White supremacist propaganda doubled last year, new report finds

Incidents of white supremacist propaganda more than doubled in the US in 2019 , the second year in succession to have seen a leap of more than 100 per cent.

Three years into the presidency of Donald Trump, a leader who was criticised after failing to condemn racist hate groups who terrorised the city of Charlottesville, experts say college campuses are a focal point for much of the propaganda being disseminated.

Three groups in particular – Patriot Front, American Identity Movement and the New Jersey European Heritage Association – were responsible for approximately 90 per cent of the activity, a report by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) found.

It said that incidents of white supremacist propaganda had been identified in every US state except Hawaii.

“White supremacists see propaganda distribution – including fliering, leafleting and stickering – as a convenient and practically anonymous way to promote their messages of hate and intolerance,” said ADL chief executive officer Jonathan Greenblatt.

“While we know extremists and hate groups are emboldened by the current environment, this surge in fliering and propaganda distribution powerfully demonstrates how bigots are able to spread their message without compromising their anonymity.”

The ADL, which describes itself as the world leading anti-hate organisation and which was formed in 1913, identified three groups as being behind 90 per cent of the material.

It said the Texas-based Patriot Front was responsible for 66 per cent of all propaganda incidents, far more than any other group. The group distributed propaganda in all but two states, Hawaii and Delaware, but was most active in Texas, California, Massachusetts, Ohio, Virginia and New York.

It said since its formation in August 2017, Patriot Front has used its own iteration of “patriotism” to promote its white supremacist and neo-fascist ideology. In 2019, the group continued to use red, white and blue colour-schemed propaganda.

Experts say Patriot Front was formed from members who broke from another white supremacist group, Vanguard America, in the wake of the Unite the Right white supremacist rally in the Virginia college town of Charlottesville.

In the summer of that year, violence broke out after white supremacists and other neo-Nazis marched through the city with flaming torches, purportedly to protest against a decision to remove statues of Confederate officers.

A young woman, Heather Heyer, an anti-Nazi demonstrator, was killed after one of the white supremacists, 20-year-old James Alex Fields, drove a vehicle into a group of people.

He was found guilty of murder and sentenced to life and 419 years in jail as part of a plea deal that saw him escape the death penalty.

Mr Trump faced a wave of criticism when he said there had been “very fine people on both sides” at Charlottesville.

Oren Segal, of the ADL’s centre on extremism, said the “barrage of propaganda” featured veiled white supremacist language with a “patriotic” slant, is an attempt to normalise the white supremacists’ message.

Additional reporting by Associated Press