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Politics

ASU club responds to anti-Semitic posters donning group’s logo

Posted 12/6/21

College Republicans United officials say the Arizona State University club has been wrongly accused of anti-Semitic messaging around town.

The club has repeatedly denied responsibility of hateful …

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Politics

ASU club responds to anti-Semitic posters donning group’s logo

Posted

College Republicans United officials say the Arizona State University club has been wrongly accused of anti-Semitic messaging around campus.

The club has repeatedly denied responsibility of hateful posters around the ASU campus, despite their name being on the poster.

College Republicans United’s founder, former president and Arizona chairman have opened up about the controversial situation.

“Immediately, I jumped to the conclusion that it was a false flag, that it was someone else doing it to us but I wanted to make sure 100%,” said Founder Richard Thomas of his iniital reaction. “We went through the membership and asked, ‘Have you seen this? What do you think of it?’ and that was my way of interrogating the members to make sure that it wasn’t one of our own first.”

Thomas stated that everyone’s response was one of shock and says he was reassured it wasn’t a member of ASU’s group.

According to Thomas, it was later discovered that a member of the ASU College Republicans United was the original person to find and report the poster on the morning of Nov. 1. After which the club took the rest of the morning to talk to the membership and create a PR plan to execute later that same day.

The CRU officials say the club then reached out to campus police to make sure they were aware of the posters and see if they had any plan moving forward, beginning their investigation.

Former Club President Matthew Northway said he found out through Facebook Messenger from Thomas about the posters.

“I was shocked,” said Northway. “I also came to the conclusion that this had been a false flag operation and the timing between the press releases and the comments from the establishment college republicans at ASU, other establishment organizations ... it was definitely not coincidental.”

Arizona Chairman of Republicans United Ren Ramsey said his initial reaction was shock and anger.

“I was angry about it because we were in the middle of doing a lot of different things nationally and here in the state and this kind of disrupted that timeline,” said Ramsey. “I definitely felt like at the time that most likely it was perpetrated to defame the club.”

Ramsey then went on to say that the club did have to do their “due diligence to make sure this wasn’t some rogue person.”

Ramsey also added that he went to the kosher deli, where the posters were first put up and the workers there assured him that they knew it was not his club. ASU has been able to determine that they know the responsibility does not fall on the club as well.

All three men have stated that ASU College Republicans United has their own suspicion of who they believe to be responsible for the posters and it was meant purely as an attack on their club.

According to Thomas, it was well known that the club was looking for a new faculty advisor and if someone wanted to hinder the club from finding one, a way would be to “put out a large story like this that were antisemitic to scare away from professors from doing business with us.”

Without a faculty advisor, the club wouldn’t be able to operate on campus.

Northway and Ramsey both agreed that it is most likely why someone would attack their club in such a way.

“I can speak for the national level, the ASU level, the state, we condemn 110% the message in that [poster],” Northway said.

ASU nor its president, Michael Crow, has released an official statement on who the responsibility for the posters lies on, but is reportedly conducting an investigation to find out.

Editor’s Note: Brooke Rindenau is a student reporter at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communications.