Fliers credited to neo-Nazi, white supremacist group American Identity Movement
Updated at 4:46 p.m.
New information has emerged regarding the anti-Semitic fliers posted around campus on Monday, Sept. 23. UC Davis Campus Police Chief Joe Farrow spoke with The California Aggie about the incident, saying the fliers were posted by members of the American Identity Movement, also known as Identity Evropa, which explicitly affiliates itself with neo-Nazi and white supremacist ideology.
The group was founded in 2016 by Nathan Damigo, an Iraq war veteran, and it is known for distributing fliers on college campuses to “build name recognition,” according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. Damigo helped plan the fatal Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in August of 2017.
There were three different types of fliers distributed that day: the first, posted in Mrak Hall, contained the slogan “Nationalism Not Globalism,” framed by United States insignia; the second contained the name of the group; the third was a decal.
Farrow noted that the fliers seemed to be more “recruitment-based” than in previous years.
“My personal reaction [to this] is extreme disappointment,” Farrow said. “I think it angers most of us that we’re such a diverse campus and we’re so inclusive and […] things like [this] are distributed on campus that are meant to divide [us]. It disappoints us.”
Farrow stressed that he didn’t believe the fliers were affiliated with anyone in the community, adding that “the trend [we’ve] seen across the nation is that these groups try to grow in strength and try to recruit and pay people to distribute these messages so they can cause a reaction and recruit members.”
Farrow added that he believes the group’s actions were motivated by “opportunity and will,” saying the fliers are distributed by “[individual people] who try to raise their point of view in the largest audience possible.” He also said he thinks the UC Davis community is “stronger” than the messages conveyed in the fliers.
Correction: A previous version of this article contained a factual error regarding the content of the fliers. Chief Joseph Farrow has clarified that he misspoke regarding the number and content of the fliers. There were only three posted. A flyer containing a Twitter excerpt saying that “the group is an American neo-Nazi and white supremacist organization […its] members have pushed for what they described as the ‘Nazification of America'” was not found on campus.
Written by: Rebecca Bihn-Wallace — campus@theaggie.org
