Signs featuring a slogan popularized by neo-Nazis and white supremacists were posted around the Bates College campus in Lewiston on Sunday.
Bates students reported the signs reading “It’s OK to be white” to campus security and Lewiston police mid-day Sunday, according to the Lewiston Sun Journal.
Lewiston police removed the signs because they were illegally attached to utility poles, the Sun Journal reported.
“The sign itself is ‘dog whistle’ stuff. It’s an old, white supremacist slogan, so it’s not as jarring as something else,” Bates student Walter Washington told the Sun Journal. “The thing the cop said to me is it’s not a crime because of the language, it’s a crime because of the city ordinance.”
Bates students and professors called the signs “intimidating” as they come in the wake of a deadly terrorist attack in Christchurch, New Zealand, where a gunman inspired by a white supremacist ideology killed 50 worshippers and injured 34 others, including children, at two mosques.
Use of the signs’ slogan by white supremacists dates back to at least 2001, when it was used as a song title by a white power band, and white supremacists have used it in signage and as a hashtag, according to the Anti-Defamation League. It has recently garnered attention on social media after members of an internet discussion board used it as part of a trolling campaign in 2017.
Hundred turned out for a vigil against white supremacy and to stand in solidarity with the victims of last week’s Christchurch terrorist attack in Lewiston’s Kennedy Park on Sunday.