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Last week, the Review wrote about the rise of groyperism at Stanford and strategies to address it. Two acts of antisemitic vandalism—one right-coded, one left-coded—confirmed what we feared. Groyperism isn’t only a distant threat in DC; it’s here on campus.
On Friday, graffiti appeared on Jane Stanford Way, one of Stanford’s main thoroughfares, reading: “NICK FUENTES WAS RIGHT ABOUT ISRAEL.” Fuentes, a Holocaust denier, argues that Israel’s existence makes a “holy war” against Jews necessary because of their perceived commitment to that state.
A Jewish freshman, shaken after encountering the Fuentes graffiti Friday morning, alerted us to its existence. The vandalism had achieved its intended effect: intimidation.
On Thursday morning, Memorial Church’s steps and entrance were defaced with antisemitic imagery. Chalk on the stairs read “DROP THE CHARGES” and “FREE THE STANFORD 11,” referring to students facing disciplinary action for breaking into and defacing the President’s office and hospitalizing a public safety officer to spraypaint pro-Palestine messages. Outside the entrance, someone had drawn a swastika alongside the words “ZIONISM” and “ISRAEL,” all circled and crossed out, ironically equating the Jewish state with Nazism.
We removed the graffiti ourselves, with help from friends who stopped to assist. Not because it’s our job, but because no one should wait for maintenance to erase hate from public places on our campus, especially our Church.
While cleaning the Fuentes graffiti, we noticed a generational pattern. Juniors, seniors, and graduate students would stop and ask us who Fuentes was, one quipping, “I don’t know what this means, but it can’t be anything good.” Freshmen and sophomores, by contrast, knew immediately; one even helped clean. This divide confirms what we’d reported: groyperism’s spread is concentrated among Stanford’s youngest students.
Students can protest, criticize Israel, or challenge the Stanford 11’s handling. These are fair uses of First Amendment rights.
But desecrating a holy site and coopting a public road to spread weakly cloaked antisemitic hatred is unacceptable. “Advocacy” that relies on intimidation is not advocacy—it is cowardice.
If Stanford stands for anything worth defending, we must begin by defending the spaces that hold our community together. Such hatred—whether from the left or the right, whether scrawled in bloodred or white chalk—has no place here.
