Phoenix, AZ: #MyBordersMyChoice Neo-Nazi Propaganda Efforts Foiled by Antifascists

As the radical right wing movement continues to splinter due to poor strategy, infighting, and general lack of consistency, members of hate-havens 4chan and 8chan called for a propaganda action on US college campuses, and public areas on the night of January 21st, under the hashtag #MyBordersMyChoice, (one of the featured slogans on one of the two flier designs they had). The callout post on 4chan had explicitly called to place anti-immigrant posters on college campuses, specifically places with high traffic, or buildings related to “feminism & SJW related areas,” in hopes of getting a reaction out of those who would come back to classes the next day and see them.

Poster from the group ‘Vanguard America’ found with the #MyBordersMyChoice flyers, shows the connection between neo-Nazi groups and those putting up the posters. James Alex Fields, the man suspected of killing Heather Heyer, is also suspected to be a member of the organization.

In years past, Arizona State University in Tempe, AZ has been an on-again, off-again site of white nationalist campus recruiting, with efforts made by, primarily, the now defunct National Youth Front, and Identity Evropa to flier, recruit, and organize rallies on the campus. Recent history includes a 2015 National Youth Front flyering and intimidation campaign aimed at harassing and intimidating an ASU professor teaching a class about the construct of whiteness, which eventually led to the NYF and assorted neo-Nazi’s openly rallying on the ASU campus, and being confronted by a large group of local anti-fascists.

With that said, anarchists and antifascists have also kept a consistent presence on the campus, postering, flyering, distributing literature, and dropping at least a dozen banners over the ASU bridge on University Drive, a main traffic artery through Tempe. These efforts have also included the removal and destruction of white supremacist propaganda found on campus. Recently, Identity Evropa propaganda was rounded up and burned by antifascists who left posters of their own and a mosaic for Argentine anarchist Santiago Maldonado, and in December, Identity Evropa stepped up their game with a banner drop in Downtown Tempe, which was quickly seized and burned by local anarchists as well.

https://twitter.com/afaphx/status/955406238065377281

And so, seeing as how this has been contested territory as of late, we figured it was a pretty good guess that ASU would once again be a site for neo-Nazi propaganda efforts on the night of 1/21. At around 9:00 PM, a large group of antifascists met on the campus and organized themselves into patrols with the goal of cleaning the campus and potentially identifying those responsible. The area was swept and a large amount of #MyBordersMyChoice posters (a perversion of “My Body, My Choice”, a slogan picked to specifically coincide with the Women’s March) and posters politicizing the death of Kate Steinle, a woman killed in San Francisco, of which an undocumented migrant went to trial for and was acquitted, were found.

Recent antifascist banner drop at ASU.

Around 50 fliers were found in total, a large increase in prior instances, and it was determined that at least two people were involved, with the comparison of fliers, and techniques used to post them. After we were confident that we had rounded up the significant majority of fascist materials, we moved to a nearby park and disposed of them by fire.

It should be made clear that no ground will be ceded to these racist idiots on the campus, or anywhere else their organizing efforts pop up. Malleable times call for a two front approach of seizing new territory opened up by the deteriorating political, economic, and social situation, and simultaneously denying those who would wish death upon entire peoples this same space. Where they are, we will be too, and in greater numbers.

ASU is Antifa territory!

-an antifa participant