White supremacist posters appear around Auckland University

The University of Auckland came under fire last year for refusing to acknowledge there was a problem with racism on its campus.

A fresh wave of posters promoting white nationalism have been plastered to walls around the University of Auckland today, the first day of the study year.

A spokeswoman for the university said it was aware of the materials and they were being removed.

The University of Auckland came under fire last year for refusing to acknowledge there was a problem with racism on its campus, despite an apparent uptick in white supremacist and neo-Nazi propaganda being distributed in the area.

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Last March in Orientation Week a group called the Auckland University European Students Association formed and began distributing racist material across campus.

Posters reappeared at various times last year, with students growing frustrated after the university initially declined to take them down, saying they were a free speech issue.

Students staged sit-in protests in the Clock Tower and a petition was created calling for zero tolerance of racism at the university.

The current batch of posters directs people to a website for a relatively new white supremacist group. A post written at the end of February on the website promised a fresh drive of poster-sticking all over New Zealand.

Twitter user @CentralCommiTi put out a call for people to rip the posters down when they saw them without taking pictures or sharing their racist content.

He said he had pulled down "about a dozen in 10 minutes".

He also tweeted that someone had written white supremacist graffiti in a bus stop on Queen St.

There are white supremacist posters and stickers up all around UoA city campus for the start of semester. If you see them, please remove them immediately. Please do not post the group’s name or pictures of the posters/stickers (let’s not propagandise on their behalf).

— Leigh Guhlize-Wede (@CentralCommiTi) March 1, 2020