DC eatery sorry for inadvertently hosting alt-right party, to donate money to ADL

A restaurant in Washington has issued an apology after it unintentionally hosted members and supporters of the alt-right movement, out celebrating the presidential victory of Donald Trump, some of whom performed the Nazi salute while there.

Maggiano’s Little Italy posted a Facebook status Monday detailing the Friday event, including the Nazi salutes, and explaining that the restaurant did not realize who the diners were.

“We want to sincerely apologize to the community of Friendship Heights for inadvertently hosting this meeting, which resulted in hateful sentiment,” the restaurant wrote.

Proceeds from the evening, Maggiano’s said, would be donated to the Anti-Defamation League.

“We are donating the profits from our restaurant sales on Friday, $10,000, to the DC office of the Anti-Defamation League, which for decades has been working to bring people together in peace and understanding,” it added.

The restaurant said it did not know that the diners were from the little-known National Policy Institute led by alt-right leader and white supremacy champion Richard Spencer and that the “last-minute” Friday reservation had been made in another name.

Former reality TV star Tila Tequila, who has praised Hitler and made several anti-Semitic comments, tweeted out a picture of herself and two other unnamed men performing the Nazi salute from the restaurant on Friday, with the text “Seig [sic] heil.” The picture was later deleted and Twitter suspended her account on Tuesday.

The alt-right group was gathered in Washington for a conference last weekend in which participants shouted “hail Trump, hail our victory,” drawing some enthusiastic Nazi salutes.

Speakers at the conference described Trump’s election victory as “the victory of will,” using the name of a famous Nazi propaganda film that championed Hitler and the Nazis’ rise to power in 1930s Germany, The New York Times reported.

Spencer, who claims to have coined the term alt-right, said that white identity was the driving factor behind the movement and that since the meteoric rise of Trump, white people have been “awakening to their own identity.

“To be white is to be a striver, a crusader, and explorer and a conqueror. We build. We produce. We go upward,” he claimed. “Within the very blood in our veins as children of the sun lies the potential for greatness.”

Since Trump’s election, much ink has been spilled over his campaign’s part in the rise of the alt-right, a vague grouping of far-right nationalists who have taken a hard line against immigration and what they see as the cultural degradation of America. Spencer has made clear that in his eyes the alt-right is by no means a mere nationalist movement but one based on a doctrine of white supremacy and hatred toward Jews and non-whites.

Last week, Spencer’s Twitter account was suspended for violating prohibitions on “violent threats, harassment, hateful conduct,” leading him to lash out at what he called “corporate Stalinism” and saying that “there is a great purge going on,” according to AFP.

Much of the recent focus on the alt-right stems from Trump’s appointment of his campaign CEO and Breitbart News executive chairman Stephen Bannon as a senior presidential adviser, who earlier this year said that Breitbart News is “the platform for the alt-right.”

Trump insisted Tuesday that Bannon is not racist or extremist, as asserted by many critics, and that he — Trump — rejects the alt-right.

“It’s not a group I want to energize, and if they are energized, I want to look into it and find out why,” Trump told the New York Times.

Of the gathering Saturday in Washington, Trump said, “I condemn them. I disavow, and I condemn.”