According to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), at least two people found laminated cards with the words "It's okay to be white" in boxes of diapers bought from Target this month. One of the diaper boxes was bought from a Target store in the state of Washington while another was shipped from a facility in Indianapolis, Indiana, to Florida. The cards also reportedly listed multiple white neo-Nazi websites.
In March, a family in Hixson, Tennessee, also found a similar note in a box of diapers.
"I looked on the back and it was just five or six websites that I recognized the language that was used from the Charlottesville incident late last year," Tad Russell, who lives in Hixson, told WRCB last month.
On Wednesday, a spokesman for Target told Newsweek that after an urgent investigation of the situation, the discount store retailer identified and fired the employee responsible for the incident.
"We sincerely apologize to guests who received an inappropriate message in their Target purchase and thank them for calling it to our attention," a spokesman for Target told Newsweek.
"After being made aware of the situation, we immediately launched a thorough investigation to address the concerns and put a stop to it. We have identified the source, and given this is a violation of our policies and our commitment to inclusivity, terminated the team member," the statement added.
Target did not specify where the individual in question is located or how the employee was identified. However, since the message appeared in multiple states, it is probable that the employee worked in one of Target's warehouses.
The ‘It's okay to be white' slogan became popular after it was used in a troll campaign last year by 4chan, an English-language imageboard website where users generally post anonymously. The purpose was for people to put up the slogan in public places to prove that a "harmless message" could cause a "massive media shitstorm" driven by liberal pundits.
"Normies tune in to see what's going on, see the posters saying 'It's okay to be white' and the media and leftists frothing at the mouth," an anonymous 4chan user wrote last year in an excerpt on the website outlining the group's strategy. "Credibility of far left campuses and media gets nuked, massive victory for the right in the culture war."
"‘It's okay to be white' is a brilliant political provocation," said popular right-wing blogger Nick Land after the slogan started to appear across the country last year.
"Any response other than ‘Of course it is' looks preposterously demented," Land added.
According to the ADL, the hashtag #IOKTBW has also been used by the Ku Klux Klan on Twitter since 2012. In addition, the American hatecore band Aggressive Force has a 2001 song titled "It's OK to be White."