The National Socialist Movement, a neo-Nazi organization, officially claimed responsibility for the racist propaganda distributed in a Sugar House neighborhood last week.
Local NSM members, referred to as stormtroopers, bundled fliers that condemned Jews and interracial couples with copies of The Daily Utah Chronicle with a rubber band and tossed them onto the lawns of several homes on the 1900 block of Blaine Avenue. Neighbors were appalled by the fliers’ messages, which read “keep your bloodlines pure” and “America is being controlled by the Jews.”
The FBI and the U Police Department are investigating the case as a potential hate crime, but the group claims that malice was not the intention. In order to build a case for hate crime, the propaganda had to be intended for specific people, said U Police Chief Scott Folsom. If the investigation finds that the fliers weren’t intended to threaten or harm the block’s interracial or Jewish residents, courts would classify it as nothing more than an exercise of free speech, he said.
The national movement’s spokesman Charles Wilson said, “We don’t preach hate, we preach separatism.” Races should stay within their own races, and anyone who interprets the fliers as hateful has a “guilty conscience” about their lifestyle, he said.
Wilson also said the Utah stormtroopers were not targeting the 1900 block, which is home to at least two interracial couples. The NSM randomly selects neighborhoods to distribute literature and never targets individuals, he said.
The neo-Nazi organization also had no intention of singling out The Chronicle.
“We chose it because it was free,” Wilson said.
A Utah stormtrooper could not be reached for comment. An FBI spokesman also did not respond for comment.