“Not something we can ignore anymore”: White supremacist, extremist activity on the rise across Colorado, experts say

A nonprofit tracking hate incidents says there’s been a dramatic rise so far in 2018

The Denver Post/September 20, 2018

By Elise Schmelzer

Underneath an overpass somewhere in Denver, two members of a white supremacist group painted their blue and white logo so large that they needed a ladder.

A video by Identity Evropa posted Sept. 3 shows two men in sunglasses using rollers to paint the triangle logo before posing in front of it, lit only by the flames of a torch. The video ends with white text on a black screen that reads: “Rediscover Your Identity.”

It’s one of the latest acts in a wave of increased activity by white supremacists and other extremists in Colorado. The emboldened groups are the most active they have been in the state in recent years, and the number of known incidents of hate and bias in Colorado is rising dramatically, experts said.

The Anti-Defamation League has recorded 23 incidents of extremism or anti-Semitism in the state through July of this year, though that number is expected to rise dramatically after data about a rash of white supremacist propaganda in August and September is recorded. In 2017, the Jewish civil rights nonprofit counted 62 incidents, up from 46 the year before.

“Those numbers reflect Colorado catching up with a lot of other states in the country,” said Jessica Reaves, a Denver-based writer with the ADL’s Center on Extremism. “Colorado had remained relatively untouched until this year. Then there was a dramatic increase.”

The database tracks a variety of incidents attributed to extremist groups or unaffiliated individuals, including vandalism, rallies, harassment and propaganda. The data is collected from news stories, government documents, police reports, victim statements and the extremist groups themselves.

Since 2016, the group documented at least 17 times when swastikas were scrawled on Colorado property, including one drawn on the garage door of a Jewish person in Durango and another spray painted on the Aurora home of a Jewish couple. The database also includes an incident at a Lakewood middle school where students chanted “Heil Hitler” and another where a Ku Klux Klan group in Grand Junction posted flyers against the LGBTQ community and “race mixing.” It also notes that a Jewish person was stopped on a street in Boulder and told they do not belong in the U.S. and they will be killed in a gas chamber.

“The dramatic increase is not something we can ignore any more,” said Scott Levin, director of the ADL’s Mountain States Region.

“It’s a great bang for their buck”

So far this year, white supremacist groups have posted propaganda in more than 50 places in Colorado, though the bulk of the flyers and stickers have appeared in communities along the Front Range, according to ADL Colorado staff members.

Last year, they counted 22. The year before: three.

Identity Evropa, a white nationalist group involved in the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va., has been active along the Front Range every week since mid-July, according to its Twitter page. Members have plastered posters and stickers on Denver’s 16th Street Mall and posed with banners in Civic Center park. In the past two months, they have been in Colorado Springs, Boulder, Fort Collins, Wheat Ridge, Greeley, Centennial, Arvada, Aurora and Loveland.

The group identifies itself as “American Identitarians” working to preserve white European and American culture from perceived threats from Muslims, immigrants and rising numbers of nonwhite people in the U.S. The group believes that “ethnic diversity … is an impediment to societal harmony” and that people of European heritage should retain “demographic supermajorities in our homelands,” according to its website. Both the ADL and the Southern Poverty Law Center identify the group as a white supremacist organization, though Identity Evropa disputes that label.

While a spokesman for Identity Evropa initially responded to an interview request from The Denver Post, he did not respond to questions that were later emailed, including whether the group’s membership had grown, why there was a recent increase in activity along the Front Range and where they had painted their mural.

Many of the flyers from Identity Evropa and similar groups are subtle and an attempt to “rebrand white supremacy,” but their beliefs are no less racist, said the ADL’s Reaves. Many reference a need to preserve white identity or advocate for the end of all immigration to the U.S.

“This is not a new phenomena,” Reaves said. “David Duke took off his hood and put on a suit and tie to appear respectable. This is a continuation and reflection of that same kind of thinking.”

Stickers and flyers have appeared on at least nine Colorado college campuses this year, part of an intentional targeting of young people searching for identity and community on campus. The propaganda is also a rebuke of perceived liberal culture on college campuses, Reaves said.

The executive director of Identity Evropa told CSU’s student newspaper in March that flyering was a good way to gain members, though most of their recruiting is done via social media. Casey said his group targets college campuses because they believe universities have an “anti-white” agenda, the Collegian reported.

Colorado also saw an uptick in the number of active hate groups operating in the state last year. The Southern Poverty Law Center tallied 21 hate groups that operate in Colorado, the highest number ever recorded. The number hovered between 15 and 17 over the previous six years.

But a rise in propaganda does not necessarily mean the groups have more members — the number of people involved in these organizations is hard to gauge, Reaves said.

A small number of people with transportation can cover a wide range of territory relatively quickly and make it appear as if there are more people involved, Reaves said. The Ku Klux Klan used a similar tactic to incite fear, she said.

“It causes a great level of anxiety and anger in communities,” Reaves said. “It’s a great bang for their buck.”

While the flyers and posters might seem minor, they normalize the presence of white supremacy in Colorado communities, said Levin, the ADL regional director.

“They’re signs they’re feeling more emboldened,” he said.

“This has been here all along”

The recent rise in activity among extremists and white supremacists is tied to a number of complex and interacting factors, according to scholars who study white supremacy.

These groups have been in Colorado for decades, though the names of the organizations and the language they use to describe their beliefs shift with the times, said Catlyn Keenan, a professor at Front Range Community College who has studied supremacist groups.

“This is an opportunity to really face the music and realize that this has been here all along,” she said. “White people in particular need to recognize it and speak out.”

Mary Ann Grim, a history professor at the community college who has studied Nazism through the decades, said a rising fear of immigrants stoked by conservative politicians helps validate white supremacist views. A loss of working class jobs also fans a belief that immigrants will take those jobs that remain.

White men are particularly susceptible to joining the groups as the bulk of power and status they have retained for decades is distributed among other demographic groups, Keenan said.

“Our young white men are in crisis,” she said. “They’re really, really angry and they’re looking for a scapegoat.”

The groups have also received an accepting or ambivalent reception by some local and federal government administrations, Grim and Keenan said. For example, many groups found affirmation in President Donald Trump’s statements that there were good people on both sides of the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville.

“In the current political climate, the alt-right has received a degree of legitimacy from the administration, both federal and locally, that we haven’t really seen since the 1920s when the KKK was very active,” Keenan said.

The rise could also be attributed to a backlash to the presidency of Barack Obama, according to Grim and Keenan. Obama was elected as part of a social movement championing diversity and inclusion and the recent activity is a backlash to that, they said.

Grim said many of the groups are very similar to those active during the 1910s and 1920s, when the Ku Klux Klan was rebranding itself. They have their own magazines and media, an educated leadership and an ability to meet and demonstrate in public.

“I wish I had a long list of things that are different,” Grim said. “Call it what you want — white supremacy, Nazism, white nationalism — it’s all the same.”

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