Flyers linked to a Texas-based white supremacy network were distributed in a Northwest Side neighborhood near Jefferson High School.
Residents said the flyers appeared Sunday in the Jefferson Terrace area near Babcock Road and St. Cloud and were distributed across a broad stretch of the neighborhood, according to a Reddit post. The drop spanned about a mile.
In a statement Wednesday, District 7 Councilwoman Marina Alderete Gavito said “Nazi propaganda belongs in the trash — not in our neighborhoods.”
One resident, who asked to be identified only as Esther, said a flyer was found in her driveway early Sunday afternoon on Easter.
Her ring camera didn’t pick up who left it.
It was raining at the time, and potential witnesses were likely at church or celebrating Easter indoors. The flyer was wrapped in a plastic sandwich bag.
The flyer displayed logos that match imagery identified by the Anti-Defamation League’s Hate on Display database as belonging to the Aryan Freedom Network.
The ADL describes the group as a white supremacist organization that originated in Texas, noting its logo includes a Waffen SS-style shield and a Totenkopf skull surrounded by a laurel.
Esther said she immediately recognized it as a white supremacist group based on the fonts and wording.
The wording is designed to create division, Esther said, using references to “pedophiles” and “groomers” to target members of the LGBTQ community.
“That is their M.O. of course who is going to side with the pedos (pedophiles) and groomers?” she said. “AFN considers the LGBTQ community as pedos and predators, so that’s their hook to get traffic to their website and target the gullible.”
Residents who discussed the flyers online described the neighborhood as diverse in culture, religion and ethnicity and said the propaganda was unwelcome.
It’s not the first time Neo Nazi propaganda has been found in the San Antonio area.
In August, a tip led Bexar County Sheriff’s Office to find a man who had boxes of white supremacist pamphlets along with weapons and grenades in various stages of completion.
Letters found in the man’s far northern Bexar County home and truck were determined to be correspondence with known white supremacists, including another person who had been arrested for conspiring to attack Baltimore’s power grid, and others arrested for violent hate- and race-related crimes.