A still shot of the man who posted the flyers on American University’s campus.

The same person who distributed a series of bigoted flyers in several northern neighborhoods of Ward 4 appears to also be responsible for the Confederate flag posters hung at American University on Tuesday night.

Ten posters were found on the AU campus, distributed on message boards that advertised the Center for Israel Studies and the Center for Diversity and Inclusion, among others. Officials also said they are “well aware” that the incident came on the same night that Ibram Kendi presented a talk introducing the new Antiracist Research and Policy Center.

Security footage showed a man who appears to be in his 40s, wearing a construction hat and vest, tacking up raw cotton along with the flyers. “This is not a person of interest. The person in the photographs, in the video… is the suspect who committed this crime,” said Director of University Police Phillip Morse.

The front reads “Huzzah for Dixie” and “I wish I was in the Land of Cotton” printed over the Confederate flag. The back features a logo and text that says “D.C. Counter Resistance,” according to several people who saw the reverse side or images of it. A student also shared an image with the campus newspaper, The Eagle, that showed the “D.C. Counter Resistance” text and logo.

The icon—two interlocking white ovals on top of a black background—is a version of one used by the Milice Française, a French paramilitary organization that fought against the resistance during WWII.

The same logo was also prominently displayed on a slew of bigoted flyers that were posted in recent weeks and months in Takoma Park and surrounding neighborhoods. As DCist reported in August, many of them feature anti-immigration rhetoric and offensive imagery:

One flyer has a picture of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg with the text “Even RBG backs the ban. Build the wall,” apparently a reference to the Supreme Court unanimously reinstating part of President Donald Trump’s travel ban. Another makes claims about a man who had been deported more than 20 times, who allegedly sexually assaulted a 65-year-old woman in Oregon, and tells people to “Report illegal aliens to DHS or ICE.” Residents spotted one flyer that Photoshops the face of Florida Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz onto the image from famed pornographic film Debbie Does Dallas with the text, “Debbie Does Pakistan.” And one shows a photo of Kate Steinle, a woman whose murder has been exploited by anti-immigration activists.

When Takoma resident Erin Palmer saw images of the flyers posted at American University, she was immediately reminded of the ones that had blanketed Takoma, Brightwood, and Manor Park.

“I thought this looks eerily similar to these flyers just in style and tone,” Palmer says.

The use of the same name and logo on the back seemed to confirm it, but there’s another bit of strong evidence: a resident’s home security camera had captured the person as they put the flyers up in Ward 4. Though the footage wasn’t very clear, the poster was similarly wearing construction gear, according to Palmer.

“One dude is running around doing this,” she says. “It’s speculation on some level, but it sure seems that way.”

It gives her some measure of consolation that the person doesn’t appear to be a neighbor.

“I am comforted in the sense that I don’t think it’s an individual that’s integrated in either of these communities. I think it’s somebody from somewhere else who is targeting specific places for specific reasons,” says Palmer, who suspects her neighborhood was chosen for its large population of immigrants and Spanish speakers.

A Twitter account, @whitebloc18, with the same “DC Counter Resistance” name and logo (along with a background image of men holding torches in Charlottesville) identifies its owner as a “proud American, vet, not putting up with bullshit, ready to roll.” It instructs people in Northern Virginia and D.C. to get in touch if they are “ready for IRL action.”

The person who runs that account denied being the same person who put up the flyers in a brief conversation with WAMU. “This is a fake account that was set up for antifascist research,” the anonymous tweeter told the outlet. “Not sure who put up those [flyers] and posters.”

In the District, simply putting up posters doesn’t constitute a crime, so long as it doesn’t depict anything “lewd, indecent, or vulgar, or if it pictorially represents the commission of or the attempt to commit any crime” and is taken down within 180 days.

“When this happened in our neighborhood, the advice from our local representatives was to call the police but then it was generally understood that the police couldn’t do anything,” Palmer says. “It left people feeling anxious about the whole thing. As a community, people wanted to do something, and it wasn’t clear what would be effective and helpful.”

D.C. police officials confirmed to DCist at the time that the law didn’t appear to be broken, but when such things happen, “we’ll generally patrol that area more often and make our presence known to make sure the public feels safe,” said MPD spokesperson Rachel Reid.

Other bigoted flyers have appeared in recent months, including a series of fake ICE posters that were put up around the city and a slew of white supremacist flyers in Bloomingdale in June. A month later, white nationalist groups boasted about putting up flyers in downtown D.C.

University campuses have also been a frequent target. In March, the group Vanguard America posted white nationalist flyers at the University of Maryland, George Washington University, and Georgetown University.

In the past year, 142 college campuses have been the site of racist flyers, according to Doron Ezickson, the Washington regional director of the Anti-Defamation League. “I’m here to deliver a difficult message,” he told students at a town hall on Wednesday. “The incident that AU has experienced is a part of an unfortunately growing trend on college campuses across the U.S.”

At American, the person who posted the flyers is sought for “defacing property – bias related,” according to a crime alert. A spokesperson for D.C. police says the case remains with the American University Police Department, and a report hasn’t been filed with MPD. Morse, the head of university police, said that AU hopes to identify the suspect and take the evidence to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

“An attack on one of us is an attack on all of us,” AU President Sylvia Burwell said in an emotional address to students. “Acts like this target American University precisely because of our strengths. We stand against racism, anti-Semitism, injustice, and bigotry, and it’s those strengths that will see us though… The perpetrators of such acts, they want to divide and define us, but we cannot let that happen.”

Previously:
Cotton And Posters Of Confederate Flags Found At American University
Ward 4 Residents Report Bigoted Flyers To Police