BATON ROUGE, La. (BRPROUD) – A local college student went out to eat on Saturday, February 5, at Zea Rotisserie & Bar in Towne Center.
It was cold outside and Chloe Yava originally planned to go to P.F. Chang’s with her boyfriend but it was packed that night.
After finishing their meal around 8:45 p.m., the duo returned to their vehicle which was in the P.F. Chang’s parking lot.
Upon returning to their vehicle, Chloe noticed something tucked into their front windshield wiper.
Chloe looked around and saw the same pamphlets on various cars.
The LSU student estimates that more than 100 cars had these pamphlets on them.
Chloe states that they were tucked into door handles and tucked into back windshield wipers.
The first page of the pamphlet is at the top of this article and the second page that Chloe found is pictured below.
The LSU student goes into what happened next in her own words, “When I first glanced at it, I was confused. The first thing that caught my eye was the title “ET AND THE SLAVE TRADES” and the large table titled “JEWISH CONTROL OVER AMERICAN SLAVERY”. I took a second to skim through and was appalled at some of the language I saw. I was too shocked to read it through so I passed it to my boyfriend in the passenger seat to give it a more thorough look. I made a comment that this was some sort of antisemitic manifesto as he read off some of the quotes. After reading through the whole thing at home, my stomach sank as I remembered how many of these were spread around on the cars.”
Chloe wishes she had taken more off the cars in the parking lot.
Yava says that “as far as I could see, every car in the Towne Center parking lot had one and while driving out of the parking lot they were still present.”
She contacted law enforcement but were told that nothing can be done unless P.F. Chang’s reached out to them.
The Anti-Defamation League was asked how common it is to see these antisemitic pamphlets.
ADL says that they have been collecting “data on antisemitic incidents since 1979 and 3 of the last 4 years have had the highest number of incidents on record.”
This ADL H.E.A.T. map shows the number of incidents like this that have taken place in 2020-2021.
In Louisiana alone, there were 55 incidents, 14 of which are considered antisemitic.
According to the Anti-Defamation League, “These flyers are a way to effectively share a message that accuses and vilifies the Jewish community. There are at least two goals accomplished with these type of flyers – to recruit and to intimidate and instill fear within the Jewish community.”
In case you are curious, these flyers are protected speech and can’t be considered a federal hate crime.
When recalling the incident, Chloe said “It was horrifying knowing someone, or a group of people, had gone out of their way to spread nothing but hate-filled lies to the people of Baton Rouge.”
P.F. Chang’s was contacted and did not respond to our questions.
Attempts to figure out who circulated the pamphlets have been unsuccessful.
