LSU students have spotted stickers belonging to the far-right, white supremacist hate group Patriot Front in several locations around campus. 

A Black LSU student who spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation from the group spotted stickers on electrical poles around the LSU Lakes, UREC and another on South Stadium Drive near Knapp Hall on Tuesday. She tore one of them down. It reads, “America is not for sale” and includes an address to the group’s website.

Another student said she spotted three or four stickers on light poles near the LSU Union and a Patriot Front banner hanging off the bridge near Acadian Thruway on Interstate 10, which has now been removed. She also spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Patriot Front is a Texas-based white nationalist hate group whose members call for the formation of a white ethnostate, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. The group’s activities typically include anonymously posting flyers, stickers and draping banners over buildings and overpasses to promote their ideology. 

“They’re not calling themselves the Klan. They’re not using swastikas or things along those lines, but they ultimately want the same thing,” said Bryan McCann, an LSU rhetoric and cultural studies professor. “They see the U.S. as the birthright of white people and want to essentially ethnically cleanse the United States.”

Though this is the first time the group is known to have made its presence known at LSU, their propaganda has been spotted in Shreveport, Louisiana, and at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette in 2018 and 2019. 

“It definitely indicates that they have a presence in Baton Rouge and that LSU is a place they’re interested in spreading their message,” McCann said. 

LSU Student Body President Javin Bowman said he’s meeting with the dean of students Monday to discuss the matter and find a solution. He encouraged students to tear the stickers down and report them in the meantime. 

“To cultivate a truly inclusive environment and make sure all students are safe, we have to make sure that hateful groups and supremacists do not impede upon the tiger experience for our diverse community and students of color,” Bowman said. 

Patriot Front is likely made up of around 300 members nationally, according to a deep dive into the organization by ProPublica. Despite this, the group is responsible for the vast majority of white supremacist propaganda distributed in the U.S., representing 80% of all propaganda incidents nationally in 2020, according to the Anti-Defamation League. 

The group was formed in 2017 after it split from Vanguard America, a similar Neo-Nazi group. Unlike Vanguard America, Patriot Front attempts to hide its white supremacist beliefs under a cloak of American nationalism and patriotism. 

In 2020, Patriot Front transitioned from using explicitly racist and antisemitic language to more covered bigoted language. The group uses an image of a fasces, or a bundle of rods with an axe, the original symbol of fascism, encircled by 13 stars as “an American symbol of revolutionary spirit,” according to the ADL. 

“They’re trying to kind of cloak themselves in a certain degree of political legitimacy almost to mainstream themselves,” McCann said.

LSU spokesperson Ernie Ballard said the university has a policy prohibiting groups from putting flyers and stickers on campus property. 

“When something like this is reported through facility services, they will go and remove them,” Ballard said.