Identity Evropa used to be called National Youth Front and this is their second, maybe third time on campus. Seems the fash have a thing for our old stomping grounds!

NEW BRUNSWICK, NJ – When racist flyers by the White supremacist group Identity Evropa appeared on the Rutgers University campus earlier this week, it generated a lot of media attention and made the Rutgers community aware of the presence of neo-Fascists on their campus. This, however is only the latest incident involving such hatemongers at Rutgers, nor is it the first this Identity Evropa revealed themselves there.

According to news reports, the flyers were found posted on buildings on the College Avenue, Douglass and Livingston campuses, appearing to be the usual recruitment posters that Identity Evropa have been known for and have posted on other campuses around the country. They were eventually removed because the group is not a recognized university organization and the fliers violated Rutgers’ posting rules, but the Targum, the Rutgers University student newspaper noted that on Feb 14 another hate group called Vanguard America launched a similar flyer recruitment campaign that particularly targeted Muslims for scorn and less than a month later, a flyer posted to several official class Facebook pages on behalf of the Rutgers Conservative Union (RCU) was copied nearly word for word from Vanguard America’s website. Sophomore Dylan Marek, who was also a member of the RCU and who’s Twitter page describes him as a “hardcore American nationalist”, eventually admitted that the website was indeed where he found the template for the flyers and resigned from the group just this semester, while RCU President Nick Knight said that while the flyers were approved by the group it wasn’t known where they originated.

On Jan 31, when Rutgers students, many of them Muslim, rallied on College Ave against Donald Trump’s Muslim ban that was imposed only days earlier and Knight, along with other members of the RCU, counter protested the event with Bill Foster Jr. of South River, NJ, the founder of Sons of Exile, an organization touts itself on its website as an “American Nationalist” organization and have appeared at other rallies on campus wearing attire with the emblem of Operation Werewolf, a White supremacist group based in Lynchburg, VA.

Both Identity Evropa and Vanguard America were present at the Aug. 12 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, VA where clashes ensued after the neo-Fascists attending attacked counterprotesters. One of them, 20-year-old James Alex Fields, who was seen earlier in formations with the fascists holding a shield emblazoned with the Vanguard America emblem was arrested and charged with murder after he allegedly drove his car into a crowd of people, klilling 34-year-old Charlottesville resident Heather Heyer.

Identity Evropa was started in 2014 as the National Youth Front by another organization, the American Freedom Party, who’s director, attorney Alex Carmichael lives in Kinnelon, NJ and was just recently awarded Knight of the Year by that town’s chapter of the Knights of Columbus. In 2015, then National Youth Front leader Angelo John Gage and other members began a flyering campaign at Rutgers against one professor and demanded the University fire him for remarks they have determined to be anti-white. The professor was never fired, and Gage, who was banned from Boston University for attempting to get a Black professor there fired as well, eventually stepped down while National Youth Front was forced to change its name to its current one because an organization called Youthfront, Inc. threatened a lawsuit.

Rutgers University released a statement condemning all acts and statements of bigotry, racism, anti-Semitism and white supremacy, which have no place in its society or on its campus.