Meet The Dapper White Nationalist Who Wins Even If Trump Loses
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/...te-nationalist
http://christian-identity.net/forum/...5428#post15428
http://whitenationalist.org/forum/sh...5428#post15428
Richard Spencer uses chopsticks to deftly pluck slivers of togarashi-crusted ahi from a rectangular plate. He is sitting in the Continental-style lounge of the Firebrand Hotel, near his home in the upscale resort town of Whitefish, Montana, discussing a subject not typically broached in polite company. "Race is something between a breed and an actual species," he says, likening the differences between whites and people of color to those between golden retrievers and basset hounds. "It's that powerful."
We are well into our third round of Arrogant Frog, a merlot that Spencer chose because its name reminds him of Pepe, the cartoon frog commandeered as a mascot by the "alt-right" movement that has been thrust from the shadows by Donald Trump's presidential campaign. Spencer says Pepe could also be seen as the reincarnation of an ancient Egyptian frog deity, Kek: "He is basically using the alt-right to unleash chaos and change the world," he says, looking slightly annoyed when I crack a smile. "You might say, 'Wow,' but this is literally how religions arise."
If Pepe is the alt-right's god, then Spencer is its self-styled prophet. A 38-year-old Duke Ph.D. dropout who sometimes resides in a Bavarian-style mansion at the edge of a ski slope, he has for years been quite literally shouting into the wilderness, proclaiming to anyone who will listen that the alt-right, whose name he coined in 2008, is the only political movement that really gives a damn about white Americans. In Spencer's view, if you aren't a white American, that's fine—but you should leave.
An articulate and well-dressed former football player with prom-king good looks and a "fashy" (as in fascism) haircut—long on top, buzzed on the sides—Spencer has managed to seize on an extraordinary presidential election to give overt racism a new veneer of radical chic. In some ways he resembles an older generation of "academic racists"—or "racialists," as he prefers to put it—who've long sought to professionalize a movement associated with Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan. What sets him apart is his rock star status among a certain fringe that delights in making racist comments pseudonymously on the internet. They idolize Spencer for embracing life as a public heretic and appearing to lend an air of respectability to white nationalist views. You could call him the alt-right's outlaw version of William F. Buckley, if Buckley had been down with millennials and into shitlords and dank memes.
Related: Meet the Horde of Neo-Nazis, Klansmen, and Other Extremist Leaders Endorsing Donald Trump
Spencer subscribes zealously to the idea that America's white population is endangered, thanks to multiculturalism and lax immigration policies that have gone unchallenged by mainstream conservatives—or, as Spencer and the alt-righters call them, "cuckservatives." He envisions a future for the United States along the lines of "a renewed Roman Empire," a dictatorship where the main criteria for citizenship would be whiteness. "You cannot view another white person as your enemy," he says.
When asked who would qualify as white, Spencer's reasoning quickly turns arcane, if not tortured—he invokes a mix of race, culture, and geography—but the answer definitely does not include blacks, Asians, Muslims, Jews, and most Hispanics. Spencer knows that a white ethnostate is at most a distant dream, but his more immediate desire is to shift the bounds of accepted political discourse. He hopes America's nonwhites can be made to agree that returning to the lands of their ancestors would be best for everyone: "It's like presenting to an African that this hasn't worked out," he says. "We haven't made each other happier. We are going to have to take part in this paradigmatic shift together."
For years, Spencer's "identitarian" movement barely flickered in the dark corners of the internet on sites such as Reddit and 4chan. But Trump's ascendancy was like kerosene dumped on a brushfire. From day one, the Republican insurgent sounded themes dear to the alt-right—his official campaign launch in the lobby of Trump Tower in June 2015, when he vowed to crack down on Mexican criminals and "rapists," was simply the first clarion call. Ever since, Trump's tacit embrace of the alt-right's favorite media outlets and shrillest online voices has emboldened the movement beyond Spencer's wildest dreams. (When Trump retweeted the user @WhiteGenocideTM this past January, Spencer responded, "Wow. Just wow.") Regardless of the election outcome, Spencer believes the alt-right's views will continue to seep into mainstream American politics, in the form of a renewed focus on deporting undocumented immigrants and perhaps even the establishment of a Congressional White Caucus.
In August, Hillary Clinton declared in a speech that "the emerging racist ideology known as the alt-right" had through Trump "effectively taken over the Republican Party." Watching that speech from a hotel room while on vacation in Tokyo, Spencer could hardly believe his good fortune. Suddenly his inbox was flooded with interview requests from national political reporters; in a hasty Skype call with Michelle Goldberg of Slate—a Jew, he figured, but "it's hard not to be" in the media—he confidently asserted that he'd "made it."
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/...te-nationalist
http://christian-identity.net/forum/...5428#post15428
http://whitenationalist.org/forum/sh...5428#post15428
Richard Spencer uses chopsticks to deftly pluck slivers of togarashi-crusted ahi from a rectangular plate. He is sitting in the Continental-style lounge of the Firebrand Hotel, near his home in the upscale resort town of Whitefish, Montana, discussing a subject not typically broached in polite company. "Race is something between a breed and an actual species," he says, likening the differences between whites and people of color to those between golden retrievers and basset hounds. "It's that powerful."
We are well into our third round of Arrogant Frog, a merlot that Spencer chose because its name reminds him of Pepe, the cartoon frog commandeered as a mascot by the "alt-right" movement that has been thrust from the shadows by Donald Trump's presidential campaign. Spencer says Pepe could also be seen as the reincarnation of an ancient Egyptian frog deity, Kek: "He is basically using the alt-right to unleash chaos and change the world," he says, looking slightly annoyed when I crack a smile. "You might say, 'Wow,' but this is literally how religions arise."
If Pepe is the alt-right's god, then Spencer is its self-styled prophet. A 38-year-old Duke Ph.D. dropout who sometimes resides in a Bavarian-style mansion at the edge of a ski slope, he has for years been quite literally shouting into the wilderness, proclaiming to anyone who will listen that the alt-right, whose name he coined in 2008, is the only political movement that really gives a damn about white Americans. In Spencer's view, if you aren't a white American, that's fine—but you should leave.
An articulate and well-dressed former football player with prom-king good looks and a "fashy" (as in fascism) haircut—long on top, buzzed on the sides—Spencer has managed to seize on an extraordinary presidential election to give overt racism a new veneer of radical chic. In some ways he resembles an older generation of "academic racists"—or "racialists," as he prefers to put it—who've long sought to professionalize a movement associated with Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan. What sets him apart is his rock star status among a certain fringe that delights in making racist comments pseudonymously on the internet. They idolize Spencer for embracing life as a public heretic and appearing to lend an air of respectability to white nationalist views. You could call him the alt-right's outlaw version of William F. Buckley, if Buckley had been down with millennials and into shitlords and dank memes.
Related: Meet the Horde of Neo-Nazis, Klansmen, and Other Extremist Leaders Endorsing Donald Trump
Spencer subscribes zealously to the idea that America's white population is endangered, thanks to multiculturalism and lax immigration policies that have gone unchallenged by mainstream conservatives—or, as Spencer and the alt-righters call them, "cuckservatives." He envisions a future for the United States along the lines of "a renewed Roman Empire," a dictatorship where the main criteria for citizenship would be whiteness. "You cannot view another white person as your enemy," he says.
When asked who would qualify as white, Spencer's reasoning quickly turns arcane, if not tortured—he invokes a mix of race, culture, and geography—but the answer definitely does not include blacks, Asians, Muslims, Jews, and most Hispanics. Spencer knows that a white ethnostate is at most a distant dream, but his more immediate desire is to shift the bounds of accepted political discourse. He hopes America's nonwhites can be made to agree that returning to the lands of their ancestors would be best for everyone: "It's like presenting to an African that this hasn't worked out," he says. "We haven't made each other happier. We are going to have to take part in this paradigmatic shift together."
For years, Spencer's "identitarian" movement barely flickered in the dark corners of the internet on sites such as Reddit and 4chan. But Trump's ascendancy was like kerosene dumped on a brushfire. From day one, the Republican insurgent sounded themes dear to the alt-right—his official campaign launch in the lobby of Trump Tower in June 2015, when he vowed to crack down on Mexican criminals and "rapists," was simply the first clarion call. Ever since, Trump's tacit embrace of the alt-right's favorite media outlets and shrillest online voices has emboldened the movement beyond Spencer's wildest dreams. (When Trump retweeted the user @WhiteGenocideTM this past January, Spencer responded, "Wow. Just wow.") Regardless of the election outcome, Spencer believes the alt-right's views will continue to seep into mainstream American politics, in the form of a renewed focus on deporting undocumented immigrants and perhaps even the establishment of a Congressional White Caucus.
In August, Hillary Clinton declared in a speech that "the emerging racist ideology known as the alt-right" had through Trump "effectively taken over the Republican Party." Watching that speech from a hotel room while on vacation in Tokyo, Spencer could hardly believe his good fortune. Suddenly his inbox was flooded with interview requests from national political reporters; in a hasty Skype call with Michelle Goldberg of Slate—a Jew, he figured, but "it's hard not to be" in the media—he confidently asserted that he'd "made it."
Comment