Richard Spencer is the American editor of altright.com and is credited with leading the Alt Right movement to what it is today.
He gained international media attention during a National Policy Institute speech in which he raised a glass of whisky to the crowd and exclaimed, “Hail Trump! Hail our people! Hail Victory!”
The video showed audience members give the Nazi salute as a response to his closing statements, which drew widespread criticism.
Spencer is often referred to as a white supremacist, racist, or a Neo-Nazi but in an interview with WUVA News, he denied those labels, insisting that his passion for his “European identity” is no different than that of other races and how they too have strong cultural identities.
He argues that he is an “identitarian” and when asked what makes his aspirations different from that of a white supremacist, Spencer said that he does not want to rule over other races.
“An identitarian has the starting question of ‘who are we?’ and that is a very difficult question… I think about foreign policy and economics by asking that question,” he stated.
“We also have these much bigger identities, I’m a part of the white race, I do identify with Europe. I care about Europe more than I care about other places… I feel like I have an invested interest in the future of Germans or French people in a way that I don’t have a truly passionate investment in, say, the Chinese,” Spencer continued.
“I don’t dislike them but their destiny does not have the same importance to me as the destiny of European people. That is identitarianism. It is local and personal but it is also global,” he elaborated.
Richard Spencer is a UVa alum, earning a degree in English Literature in 2001.
Members of the UVa community and beyond have called for Spencer’s degree to be revoked, arguing that he now stands as a representation of hateful values that do not align with those that UVa wishes to uphold. He says that his time at UVa heavily influenced who he is today. Not in terms of political ideology but rather, crediting his courses with helping him master the art of questioning.
“I think it’s very sad because I graduated with high distinction, actually, and I did everything required of me and I’ve also not broken any laws,” Spencer responded.
“They are wanting to ostracize me from the alumni community for things that I think and say.”
He went on to say, “I’ll admit it is a bit painful because I am proud of attending the University of Virginia and I think they should be proud of me, I mean, I am a public figure…They in a way can’t take away my degree, even if they do in some official capacity. Everyone knows I attended UVa, everyone knows I was influenced by my time there.”
When asked if there were any specific experiences at UVa that influenced his views he replied: “There was no course or professor that changed my views in this way… the whole experience was important, UVa was definitely a coming of age experience… I was not interested in politics, I was much more interested in theater and art.”
On August 11th and 12th, Spencer returned to Charlottesville with members of the Alt-Right. He was joined by affiliates of the Ku Klux Klan, Neo-Nazi’s, and other fascist groups to march against the removal of a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, located in what is is now known as Emancipation Park.
Spencer went on to discuss why attending the Unite the Right rally was important to him.
“The confederate statues are just a symbol and in a way you can say they were just an excuse,” he admitted.”
“I do care about those statues and I think they’re worthy of being preserved. They’re a metaphor for white dispossession and that is why we care about them.”
The Unite the Right rally featured many controversial groups and while Spencer is adamant that the alt right is not racist, this people shared the event with groups that waved the Nazi flag and possessed other blatant symbolic displays of racism.
When WUVA News pointed this out to Spencer he stated: “I don’t think it’s a good idea at all to walk around with the nazi flag, I think people like that are misguided…it was a public gathering, anyone could come, no one was really turned away. I do think some people maybe have bad optics or they’re misguided in some way but on another level they are coming out to support the statue and to ultimately say ‘you will not replace us.'”
“As a people we are not going to be culturally dispossessed, morally dispossessed, and politically dispossessed. The basic idea of Unite the Right was still a very good thing,” Spencer remarked.
The events in Charlottesville quickly turned violent and deadly. Heather Heyer was struck by a car driven by James Fields as he drove through a crowd of counter-protestors. Fields had travelled from Ohio to attend the Unite the Right rally.
When asked about how he thinks the events in Charlottesville unfolded, he discussed the negligence of police and how he believed they allowed chaos to reign.
“I was absolutely shocked and appalled by the behavior of Mike Signer and Gov. Terry McAuliffe and the Chief of Police,” Spencer criticized.
He continued to explain that he believed chaos unfolded because the police forced him and other Unite the Right attendees out of McIntire Park and towards Market Street, where all of the counter-protesters were.
“I turned to the police officer and I said, ‘you know they’re going to kill us’ and he just looked at me with this kind of guilt ridden and dead eyed stare…I mean this very seriously, I think the police were trying to instigate chaos and if you want to describe what they did even more cynically you can even say that they wanted us to get killed or wanted us to kill others”, Spencer recalled.
He added: “The Heather Heyer situation was very sad, at the same time, one has to ask why was there chaos in downtown Charlottesville? They had months to plan for all of this… I think overall Charlottesville was a positive thing, we stood our ground.”
The UVa and Charlottesville community are left distraught and anxious after the tragic events, as Richard Spencer vowed to return to the city.
When questioned about whether or not the Alt Right had future plans to march in Charlottesville, he replied with a proud smile: “We’ll be back sooner than you might imagine.”
Four days after this interview, Richard Spencer returned to Charlottesville on the evening of October 7 for another gathering in Emancipation Park. He led a group of tiki torch wielding white nationalists as their chants of “You Will Not Replace Us!” once again echoed through the streets of downtown Charlottesville.
You went too easy on this racist scumbag. “Jews will not replace us?” “Blood and soil?” BOTH are from Nazi Germany. He’s a sick white supremacist. And you didn’t mention them chanting, “Russia is our friend.” NO, Russia is not America’s friend. Russia is led by a DICTATOR who locks up political opponents, has others killed INCLUDING journalists. The only reason these scum like Russia is because they are white people. We don’t want to be like Spencer or Russia where they want us all to conform.
The best Nazis are dead Nazis–that’s what my ancestors fought and they patriotically killed Nazis. When rat Spencer is no longer around, America will be better.
You are a White-hater, a racist that does not allow Whites to defend their rights as a a race. Alt-right people are not supremacists, they are simply claiming their right to exist as a race and to defend themselves against being dispossessed and replaced by extra-europeans who have absolutely nothing to do in the US. The real supremacists are the Jews who are behind this planned replacement and genocide of Whites in all the White European countries. Diversity is a euphemism for white genocide. Jews (cultural marxists) want to rule the world from Jerusalem and establish their dominance over all other races. Alt-right has absolutely no such ambition.
Truthful comment. Wonder if they’ll let you keep it?
Agree. We shall see! But regardless, the truth WILL out!
“that’s what my ancestors fought and they patriotically killed Nazis.”
Assuming you’re white american your WW2 era ancestors were probably more racist than Spencer, but don’t let that disturb your marxist circlejerk.
“And you didn’t mention them chanting, “Russia is our friend.” NO, Russia is not America’s friend.”
1.That chant was obviously intended to trigger the sort of feeble minded people that believe in those ridiculous “Russia hacked our election” conspiracy theories. Reverse Mccarthyism is probably the silliest thing I have seen in the last year.
2. Russia as in “the russian people” is indeed our friend. Neither americans nor russians benefit from hostilities between their governments. Fortunately no one cares what war mongering keyboard warriors think.
“We don’t want to be like Spencer or Russia where they want us all to conform.”
Yet you seemingly have no problem conforming to the reigning ideologies of our day.
“When rat Spencer is no longer around, America will be better.”
That is the problem with you leftists. Not understanding the cyclical nature of all things you don’t recognize when the pendulum has started to swing back. So instead of seeking dialogue like a normal person would, you screech insults like “nazi”, “racist” and “white supremacist” at everyone to the right of Elizabeth Warren until these once all-powerful words have lost all impact. The coming generation of whites certainly won’t care about your increasingly impotent outrage.
Beautifully written. I wouldn’t expect a reply from that guy, thoguh.
Leftists like him believe in their ideology because it makes them feel good, not because it’s based in reality.
They’re the same time of person who will rant about how evil white people are and then turn around and brag about how America fought the nazis. They don’t understand how stupid and hypocritical they sound because logic and facts were never the point. They say these buzzwords to feel good about themselves and to virtue signal to other True Believers(TM) , not to win an argument, which they were entirely incapable of having to begin with.
Do educated, rational adults write like you?
“Racist, Scumbag, Nazi, White Supremacist, Rat”
How about something well-thought out, reasoned & skip the logical fallacy name-calling?
Got a few things wrong. Unite the Right was in Emancipation Park (formerly, Lee Park), where the Lee statue is located. McIntire Park is where many UtR attendees went to after being physically forced out of Emancipation Park by the police. And any article about Charlottesville should acknowledge the truth about what happened on August 12th: that the police stood by and did nothing as the violent Leftist thugs of antifa and Black Lives Matter attacked the UtR attendees while they made their way to the rally site. That they attacked with rocks, mace, pepper spray, bags of urine and feces and paint, as well as blows from clubs, sticks, punches and kicks. That the police then used the Leftist instigated violence against UtR attendees as a pretext to cancel the rally before it even started, then physically pushed the UtR attendees into the Leftist mob, which caused a huge increase in the violence, and led directly to the chaos in the streets of Charlottesville which ended in the death of Heather Heyer. And finally, any article about what happened in Charlottesville on August 12th should acknowledge that the mainstream media narrative of what happened there – that it was a riot by “nazis” and “white supremacists” against the innocent people of Charlottesville – is the opposite of the truth.
“Heather Heyer was struck by a car driven by James Fields”
This is not true, there is video of her falling down nearby the car and having a heart attack. She was not struck in any way by the vehicle. Please clarify this in an edit.
The autopsy will prove she was not struck by James’s car. Video evidence already proves this. The whole thing is a media narrative that’s untrue.