Who Is Richard Spencer? Meet The White Nationalist Founder Of The Alt-Right Movement Trying To Start A Racist Revival With The Election Of Donald Trump
Richard Spencer has seen his profile growing in tandem with the rise of Donald Trump in the past year, and now the so-called founder of the alt-right movement is going viral with a video of his celebration that looked similar to a Nazi Party rally.
Video emerged this week of Spencer speaking at the annual conference of the National Policy Institute, a group that says it is dedicated to the “heritage, identity, and future of people of European descent in the United States, and around the world.” In the now-viral video, Spencer is seen firing up the more than 200 people in attendance at the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington, D.C., by using rhetoric stolen directly from Nazi Party rallies of the 1940s, the Atlantic reported.
“Hail Trump, hail our people, hail victory!” he shouted.
In the speech, which was interrupted often as attendees gave Nazi salutes, Richard Spencer fired up the crowd by envisioning a future that is once again dominated by whites.
'Hail Trump!': 'Alt-right' leader Richard Spencer leads white nationalist crowd in saluting president-elect https://t.co/xIyuQbcXNv
— The Telegraph (@Telegraph) November 22, 2016
“America was until this past generation a white country designed for ourselves and our posterity,” Spencer said. “It is our creation, it is our inheritance, and it belongs to us.”
The video of Richard Spencer’s alt-right call to action has gone viral, garnering more than 10 million views since being posted this week.
Spencer was the founder of a website called Alternative Right, a now-defunct site that the Telegraph noted was “dedicated to heretical perspectives on society and culture – popular, high, and otherwise – particularly those informed by radical, traditionalist, and nationalist outlooks.” He has been called the founder of the alt-right movement, which promotes white nationalism.
The 38-year-old Spencer told Mother Jones that he believes America’s white population is “endangered” by multiculturalism and immigration policies. Although he has been seen as the pre-eminent member of the alt-right for years, the rise of Donald Trump helped bring Spencer and his movement into the mainstream, the report noted.
“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.”
Spencer also said throughout Donald Trump’s campaign that a win on Election Day would legitimize Spencer’s racist movement.
“I think if Trump wins,” he told Mother Jones back in October, “we could really legitimately say that he was associated directly with us, with the ‘R[acist]’ word, all sorts of things. People will have to recognize us.”
And though Spencer’s own racially-charged history goes back many years, he said it was Trump who activated it on a national level.
“Trump brought us from zero to 1. We were talking to ourselves, talking to our own ideas…Now we are still doing that, but we are connected with a campaign, connected with attacking liberals. We’ve come so far.”
But even as Richard Spencer preaches the superiority of the white race, he has his own checkered history. Mother Jones noted that he dated several Asian women when he was younger, something he begrudgingly admitted took place before he evolved into a white nationalist.
“I would rather you didn’t write about that,” he said, adding later, “You are probably going to nail me with this… I think some people in the movement would probably find that terrible.”
Richard Spencer said he had gotten caught up in his passion for the alt-right cause when he shouted "Hail victory!" https://t.co/lsz7fgX3T5
— The New York Times (@nytimes) November 22, 2016
With Richard Spencer’s quick ascent to prominence with the alt-right movement and the viral video of his rally that evoked sentiments of a Nazi Party rally, many critics and civil rights group are now calling on Donald Trump’s administration to disavow the alt-right movement. The president-elect has remained silent so far.
[Featured Image by Spencer Platt/Getty Images]
