Nazi salutes at DC event a display of ‘fun and exuberance,’ says alt-right leader
Richard Spencer, who ‘hailed’ Trump election win in notorious video, says he is not a neo-Nazi but is excited for potential normalization of far-right
Richard Spencer, the American alt-right leader who made global headlines in November when he “hailed” president-elect Donald Trump at a far-right conference as some in his audience made Nazi salutes, told Haaretz in an interview Saturday that his movement had nothing to do with neo-Nazism and that the salutes were made “in a context of fun and exuberance.”
Spencer, who heads the white-nationalist think tank National Policy Institute, told the paper: “I understand why people were offended, but they have to understand the context in which it happened. The context of fun and exuberance.”
He was unapologetic for the imagery from the far-right event held in Washington, saying: “I actually don’t regret it and I definitely don’t condemn it. This has made a wave in the media and there are many people who will start looking into the ideas of the alt-right, so it is ultimately a good thing.
“I want people to understand that we are not neo-Nazis,” he said. “I think it’s clear that Jews underwent tremendous suffering during World War II. I don’t deny the Holocaust.”
Spencer, who is credited with coining the term “alt-right,” was filmed on November 19 saying “Hail Trump, hail our people, hail victory!” to cheers from the audience, drawing some 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 Adolf Hitler and the Nazis’ rise to power in 1930s Germany, The New York Times reported.
Spencer 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.”
In his interview with Haaretz, Spencer elaborated on his hopes for a Trump presidency’s potential to normalize the far-right.
“Donald Trump would be the first step for identity politics for white people in the United States,” he said. “Donald Trump is a nationalist, and that is something brand new and it is something to be excited about, because I feel like the tide is turning in the United States.”
Spencer was not discouraged by Trump’s condemnation and rejection of his speech.
“I think it is something he has to do, clearly, as president of the United States. But also, I did not expect the alt-right to become mainstream overnight. We will have to fight for our seat at the table,” he said.
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.”
Spencer contested the characterization of Bannon, who has been accused of anti-Semitism and bigotry, as a representative of the alt-right in the incoming administration.
“What I think happened is that Breitbait has been open to the alt-right ideas,” he said, referring to the far-right news website of which Bannon was a founder. “It has been a platform for the alt-right. That is a very positive step. But I don’t think Steve Bannon is an alt-right thinker.”
Spencer has spoken in the past of Israel’s potential as an ally of the American far-right. In a 2010 piece titled “An Alliance with the Jews” which was published on the Radix website, Spencer claimed “Israeli hardliners might much prefer that the extreme Right were in charge of things” in the US.
“Your average eastern seaboard liberal Jew, who takes his marching orders from The New York Times and reads Phillip Roth in his spare time, will likely never want to have anything to do with the far Right — even if his life depended on it. Bibi Netanyahu and Avigdor Lieberman are a different story,” he wrote.
“Who knows? Israeli nationalists might want to help finance the far right in Europe and North America.”
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.
AP contributed to this report.
The Times of Israel Community.