Stickers promoting a white supremacist fascist group were discovered and removed by AUPD last month in various locations around American University’s campus.
The Patriot Front group has been designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Students found stickers on stop signs, benches on the quad and poles outside lecture halls.
Elizabeth Deal, the assistant vice president for community and internal communication, said AUPD removed two Patriot Front stickers last month. An investigation by the University yielded no suspects, but Deal said she doesn’t think the stickers came from within the community.
“Hate in all forms has no place in our community,” Deal said.
Some of the stickers have remained on campus, but have been peeled off or covered with messages. Other stickers were written over with messages condoning hate.
One outside of Hurst Hall was covered with a quote by activist Emma Goldman.
“To the daring belongs the future,” the quote read.
After becoming aware of the stickers’ locations, AUPD removed them all, according to Deal.
The Patriot Front’s principles are rooted in white nationalism and the group participates in demonstrations across the country to push a fascist agenda, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Images on some of the stickers found on AU’s campus included a man holding a gun and some had a hand holding arrows, with the phrases “United We Stand,” “America First” and “For the Nation Against the State.” Some stickers also had the group’s website information.
Other universities this year have found stickers and traces of the Patriot Front group on their campuses, including Northern Kentucky University, Missouri State University and Xavier University. The supremacist group mainly pushes its rhetoric via flyers, stickers and banners, according to the Anti-Defamation League.
“Patriot Front’s most frequent form of activism has been the distribution of racist and anti-Semitic propaganda on college campuses and in various communities in at least 12 different states,” the Anti-Defamation League wrote in an article about the group. “As of December 13, 2017, the Anti-Defamation League has counted 37 incidents in which Patriot Front flyers, banners or stickers were posted on campuses.”
“For this particular group, we wanted to be very sure that we were not going to give them any attention, as it pertains to awareness and recruiting,” Deal said. “The bottom line is that kind of language and rhetoric has zero place here.”
