A group of white supremacists at an anti-immigration protest in Colorado. | Via ADL In The Arena White Supremacists Have a New Strategy Extremist groups, fearing a crackdown, have launched a stealthy propaganda offensive.

Carla Hill is a senior investigative researcher in the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism.

American white supremacists are facing a dilemma: They want to share their hateful ideology, but they don’t want to face the consequences. They want to find an audience for their racism and anti-Semitism, but they don’t want to get caught. Under increased scrutiny from law enforcement and the media, how do they disseminate their racist ideas and recruit new members, but also limit the risk of doxing, firing and ostracism that comes with public exposure?

Within the past few months, they seem to have landed on an answer that keeps their groups in the spotlight while shielding the individual identities of their members: far more propaganda efforts and fewer pre-announced public events.


There’s a very good chance you’ve seen a white supremacist flyer or banner in the past year. Data collected by the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism shows a staggering 182 percent increase of propaganda incidents in 2018, with 1,187 cases reported, compared with 421 in 2017. This is the highest number of reported propaganda efforts on record.

And the messages are everywhere: Hanging from freeway overpasses, stuck to utility poles, plastered to shop windows or left on the windshields of parked cars. They’re even found tucked into books inside neighborhood book swap boxes, libraries and book stores.

In 2018, white supremacist groups — most notably alt-right mainstays Identity Evropa and Patriot Front — continued to post propaganda on college and university campuses. These efforts, which were not insignificant, were overshadowed by the dramatic increase of their off-campus propaganda. Joined by the Loyal White Knights, a Nazified Klan group, they leveled their attention on urban areas, especially in California, Texas, Colorado, New York, Illinois, Florida and Virginia.

If you know what you’re looking at, the white supremacists’ banners, stickers and flyers clearly convey racism, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. But the messaging is not always overtly hateful. Identity Evropa often posts flyers that appear to be innocuous paeans to Western European art. Patriot Front leans heavily on red, white and blue signage with mainstream conservative messaging, including “America First” and “Fake news — don’t buy it.” When they gather for events, Patriot Front members are far less circumspect about their racism, frequently shouting “Blood and Soil!” — a callback to a Nazi slogan.

The placement of propaganda is often calibrated to elicit a response from a specific community. One flyer campaign by the Daily Stormer Book Clubs, launched after right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones was de-platformed by social media sites, targeted Jewish institutions in multiple states with anti-Semitic flyers accusing Jews of censoring free speech. In another case, a Northern California synagogue was threatened with flyers from the neo-Nazi Atomwaffen Division that warned, “There is no escaping the day of the rope,” and “The kikes are all done!”

And Jews aren’t the only group that has been targeted. Throughout 2018, Patriot Front targeted LGBT resource centers, newspaper publishers, journalists, a human rights law office and a gay political candidate with propaganda messages including, “Better Dead Than Red” and “Patriotism with Teeth.”

Under-the-radar events and stealth propaganda efforts alike shield white supremacists from public exposure and, notably, public displays of opposition. They also provide the groups with invaluable marketing materials.

Non-public situations are easily controlled, and easily manipulated after the fact. The photos and videos from flyering and events are largely shared online, particularly by the alt-right groups, which make up the youngest and most tech-savvy subset of the white supremacist movement.

When they share these images with their virtual community, these groups are patting themselves on the back, celebrating their ability to overcome the obstacles set up by the “mainstream media,” “leftists” and, of course, the Jews.

That’s one thing you can always count on from white supremacist groups: Even as their methods and tactics change, their list of imagined enemies remains the same.