College campuses have attracted national and political attention recently, due to the spaces of free speech that they boast — or their perceived lack thereof — with NC just passing House Bill 527 to create protections for it. Ongoing arguments concerning this issue maintain that problematic hate speech should be shut down, or that shutting down any kind of speech is a threat to American freedom and civility.
With this in mind, I am not writing to encourage students to shut down speech on campus that they may disagree with, but rather to warn about hateful propaganda and to turn away from it.
I came across an image of flyers placed around campus reading “IDENTITY EVROPA” on the infamous Wolfpack Students Facebook group, and saw it as an imperative to alert students who weren’t aware of the presence of this alt-right and white pride propaganda on campus.
Many typical liberal students likely complain about most kinds of right-wing content posted in and around college campuses, such as those from the nationwide conservative student organization, Turning Point USA, who are known for their “Big Government Sucks!” slogan. However, this new propaganda that has been placed around NC State is a cause for alarm of a considerably larger magnitude than any other political organization aimed at students.
On Monday young men of the organization gathered with supplies at the Free Expression Tunnel to paint a stencil across the entire length of the walls that repeated the message “IDENTITY EVROPA”, with “Evropa” being a stylized version of “Europa”, the figure in Greek mythology after which the continent of Europe is named.
Their website showcases some of the literature that contains the ideals which they champion. The organization states that they stand to protect against the dramatic decline of Europeans worldwide in their presence and culture.
Though this description alone may not raise some concern, don’t be fooled; further reading and research uncovers the dark motives of their mission statement. They seek to form a European resistance against the “gravest peril” in their [white individuals] existence: demographic collapse, submission to alien colonization and to Islam, and collapse of Euro-American [white] supremacy.
Their literature is featured on a known white nationalist website, American Renaissance, where more of what they stand for is outlined clearly, such as — you guessed it — genetic superiority to other races, as well as being against immigration, Islam, interracial relationships and racial and cultural diversity in the United States.
If all of this wasn’t alarming enough to get up and tell someone about this, IDENTITY EVROPA supports and is supported by the alt-right think tank, the National Policy Institute, which is run by the well-known racist Richard Spencer. Spencer caused special controversy by making Nazi hand salutes while speaking at an Alt-Right conference last year, and has openly voiced his beliefs of racial supremacy throughout as many media outlets as possible.
The reality is that the political climate under our current presidency has given racist groups like this a rhetorical space to broadcast these beliefs that once went mostly unheard. This is not to say the Trump administration knowingly sponsors or supports groups like IDENTITY EVROPA, but has assisted in providing them with an ethos and platform for their discourse.
Unfortunately, other occurrences of racial hatred have scourged NC State before. GroupMe messages between students that contained racist language against African-Americans were exposed last September, creating strong racial tension early into the school year.
Last November, hateful propaganda from another white supremacist organization appeared inside boxes of the Nubian Message, NC State’s own African-American newspaper publication. This is a smaller but no less significant instance of the information and politics that IDENTITY EVROPA is attempting to spread, which can only do evil by making students of color and other marginalized groups feel less safe and welcome on campus, and encouraging racial prejudice in spaces of higher education.
Beyond this, it tarnishes the appearance and reputation of a university that plasters the pride of cultural and racial diversity across its grounds. With NC State constantly brandishing this pride, it should make efforts to educate students on the dangers of propaganda such as this in order to ascertain that such messages and rhetoric on our campus will not be accepted or supported by the student body. This should include a future where a form of consequence or required educational course is given to students who are found to be openly spreading racial prejudice and hatred.
Racism and Islamophobia is being glamorized and romanticized and advertised casually during this time and, as students and residents of a diverse campus and nation, I urge everyone to heed this warning in the ongoing fight to protect our fellow students from the vicious rise of modern white supremacy.
