Neo-Nazi Posters Found At UW Theater: Report

SEATTLE, WA - Vandals plastered neo-Nazi posters at the University of Washington's Glenn Hughes Penthouse Theater Wednesday night during a performance featuring a cast of minority and LGBTQ performers, according to The Stranger

Eight posters were discovered plastered on the front doors of the theater, according to the report. The black-and-white posters depicted a swastika with a radiation symbol in the center. Next to the swastika is a skeleton dressed in a military uniform.

"Where will you be when the race war begins? When the world burns?" the posters said. "Join you local Nazis! Congregating near you!"

One of the actors in "As You Like It," student Tamsen Glaser, told The Stranger that she thinks the posters were targeting the performers and "didn't seem arbitrary." She said that all the leads were either minority or LGBTQ actors.

"It was terrifying because all the leads are people of color... and a wide [number] of our audience are people of color," she told the paper.

The posters were discovered during the Wednesday night performance of William Shakespeare's "As You Like It." Performers and stagehands smelled chemicals, which led them to discover the posters glued to the building.

The poster is signed by a group called the Atomwaffen Division. According to the website Ironmarch.org, the group describes itself as: "We are very fanatical, ideological band of comrades who do both activism and militant training. Hand to hand, arms training, and various other forms of training. As for activism, we spread awareness in the real world through unconventional means."

This week, the Southern Poverty Law Center released a report saying that radical right-wing groups have been "electrified" by the rise of President Donald Trump. The SPLC tracked an increase in hate groups in the U.S. in 2016, up to 917 from 892 in 2015.

The University of Washington Police were contacted about the posters and responded to the scene.

Image of Glenn Hughes Theater via the University of Washington