White supremacists posting fliers with hate speech in Trumbull County
State route 88 is a serene place where you can take it all in at Mosquito Lake but that peace was disturbed when fliers reading "STOP White replacement" and "White Lives Matter" were found posted on top of road signage.
It's a familiar situation, just five months ago fliers from white supremacist group Patriot Front were posted on Youngstown State University's campus.
Some of them read, "One nation against invasion," and "America doesn't have a gun problem, it has a Black problem."
A person who brought this to our attention, and asked to remain anonymous, said the group says alarming things.
"Race mixing is White genocide, other races are out to get the White race, take a stance, act against the other races, that sort of thing," the anonymous person said.
The group, called White Lives Matter, put QR codes on the fliers that take you to a chat room full of other hate speech that says things like preserve the blood of the Aryan race.
"The people in there were saying heinous things about preserving the White race by getting rid of other races, referring to other races as parasites. They were saying that specifically, Black people were out to trying to do violent acts against white people, essentially saying to beware," the anonymous person said. "They're very organized, they have chapters for every state, they're very secretive and very hateful about what they're trying to do. Those stickers that I saw posted, those aren't the only ones that they post they have a bunch of different ones and someone in that chatroom took a video of all of their different stickers that they put up," he said.
The sticker signs have since been removed by the Ohio Department of Natural Resources and Annette McCoy, President of the Trumbull NAACP is working to see what else can be done about this.
"They're operating under freedom of speech and our leadership and the current political climate is escalating situations like this across the country. It's not an undercurrent anymore, it's back on the surface and is spearheaded by what's happening on our congressional floor," McCoy said. "It has to stop and the NAACP is not backing down. We will be doing further investigations into this to see if there are any legal ramifications behind the fliers that we can take," she said.
The anonymous informant told 21 News he'd like to see more people speak out against this.
"They take this fear of the world and put that towards a distrust and anger and violence towards other races and the more we allow this thought process to be accepted the more people are going to take extreme measures to act on what they believe in," the anonymous person said. "Young men online have been, in droves, following this sort of thought process going towards very extremist views such as what these White supremacists are believing in and I think it's something we can call on parents, family members, friends to try and make sure that the people you know aren't falling into something like that," he said.
McCoy said if anyone is receiving direct threats, reach out to Warren Police Department Chief Eric Merkel to file a complaint. You can also reach out to your local police department.