Texas leads U.S. in racist propaganda
Over last two years, San Antonio saw more white supremacy than in previous decade
WASHINGTON — White supremacists are dropping more racist propaganda in Texas than any other state in the nation, according to a new Anti-defamation League report that found a 61 percent jump in such incidents in the state.
The organization recorded 527 incidents in Texas last year, with white supremacist propaganda spreading at a faster clip in the state than the rest of the nation, which saw a 38 percent increase in incidents. The 6,751 cases reported nationally in 2022 marked the highest number of white supremacist propaganda incidents the ADL has ever recorded.
In 2021 and 2022, San Antonio saw more incidents involving white supremacy — including propaganda and events — than it did during the previous decade.
The number of recorded incidents rose steadily from zero in 2011 to 11 in 2020 before a sharp increase to 31 incidents in 2021.
“We’re disappointed and alarmed to see Texas at the top of the list,” said Mark Toubin, an ADL regional director based in Houston. “Over the past year and a half, many residents in our region have reported white supremacist propaganda strewn overnight on their lawn or driveway within rock-filled plastic bags. In response, all Texans must resist these efforts at intimidation as well as speak out against this unconcealed display of antisemitism and hate.”
The report follows a stream of reports of antisemitic and racist flyers dropped on neighborhoods across the state.
Three groups — the Texasbased Patriot Front, the Goyim Defense League and White Lives Matter — were responsible for 93 percent of the propaganda activity across the nation, according to the ADL. Texas-based Patriot Front distributed 80 percent of the white supremacist propaganda last year, including in every state except Alaska and Hawaii.
The Goyim Defense League was especially active in Texas, Toubin said. The group undertook a major propaganda campaign in 2022, but it is unclear why it focused so much of its energy on the state, he said.
For the last several years, no area of San Antonio has been safe from thousands of pieces of white supremacy propaganda that have plagued neighborhoods.
While city leaders publicly announced that “racism and hatred are not welcome” in San Antonio after a Hollywood Park neighborhood was plastered with flyers denouncing Black Lives Matter by a white supremacy group in 2020, it began a string of more
publicized hate messages appearing around the city.
Signage advocating for white power and recruitment to neo-nazi groups began appearing more frequently. Posters and stickers declaring allegiances to white nationalism were found throughout The Village at Stone Oak shopping center in October 2021. Alamo Heights residents awoke to antisemitic flyers in February 2022. And the following month, a West Side neighborhood found plastic bags of dog food with a paper saying “White Power” thrown on lawns.
Outside of San Antonio, which logged 14 incidents of reported propaganda in 2021 and 17 the following year, Helotes police collected 81 flyers featuring antisemitic COVID-19 conspiracies.
It was a nearly weekly occurrence in the Houston region, one of the most diverse areas of the country, according to the ADL analysis.
Residents in the Heights found them with pictures of Adolf Hitler, swastikas and slogans reading “White Lives Matter.” Flyers with the image of a smiling white dog with the words “I love being white” at the top and the website for the Aryan Freedom Network at the bottom were found in Katy. An Atascocita family found printouts with Hitler beside the words, “We Can Do It Again.”
Toubin said the ADL logged at least 50 incidents in the Houston area, a massive increase from 15 that were reported the year before.
“It creates anxiety. It creates fear. It makes people angry,” he said. “From their standpoint, those are the kinds of reactions they want.”
Extremism is “an attempt to try to pit one group against another,” Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner said. “Because people started coming in trying to get people to be fearful of people who they may not know. People feel like their existence has been threatened, that there’s this invasion coming.”
Draping banners over highway overpasses and distributing antisemitic, racist and ANTI-LGBTQ+ fliers are practices white supremacist groups used nationwide to “publicize their hate” in 2022.
The flyers were a “major, major piece of it” in Texas, Toubin said, in part because in most cases it will not get members arrested. Speech is protected, and unless they are caught trespassing, there’s little room for prosecution, he said. The groups then go online to brag about the anxiety their leaflets cause, which drives engagement and donations, he said.
“It’s like, ‘Hey, look what we’re doing,’ ” he said. “This is the way that a small group of people can magnify their impact. By putting out this filth.”
Texas also saw the most on-campus propaganda, ADL data shows. The anti-hate organization recorded 219 incidents of white supremacist propaganda distribution on campuses in the U.S., a 6 percent decrease from 2021 and the lowest number since ADL began tracking in 2017.