting college students ramped up in January 2016 and has continued since then,” according to the ADL Center on Extremism. Their data revealed that in 2019, the various form of propaganda averaged more than seven incidents per day.
The propaganda, in various forms of literature distribution, “is an attempt to normalize the White supremacists’ message and bolster recruitment efforts while targeting minority groups including Jews, Blacks, Muslims, non-White immigrants and the LGBTQ community,” said Oren Segal, ADL’s vice president for the Center on Extremism.
Dr. Sherri Williams, assistant professor in race, media and communication at American University’s School of Communication, sees the dramatic rise as having a two-fold purpose: “to instill fear among students of color and to show a presence of White preservation and White domination.” The propaganda causes “fear, dissension and disunity” among students and faculty, Williams told Diverse.
She further said the distribution of White nationalist material on college campuses is just one aspect of increased activity throughout the country by far-right groups.
“In recent years, it has become more visible, more bold and definitely more violent,” Williams said, citing the murder of Richard Collins, a student from historically Black Bowie State University, on the College Park campus of the University of Maryland in 2017, and the killing of Heather Heyer in Charlottesville, Virginia, a few months later during White nationalist protests at the University of Virginia.
