College campuses across the United States are increasingly becoming targets for
extremist groups seeking to recruit young, impressionable minds and le


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Extremist Groups Increasingly Target U.S. Students For Recruitment

(New York, N.Y.) – College campuses across the United States are increasingly
becoming targets for extremist groups seeking to recruit young, impressionable
minds and legitimize their movements. This appeal to students reflects an
evolving strategy by hate groups in which college campuses are viewed as a
prime environment in which to promote their propaganda as intellectual
discourse while building social networks. 

 

Prominent white nationalist groups such as Patriot Front
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American Identify Movement
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(AIM) routinely target colleges and universities for spreading propaganda,
including the distribution of racist, anti-Semitic, and anti-LGBTQ fliers,
stickers, banners, and posters. Hate speech that specifically targets protected
groups can be limited, but groups like AIM employ specific language promoting
white identity that frequently avoids overtly calling other cultures inferior.
Groups such as Patriot Front seek to intimidate and threaten in some
circumstances, while claiming to promote legitimate pollical philosophies in
others.

 

Further, recent data
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from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) indicates that white nationalist
recruitment on U.S. college campuses is rising. In 2019, the ADL recorded more
than 2,700 incidents of white nationalist literature or other propaganda found
on college campuses—double the amount recorded in the year prior.

 

Universities have also emerged as a key source of recruitment and influence
for theMuslim Brotherhood
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one of the world’s most powerful Islamist organizations, the Brotherhood was
established in Egypt in 1928 with the ultimate goal of implementing sharia
(Islamic law) under a global caliphate. Unlike ISIS and al-Qaeda, the
Brotherhood has officially disavowed violence. Rather, it purports to achieve
this societal transformation by taking advantage of existing democratic
institutions, such as when the party captured Egypt’s presidency in 2012.

 

In 2016, terrorism analyst J.M. Berger said that no major American Muslim
organization was affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood. That was not always
the case, however. While the Internet is filled with false accusations and
conspiracy theories regarding Brotherhood infiltration at the highest levels of
the U.S. government, particularly under the Obama administration, it is
nonetheless accurate to note the Brotherhood’s involvement in Muslim-Americans’
university life dates back to the 1960s. Specifically, members of the Muslim
Brotherhood were involved in the creation of the following organizations:

* Muslim American Society (MAS)
* Muslim Students Association (MSA)
* Muslim World League (MWL)
* World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY)
* Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)
While these groups insist they operate independently, the Brotherhood’s
involvement in their creation cannot be ignored, particularly given the extent
of their ongoing outreach efforts to American youth. Further, the Brotherhood’s
influence on the direction of these organizations, in the type of events and
speakers they recruit, as well as their support networks, remains palpable.

 

It is crucial that educators, staff, and especially students are able to
recognize extremist groups on campus—especially as they return to American
universities and colleges this fall—in an effort to make institutions of higher
learning more inhospitable to organizations that seek to divide and destroy.

 

To read the Counter Extremism Project’s (CEP) resource, The Far Right on U.S.
Campuses, please click here
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To read the CEP report, The Muslim Brotherhood on U.S. Campuses, please click
here <[link removed]>.

 

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