Public Safety warns of potential white supremacist protest March 3

A local white supremacist, neo-Nazi group may be planning on coming to campus March 3 to protest the already canceled Education and Ethnic Studies Summit. Panther Archives

A white supremacy group may be planning to come to campus, warned Chapman University Public Safety in a Feb. 25 email to students, faculty and staff. Orchestrated by DesertKreig, a new white supremacist group regional to Orange County, Public Safety notified the community to exercise caution and stay away from campus. 

The group was allegedly planning to protest the annual Education and Ethnic Studies Summit, which is typically hosted by the Attallah College of Educational Studies each spring to consider how to better implement diversity and inclusion within academia. The summit was canceled preemptively in fall 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“(To white supremacists), the idea is that ethnic studies is (considered) liberal propaganda, politically correct and bought and paid for by the Jewish elite,” said Pete Simi, an expert in extremist groups and associate professor of sociology at Chapman. “Why did they pick Chapman when they could have picked bigger universities that have more of an ethnic studies presence? It’s hard to say.”

Roxanne Greitz Miller, the interim dean of the Attallah College of Educational Studies and organizer of the summit, did not have any further comment aside from what was written in Public Safety’s email. Public Safety emphasized the group will not be allowed on campus, announcing they are working with local authorities and increasing their in-person presence in the event the protest turns violent.

Simi, who had not heard of DesertKreig until the email, believes that the group’s name was inspired by the international neo-Nazi network Feuerkrieg.

“Feuerkrieg models themselves after Atomwaffen, which is a similar well-known group that was connected to five murders in the U.S. and one here in Orange County,” Simi said.

Chapman’s own campus isn’t a stranger to visits from white supremacist groups like Patriot Front, who have taken to plastering propaganda across campus in the past on at least four separate occasions. During the first week of fall 2019 classes, the group put stickers and posters on campus busts and covered up posters for La Frontera, a semester-long interdisciplinary exhibit examining the U.S.-Mexico border. On Super Tuesday, March 3, 2020, stickers were pasted over endorsements for Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign and again left on property adjacent to the Orange campus during the first week of fall 2020 classes.

Simi shared that Orange County, until recently, used to be homogeneous in terms of political ideology, which he said deterred people from visiting the area. The county’s moniker back then: the “Orange Curtain.”

“You’ve got just a deep glimpse of very ultra far-right conservative, extremist ideologies that have been very prominent in Orange County, demographically,” Simi said. “So when you have that kind of reputation, what you’re doing is putting the flag up that says to outsiders that have those beliefs, ‘You’ve got a safe haven here’.”

Public Safety will continue to monitor protest developments and alert the Chapman community of any updates. Even after the protest is slated to take place, Chief of Public Safety Randy Burba affirmed that Public Safety’s presence on campus will be thoroughly increased.

Burba urged students to contact Public Safety if they notice any suspicious activity or discover any white supremacist propaganda on or near campus.