White Supremacists Target Illinois In Record Year For Propaganda

CHICAGO, IL — White supremacist propaganda materials, including the distribution racist, anti-Semitic and Islamophobic fliers, stickers, banners and posters, are showing up in cities across the country, including in Illinois, according to a new report from the Anti-Defamation League. White supremacy incidents increased 182 percent in 2018 compared to the year before, the report said.

Illinois reported 126 total incidents for 2017-2018, including one terrorist plot or attack, six white supremacist events, 72 reports of white supremacist propaganda and 47 anti-Semitic incidents. The incidents are plotted on the first-of-its-kind interactive map developed by ADL experts in its Center on Extremism that details extremist and anti-Semitic incidents in the United States.

In Chicago alone, there were 59 reported incidents, including six reports of white supremacist events (accounting for all the reported events in the state), 29 reports of white supremacist propaganda and 24 anti-Semitic incidents.

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The Illinois terrorist plot or attack referred to in the report happened in Champaign, where several men plotted a failed bombing of the Women's Health Practice in November 2017. In January 2019, two Illinois men pleaded guilty to throwing a pipe bomb into the abortion clinic, but it did not explode.

The same men also admitted their role in a bombing at a mosque in Minnesota in August 2017. In that attack, the men broke a window and threw a lit pipe bomb and gasoline mixture through a window at the Dar al-Farooq Islamic Center, causing an explosion, fire and extensive damage. Though the attack happened just as morning prayers were about to begin, no one was hurt.

Most of the 1,187 incidents of propaganda nationwide — up from 421 incidents in 2017 — occurred on college campuses, the ADL said in its report. There were 868 incidents on college campuses, up from 129 the year before.

Much of the propaganda is distributed in flyers that allow those distributing them to remain anonymous in the face of increasing scrutiny of their beliefs yet still get their message across and recruit new members. Many of the flyers show either Andrew Jackson or George Washington on horseback with text that states: “European roots, American greatness.”

“Under intensified public scrutiny, white supremacists are facing a Catch-22: As individuals, they want to remain anonymous and invisible, but they need to promote their organizations and ideology,” the ADL said in its report. “Their solution: Increased propaganda efforts, which allow them to maximize media and online attention, while limiting the risk of individual exposure, negative media coverage, arrests and public backlash.”

The two most prolific alt-right groups on college campuses were Identity Evropa, a group that recruits white, college-aged men and was responsible for 191 incidents. The other is Texas-based Patriot Front, which contributed 51 incidents. Members of that group claim “ethnic and cultural origins” of their European ancestors to espouse racism, anti-Semitism and intolerance.

Other groups that were active were Andrew Anglin supporters known as the Daily Stormer Book Clubs, which targeted campuses in 29 incidents. Neo-Nazi groups such as Vanguard America and the National Socialist Legion, as well as the now-defunct Traditionalist Worker Party, also participated in a few incidents.

But the groups were active off campus as well and dusting places like libraries, bookstores and community book-exchange boxes with their flyers. That is a tactic “long favored by neo-Nazis, Klan groups and other white supremacists,” the ADL said.

Off-campus incidents skyrocketed to 868 in 2018, up from 129 the year before, according to the report. The Patriot Front was the most active in off-campus flyer distributions with 324, with Identity Evropa close behind with 312. Daily Stormer followers were responsible for 34 of the incidents.

And though the Ku Klux Klan is declining in popularity, 11 of its groups were responsible for 97 incidents of flyers being left on doorsteps or driveways across the country — a 20 percent increase from the preceding four-year average of 77 incidents a year. North Carolina-based Loyal White Knights, a Nazified Klan group known for its vitriolic and often anti-Semitic propaganda, was the most active, with 78 of the 97 incidents occurring in 2018, primarily in Maryland, Pennsylvania and Virginia.

About 5 percent of off-campus distributions were attributed to neo-Nazi groups such as Atomwaffen Division, National Alliance, National Socialist Legion, National Socialist Movement and Vanguard America.

Other hate-spreading techniques included white supremacist banners, which in 2018 were placed in 32 highly visible locations, including highway overpasses. During a 10-month period from May 2017 to March 2018, white supremacist groups used banners an average of seven times a month.

Patriot Front displayed banners 21 times in 2018, and Identity Evropa used them nine times. Most of the banners conveyed an anti-immigrant message, but one notable exception was a banner in Virginia attributed to the Daily Stormer Book Club that is based in that state. It claimed “James Fields did nothing wrong.” Fields was convicted of murdering Heather Heyer when he drove his car into a crowd at a “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017.

Read the full report and see where hate groups are most active.