Audio By Carbonatix
Posters and stickers promoting an alleged white supremacist group were found on Arizona State University’s campus Tuesday. Online, the hate group, known as Identity Evropa, shared images of the posters on display at the Tempe campus as a part of a campaign to advertise on college campuses.
An ASU student was leaving class Tuesday afternoon when he walked past the Memorial Union, where the triangular logo of the hate group on a large sticker caught his attention. After checking other bulletin boards, the student found a poster near a pedestrian bridge on University Drive.
“I am deeply disconcerted by this happening and I am perhaps even disturbed by the apathy of the students and especially the administration towards this so far,” the ASU student told Phoenix New Times in an email. “The idea that there are white supremacists organizing on ASU’s campus makes me feel significantly less safe, especially because I am willing to resist such actions and quickly identify them.”
Arizona State University
— IDENTITY EVROPA (@IdentityEvropa) September 28, 2017
(Tempe, AZ) #ProjectSiege pic.twitter.com/bGZLiZqf6u
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The student said he is active in the Young Democratic Socialists of America at ASU but asked to remain anonymous. He photographed the poster and sticker, and then removed them because he didn’t want the images to intimidate students. He showed them to New Times.
“ASU officials have searched campus today and seen no such fliers,” a university spokesperson said in an emailed statement. “However, sometimes ASU, like other universities, has experienced strange notes from strange people who are not a part of the ASU community being posted around campus.”
The statement continued: “It’s sad when this happens because these do not represent the views of the ASU community. … Ensuring the safety and security of our students is a top priority, and the university undertakes extensive efforts to make sure student safety is not compromised. ASU is a place where open debate can thrive and honest disagreements can be explored, but not when hateful rhetoric is used. That is not who we are.”
A large sticker displayed on ASU’s campus on Tuesday features the logo of a white supremacist group.
Joseph Flaherty
The Identity Evropa posters encourage people to visit the group’s website and feature slogans such as “Our Generation, Our Future, Our Last Chance.”
The site tells visitors that members of the hate group are “a generation of awakened Europeans who have discovered that we are part of the great peoples, history, and civilization that flowed from the European continent. … We oppose those who would defame our history and rich cultural heritage. In a time when every other people are asserting their identity, without action, we will have no chance to resist our dispossession.”
On Thursday, the white supremacists’ Twitter account shared images of posters on the ASU campus in Tempe with the hashtag #ProjectSiege. The hashtag is an apparent reference to a campaign to spread the word on various college campuses nationwide, judging by the other photos with the hashtag, which show posters at campuses from the University of Montana to New York University.
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, 31-year-old Nathan Damigo founded Identity Evropa in March 2016 at California State University – Stanislaus. Damigo, the SPLC writes, is one of several of media-savvy, but no less dangerous, white supremacists to emerge out of the so-called alt-right; other prominent figures include Richard Spencer and Milo Yiannopoulos.
The SPLC’s extremist file says that “Damigo represents a case study in how right-wing extremist ideologies have transformed from the age of Skinheads and Klansmen to the age of the so-called ‘Alt-right.'”
