Richard Bertrand Spencer is an American white supremacist.
He is president of the National Policy Institute, a white supremacist think tank, as well as Washington Summit Publishers. Spencer rejects the label of white supremacist and considers himself a white nationalist or white identitarian. Spencer created the term "alt-right", which he considers a movement about "white identity". Spencer advocates white-European unity and a "peaceful ethnic cleansing" of nonwhites from America. He has criticized Euroskepticism, and advocates the creation of a white ethnostate that would be open to all "racial Europeans", which Spencer considers a reconstitution of the Roman Empire.Spencer has been described as a neo-Nazi and has publicly engaged in Nazi rhetoric on many occasions. In early 2016, Spencer was filmed giving the Nazi salute to Milo Yiannopoulos in a karaoke bar. In the weeks following the 2016 U.S. presidential election, at a National Policy Institute conference, Spencer quoted from Nazi propaganda and denounced Jews. In response to his cry "Hail Trump, hail our people, hail victory!", a number of his supporters gave the Nazi salute and chanted in a similar fashion to the Sieg Heil chant used at the Nazis' Nuremberg rallies.Spencer promotes his views through writing, media appearances, and college speaking tours. He was a featured speaker at the August 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, during which an alt-right supporter drove his car into a group of counter-protesters, killing one and injuring at least 19 others. Spencer denies any role or culpability in the attack, but has been sued for allegedly acting as a "gang boss" at Charlottesville and inciting the killing. After three other supporters of Spencer were charged with attempted homicide following Spencer's October 2017 speech at the University of Florida, Ohio State and several other universities cancelled Spencer's appearances, describing his presence as a menace to public safety. In 2018, Spencer suspended his college tour indefinitely.The majority of European nations, including the entire Schengen Area, and nations with nationalist governments, have banned Spencer and condemned his message. While promoting his message in a controversial speaking tour in Hungary, Spencer was mocked by the Hungarian newspaper Népszabadság for his claim to be a "racial European", which the newspaper said had no basis in European history, and for his call for "European unity" through a revival of the Roman Empire. In the aftermath of the controversy, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán banned and condemned Spencer. The government of Poland has also banned and condemned Spencer, citing Spencer's Nazi rhetoric and the Nazis' genocide of Slavic "Untermenschen" during World War II. In July 2018, Spencer was detained at Reykjavík airport en route to Sweden and ordered by Polish officials to return to the United States; the successful effort of the Poles to ban Spencer from other parts of Europe arises from the Schengen agreement.
✵ 11. May 1978
