Editor’s note: This story was updated Sept. 5, 2017 to reflect that both the sticker and “white heritage” posters are associated with the Alt-Right and white nationalism.

On a campaign sign that promoted diversity, Ames school board candidate and Iowa State assistant professor of sociology, Monic Behnken, found a sticker linking to an Alt-Right website. 

Behnken posted on her campaign’s Facebook page and wrote about what transpired. She was on her way to a campaign event when her husband noticed her sign had been defaced with what she called a white supremacist sticker.  

The sticker said, “Are you sick of bankers, biased media, pol. establishment? Join the movement,” and included the web address, therightstuff.biz.

“Bankers, biased media, pol. establishment” were each surrounded with multiple sets of parentheses, or “echoes,” as they are referred to by the far-right. As Cooper Fleishman and Anthony Smith reported for Mic in 2016, these parentheses are a cryptic, anti-Semitic symbol used to indicate someone, or an organization, is Jewish.  

“To be absolutely honest, I cried. I wept because my children were in the car and had to see that,” Behnken wrote in a Facebook post Sunday. “I wept for our beautiful city that has to host this hatred. I wept for our community’s children who are still being asked to bear the burdens of the past.”

There were other posters in the yard, but Behnken’s was the only one that was defaced. 

Behnken wrote in the post that after taking a breath and composing herself, she went on to speak at her event pushing her main message of diversity, dialogue and data.  

Mike Peinovich, who goes by the pseudonym “Mike Enoch,” founded The Right Stuff (TRS), the group mentioned on the poster, and co-hosts the Daily Shoah, an alt-right podcast, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a non-profit legal advocacy organization.

SPLC said Peinovich has become one of the most nationally recognizable white nationalist voices. 

Last October, posters containing the same red symbol as this sticker were found on Iowa State’s campus.

The ISU police reported 20 posters found on campus with messages such as “white students, you are not alone. Be proud of your heritage,” and “In 1950 America was 90 percent white, it is now only 60 percent white. Will you become a minority in your own country?” The posters also contained symbols associated to the Alt-Right and white nationalism.

Three weeks later, similar posters were found on campus. 

“While I may not have earned this person’s respect, I certainly haven’t earned their disrespect,” Behnken wrote in her Facebook post. “I reject the attempt to reduce my accomplishments, expertise and passion down to my blackness. I am not required to pick up their baggage and take it along with me on my journey.”