American Nazis and the Fight for US History

Photo by Patrick Feller | CC BY 2.0

Photo by Patrick Feller | CC BY 2.0

 

“Hail Trump, hail our people, hail victory!” Richard B. Spencer yelled in front of more than 200 attendees at his annual conference on November 19th, in the nation’s capitol. Several of his supporters then raised their right arms to give the Nazi salute. This video, taken by a reporter for The Atlantic, features Richard Spencer, president of the National Policy Institute, a white-nationalist think-tank in Washington D.C. Spencer is known for having created the term “alt-right.” He is also known for advocating for “a peaceful ethnic cleansing” of the United States.

“America was, until this past generation, a white country designed for ourselves and for our posterity. It is our creation. It is our inheritance. And it belongs to us,” Spencer declared during his speech.

When I first watched Richard Spencer at his NPI annual conference, like many, I was horrified by Spencer’s intentional references to Nazi language, imagery and ideology. In this political moment, as President-Elect Trump appoints to his cabinet, a crew of known white supremacists: Stephen Bannon as Chief Strategist; Jeff Sessions (Attorney General); and Michael Flynn (National Security Adviser), Spencer’s Neo-Nazi D.C. conference takes on a whole new, chilling power—not of a fringe, right-wing hate group, but of a mainstream, right-wing hate group.

After absorbing the initial shock of his fascist message, what disturbed me next about Spencer’s…

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