The signs began as a suggestion on the online chat space 4chan last month, a kind of Internet prank laced with ennui and cynicism about race and white identity in modern-day America.

A series of messages said people should print signs reading “IT’S OKAY TO BE WHITE,” post them on college campuses and elsewhere, and then stand back and watch the fun begin. News reports would draw attention to the posters, the writer behind the idea predicted. Then white Americans derisively referred to as “normies” in the white nationalist ecosphere will discover that American journalists and “lefties” hate white people. In the process, normies will stop regarding news outlets as credible. That would deal a damaging blow in the culture war, the post said, inevitably converting more “normies” to the white nationalist, alt-right side. It could be that easy to seed social disruption, the post implied.

The episode is indicative of the efforts white-nationalist groups have made to recruit in and around the nation’s college campuses and other mainstream settings with claims of growing white maltreatment and expanding anti-white discrimination.