The chaos that erupted across college campuses earlier this month escalated racial tensions among students to levels not seen since the 1950s and 60s, as radical activists sought to enforce a new orthodoxy of ‘white privilege’ across universities. The inevitable consequence — a newly-racialized American campus — is beginning to emerge.

In the space of a few days, Facebook pages for “White Student Unions” have sprung up on dozens of campuses across North America. The pages adopt the language of campus activists, promising a “safe space” for white students and condemning alleged anti-white racism on campus.

Mainstream media outlets have reported on them as hoaxes, the product of online trolls who don’t even attend the campuses they claim to represent. The Daily Beast blames “racist trolls” from 8chan, 4chan, and white supremacist site The Daily Stormer for “fabricating” the Facebook pages in order to further stoke racial tensions.

But this narrative is incorrect. In private interviews conducted with the creators of a number of these groups, Breitbart Tech has found that a number of the new “White Student Unions” are indeed the product of students on campus who are afraid to speak out publicly.

But these students aren’t white supremacists, or even white nationalists. In some cases, they are not even white. One of the anonymous student group founders we spoke to, who did not wish to be identified, was of South Asian descent. Another founder was Mexican-American. They are concerned by what they see as unchecked hostility towards their fellow white students.

Juan (real name omitted at his request), a Mexican-American student at UC Santa Cruz (UCSC), said he started his White Student Union page as a means to mock the “absurd nonsense of crybaby, race-obsessed college students, [by] using their tactics against them,” although Juan also added that he now thinks there might be a serious problem to tackle. “We’re coming to see that there might actually be some hostility to the thought that one might be proud of being of European descent.”

Rajesh (real name omitted at his request), a South Asian student who founded a White Student Union page page for the University of British Columbia (UBC), also expressed concern at what he saw as the increasingly unequal racial hierarchy emerging on campuses. “In the current ideological and cultural environment I, as a non-white, am lucky,” said Rajesh. “I have the right to be proud of my heritage, I am not made to feel ashamed of who I am and don’t need to constantly walk on eggshells in conversations for fear of being thought a racist.”

“I value whites. I’m culturally comfortable among whites. I’ve always grown up around whites. I enjoy the company of whites,” he stated.

Rajesh also claimed he was not the only minority concerned by the new racism: “I’ve been surprised by how many non-whites we’ve had approaching us. They are familiar with the stigmatisation of white identity and white people… And they don’t like that.”

White students involved in the new movement report a similar sense of stigmatisation. John (real name omitted at his request), a student at UC Santa Barbara (UCSB) and an editor of its White Student Union page, said he was led to set up the page by “a pervasive set of attitudes at my school towards people of European descent. I have had physical threats via pm, intimidation, and verbal abuse both online and off.”

John also detected hatred in attitudes to European history. “European history and culture is considered evil, and entirely defined by the harm it did other cultures,” he said.

The media continues to push the narrative that these pages are all hoaxes. BuzzFeed Canada today reported that Rajesh’s White Student Union at UBC is “almost certainly a hoax” after failing to obtain a phone interview with the student. Unlike BuzzFeed Canada, Breitbart Tech succeeded in obtaining a phone interview, as well as extensive online records that chronicle his time at the university, proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that he is a student at the university. BuzzFeed Canada is wrong.

Not all of the White Student Union pages are genuine. One administrator, who manages the page for Ohio State University, told Breitbart Tech that he was not a student at the university and had initially set up the page as a troll. However, the administrator said he was then approached by real students at the college, who were given admin privileges.

With over thirty White Student Union pages set up, it appears that some are indeed the creation of off-campus trolls. Others, like Ohio State, originated as trolls and later morphed into something more serious. But others still — UBC, UCSC, UCSB among them — were created by students at their respective colleges.

Some, too, unfortunately bear the hallmarks of white nationalism, including strident anti-immigration rhetoric. A copy-pasted message that appears on many pages condemns “the continued invasion and degradation of the lands, institutions, and cultural heritage that are rightly ours.”

Others — particularly the more active pages — contain more thoughtful messages, which suggest a burgeoning student movement that is very different, more akin to the liberal anti-racist and black consciousness-raising groups of the 1960s than Stormfront. The White Student Union page for Michigan State University, for example, quotes Martin Luther King’s famous hope that Americans living today would “not be judged by the color of their skin, but the content of their character.”

The page’s very first post is also a condemnation of racism: “We denounce racism in all its forms and find it incredibly ironic that a group of this magnitude must be formed to combat the racism openly thrusted towards whites on campus’s across the country.”

Very few of the Facebook pages exhibit any overt hostility to other races. The page for the University of North Carolina declares itself open to “people of all races that wish to combat the extremist ideology that has taken over our institutes of higher learning.”

The University of Chicago’s page stresses that it only wishes to discuss “identity and heritage” and “wishes no harm or domination of other groups. So come join us.” Liberty University’s WSU page, prior to its deletion, promised “outreach and educational events” and declared itself “open to people of all backgrounds as we are a tolerant community that values the support of allies.”

The friendliness of the language is in stark contrast to the increasingly bellicose and hysterical social justice mobs currently terrorising campuses. A particularly extreme incident recently occurred at Dartmouth, where Black Lives Matter activists invaded a library. The activists hurled abuse at students as they attempted to work, calling them “filthy white f*cks” and “racist sh*ts.”

Over the past month, we’ve also seen radical campus activists threaten journalists, terrorise professors with public shaming, and demand written letters of apology for “white privilege.” They are even attempting to exert control over history, demanding Princeton renames buildings dedicated to alumni Woodrow Wilson, due to the former president’s racist beliefs.

It is little wonder that white students, and their non-white allies, feel compelled to push back. Rajesh, the UBC student BuzzFeed believes doesn’t exist, is clear on what has caused this to happen: “To onlookers….  the enforcers of orthodoxy are meaner, less charitable, and less coherent, while the people who are advocating for white identity aren’t the monsters they’ve been made out to be.”

Follow Allum Bokhari @LibertarianBlue on Twitter, and download Milo Alert! for Android to be kept up to date on his latest articles.