No suspects after white {sic} supremacist fliers posted in downtown Laurel, police say
SAM WILSON
[email protected] May 10, 2019
Laurel police say they have not identified any suspects in their
investigation into dozens of fliers advertising a white
{sic} supremacist group that were anonymously plastered around town in March.
Dozens of fliers bearing the images, slogans and name of the “American Identity Movement,” an organization formerly known as “Identity Evropa” and identified by multiple human rights organizations as a hate group, appeared around the downtown area on March 25 and 26,
Laurel Police Chief Stan Langve said.
The incident was first reported by the Laurel Outlook.
Langve said it wasn’t clear if the activity violated any criminal laws, although he said his department would move forward on a criminal mischief complaint if any of the businesses that were targeted by the fliers could “articulate some kind of loss” as a result. He said nothing in the reports indicated that police were able to get any surveillance video of the suspects.
But he added the appearance of hate group activity in the town is something his department takes seriously.
“Our reaction is, if you want our attention, you have our undivided attention. We watch them closely, and any time we can make contact, we do,” Langve said.
“It’s one of those cancers you don’t want in your community, so we’re always very vigilant about watching for it.”
The American Identity Movement was launched in March as a re-brand of Identity Evropa, a white
{sic} supremacist organization that aims to “recruit white, college-aged men and transform them into the fashionable new face of white
{sic} nationalism,” according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate group activity throughout the country.
The fliers posted in Laurel included the group’s typical patriotism-theme images, paired with slogans embracing nationalism and white “identity” and rejecting diversity, Langve said. One of them, according to photos published by the Outlook, directed people to the organization’s website.
The patriotic, innocuous-looking images and wording are typical of the group, said Rachel Carroll Rivas, a co-director of the Montana Human Rights Network.
The American Identity Movement’s re-brand appears to be based off of similar “identitarian” movements in Europe, Carroll Rivas said, but also adding a “nationalist spin” to lure in people with strongly patriotic feelings, she said.
But leaders of the group have called for explicitly racist policies, and the organization’s previous leader embraced violence against ethnic and religious minorities.
In a slur-laden interview for a right-wing podcast, former Identity Evropa leader Eli Mosely praised the actions of the Nazis during the Holocaust and claimed to “kill Muslims for fun” while serving in Iraq. A New York Times investigation of Mosely later found he had lied about his supposed deployments, having been a member of the Pennsylvania National Guard who never served overseas.
“They propose the same white supremacist and nationalist ideology that has been out there,” Carroll Rivas said. “Just because they use sort of fancy branding, there is nothing really dramatically different about what they are proposing.”
While no suspects had been identified as of Wednesday, Langve said his department received a separate report at the same time, of a man with a swastika tattoo who yelled at a woman on the street. The woman’s husband is Jewish, Langve said.
“There’s nothing to directly link him to it, other than noting that these signs are popping up and here’s an individual in our community with a swastika on his forehead,” Langve said. “It would be a place to start, obviously.”
He said police did not have any other description of the man.
The American Identity Movement has been associated with other similar actions throughout the state, including in November, when Identity Evropa targeted the campuses of Montana State University Billings and Rocky Mountain College. Previously, similar fliers had also appeared on the Montana State University campus in Bozeman.
In March, the Bozeman Daily Chronicle reported that the Montana National Guard had suspended a cadet in MSU’s ROTC program, who was being investigated for “alleged ties to white
{sic} nationalism” after leaked online messages connected him to the incident.
Carroll Rivas said the group’s motivation for posting the fliers is likely twofold: recruiting of new members and intimidating members of minority groups.
“I think it's something for people to take seriously and be concerned about. We can be dismissive about something like a flier, but it can be pretty intimidating for some people,” she said. “There's been a dramatic rise in hate crimes in our country over the last few years.”
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