Local white supremacists targeted Champaign and Urbana again with propaganda drops around the Martin Luther King, Jr holiday. Flyers in baggies weighted with rocks were distributed targeting at least a couple neighborhoods, including the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr subdivision. The incidents were raised in public comments at both Champaign and Urbana City Council meetings recently. From WCIA's coverage last month:
Authorities in Champaign and Urbana are investigating after people woke up this weekend to flyers saying “No White Guilt.”
This isn’t the first time these flyers have shown up in Central Illinois.
People in Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. subdivision in Champaign and Ellis Drive in Urbana woke up Friday morning to a flyer saying “no white guilt.”
...
Urbana Police are currently investigating, but have no leads at the time. With no suspects or anyone in custody, people are living in fear.
Full WCIA article available here. WCIA also had coverage of previous incidents in Champaign County with nearly identical flyers promoting the same white supremacist links and organizations in a 2019 article and video segment. Images and descriptions of the most recent flyers have been shared on social media locally (e.g. here and here).
Illinois Newsroom had additional coverage of the most recent incidents a couple weeks ago:
[Melanie Keil], who is white and married to a Black man, believes her mostly-Black Champaign neighborhood was targeted.
“I do think this was a coordinated effort that it was meant to be a statement in advance of Martin Luther King Day in the Martin Luther King Jr subdivision,” says Keil.
The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks the movements of hate organizations, wrote in an article that there’s a white nationalist podcaster and vlogger known by the phrase. Last week, there were reports of the flyers appearing at homes in Whitestown, Indiana and Montgomery County, Pennsylvania.
That full article including a Champaign Police response here. For more details of the local extremists blamed for these incidents, Chicago Antifascist Action has catalogued the activities, on-line admissions, police records and other information about two extremists in the area likely responsible here and the other here [Warning: these links include overt white supremacist propaganda and imagery]. We caution readers that internet sleuthing sites can be unreliable and law enforcement has not confirmed or alleged that these incidents were committed by these same actors.
These white supremacist propaganda drops are just the most recent among white nationalist activity in the area in recent years. For example:
- A local clinic was targeted by a white nationalist group that had already firebombed a mosque.
- A white nationalist group has regularly papered campus and downtown Champaign with propaganda promoting their "western chauvinism" re-branding of white nationalist ideology. The Daily Illini had more here.
There have been other recent incidents of propaganda drops locally and East Central Illinois that also promote the New Jersey hate group in these flyers. The Anti-Defamation League has an overview of that particular hate group on their website here. The independent newspaper The Public i had coverage of previous drops last year here.
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