Neo-Nazis Hack College Printers to Spit Out Anti-Semitic Flyers

KINGSTON, RI—As the University of Rhode Island prepares to commemorate Holocaust Remembrance Week a week from Sunday, the campus community is mortified after printers and fax machines on campus spit out anti-Semitic flyers emblazoned with swastikas this week.

The same flyers appeared at Brown University in Providence and other schools across the country in an apparent coordinated effort by members of racist hate groups to access network printers on college campuses and distribute the flyers.

The URI campus community was notified of the flyers by way of an email from the Department of Public Safety.

The flyers were found on printers at both the Kingston and Narragansett Bay Campuses, and URI Public Safety Director Stephen Baker said that he expects more reports of flyers after students return from spring break.

In the notification, the school condemned the flyers and said the "hate-filled, racist and anti-Semitic flyers. . .are offensive and contrary to the University's core values of community, equity and diversity that welcome everyone."

The flyers include the web address of The Daily Stormer, a group classified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The Anti Defamation League identified the leader of the group as Andrew Anglin, a neo-Nazi in his 30s who has said that he started the site "to serve as a hardcore front for the conversion of masses of people into a pro-white, anti-Semitic ideology."

Along with probing computer networks to find insecure printers, the group is known to troll people on Twitter and harass through other means, often through the cowardly cloak of anonymous pseudonyms.

The flyers, addressed to "white man" ask: "are you sick and tired of the Jews destroying your country through mass immigration and degeneracy?"

The flyers reportedly have shown up at schools in California, Connecticut, Illinois and in Massachusetts, where UMass Amherst Chancellor Kumble Sabbaswamy said they were cowardly and a reminder that "we must not be complacent as we continue to strive for a society that embraces diversity."

Hillel at the University of Rhode Island is hosting a series of events to commemorate Holocaust Remembrance Week from April 3 to 10.

Among the events is a talk by Alice Goldstein of Warwick, a Holocaust Survivor and retired researcher in population studies at Brown University.

Hillel at URI students also plant a field of flags on the Hammerschalg Mall in memory of the 11 million victims of the Holocaust. Each flag represents 5,000 victims.

Other events during the week include special yoga and meditation classes, a memorial vigil, faculty and student presentations and more.

The Hillel at URI site has more information.