UW community responds to ‘fascist crisis’

In addition to a shooting at Milo Yiannopoulos’ controversial speech, UW Seattle has seen a variety of incidents that, according to UW astrophysicist Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, comprise a “fascist crisis.”

A neo-nazi group called the “Atomwaffen Division” has taken credit for numerous posters that have gone up around campus directing students to “join your local nazis.” The website, Puget Sound Anarchists, has compiled a map of over 20 places where white supremacist symbols, stickers and posters have reportedly appeared on campus.

While the website appears unchanged since November, Christy Fisher, a minister at a pro-LGBT campus ministry at UW, told The Stranger that a swastika was graffitied on the ministry building in January.

Alan Weatherford, a doctoral student at UW, described in a guest editorial for the Daily UW how he was doxxed after participating in teach-ins across from the Yiannopoulos event. He reported that many UW students had to keep their faces covered to protect their identities from Yiannopoulos supporters. Despite the additional measures, Weatherford was targeted with rape threats, slurs and false accusations.

Weatherford expressed disappointment with how the administration handled his situation, writing that, “The University failed to protect its own population.” He said that when he asked UW president Ana Mari Cauce to protect UW students, he received a “more than disappointing response of ‘Sent to campus police and student life. So sorry you are experiencing this.’ Signed with not her name, but ‘Sent from my iPad.’”

“This is not about resolving some abstract question regarding whether and how we should tolerate bigoted speech in a democracy,” he concluded. “This is about the concrete question of whether you are willing to take the measures necessary to protect my safety and my ability to do the work I came to the University of Washington to do.”

Another event, which was scheduled for Jan. 30, was hosted by a group calling itself the “UW Wall Building Association.” The College Republicans at the University of Washington claim the group was run by a Washington State University student, and according to The Seattle Times, “say the event announcement was fake, placed online to bait students and the media.”

On its Facebook page, the organizers instructed students to bring bricks, created polls with questions like “Illegal aliens must be:” and “Who is getting deported first?” The first poll provided Ana Mari Cauce as an option, while the second gave choices such as “sent to daddy Richard’s study for ‘further discipline’” and “sent to the concentration camps.”

“Only cucks vote other than camps,” stated one UW student on his Facebook page, and also said that “national socialism is much closely related to my own beliefs.”

The Wall Building Association never showed up, though many counter-protesters did. According to the Seattle Times, the counter-protesters expressed pro-refugee sentiment and demanded that university president Cauce do more to address harassment and hate speech some students claim to have experienced.

“Our campus is not safe,” said Prescod-Weinstein, “and the administration is not adequately responding.”