(Abingdon: Routledge, 2013), 175.
58. American Renaissance, “We Are at the End of Something— A Conversation
with Alain de Benoist,” accessed December 14, 2017, https:// www.amren.com/
features/ 2013/ 11/ we- are- at- the- end- of- something/ .
59. Greg Johnson, “Recommended Reading: Six Essential Works on White
Nationalism,” accessed December 14, 2017, https:// www.counter- currents.com/
2016/ 04/ six- essential- works- on- white- nationalism/ .
60. Greg Johnson, “The Muslim Problem,” accessed December 14, 2017, https://
www.counter- currents.com/ 2015/ 01/ the- muslim- problem/ .
61. Johnson, “Tom Sunić Interviews Greg Johnson.”
62. Greg Johnson, “Vanguardism, Vantardism, and Mainstreaming,” accessed
December 14, 2017, https:// www.counter- currents.com/ 2014/ 10/ vanguardism-
vantardism- and- mainstreaming/ .
63. Irmin Vinson, Some Thoughts on Hitler and Other Essays (San Francisco: Counter-
Currents 2012), v.
64. Ibid., viii.
65. Ibid., 43, 51, and 54.
66. Johnson, “Between Two Lampshades.”
67. Greg Johnson, “Dealing with the Holocaust,” accessed December 14, 2017,
http:// www.theoccidentalobserver.net/ 2012/ 07/ 20/ dealing- with- the- holocaust/ .
Predictably, this argument alienated diehard revisionists and deniers,
see Carolyn Yeager, “Nationalism and the Holocaust: A Reply to
Johnson,” accessed December 14, 2017, https:// carolynyeager.net/
nationalism- and- holocaust- reply- johnson.
68. Singal, “Undercover with the Alt- Right.”
69. Vinson, Some Thought of Hitler, 6.
70. Greg Johnson, “The Burden of Hitler, 2013,” accessed December 14, 2017,
https:// www.counter- currents.com/ 2013/ 04/ the- burden- of- hitler- 2013/ .
71. Johnson, “Greg Johnson Interviewed by Laura Raim.”
23
Greg Johnson and Counter-Currents
223
72. Counter- Currents Radio, “Podcast no. 14— Interview with Charles Krafft, Part 1,”
accessed December 14, 2017, http:// www.counter- currents.com/ 2012/ 04/
interview- with- charles- krafft- part- 1/ .
73. Trevor Lynch’s White Nationalist Guide to the Movies, ed. Greg Johnson (San
Francisco: Counter- Currents 2012).
74. Johnson, “Tom Sunić Interviews Greg Johnson.”
75. Greg Johnson, “Homosexuality and White Nationalism,” accessed December
14, 2017, http:// www.counter- currents.com/ 2010/ 10/ homosexuality- and- white-
nationalism/ .
76. Greg Johnson, “Gay Panic on the Alt Right,” accessed December 14, 2017.
https:// www.counter- currents.com/ 2016/ 03/ gay- panic- on- the- alt- right/ .
77. Greg Johnson, “Does the Manosphere Morally Corrupt Men?” accessed
December 14, 2017, https:// www.counter- currents.com/ 2015/ 02/
does- the- manosphere- morally- corrupt- men.
78. Greg Johnson, “Gay Panic on the Alt Right.”
79. Voice of Reason, “The Sunic Journal: Dr. Greg Johnson on the New Right,”
accessed December 14, 2017, http:// reasonradionetwork.com/ 20110809/
the- sunic- journal- dr- greg- johnson- on- the- new- right.
80. Greg Johnson, “Punching Right,” accessed December 14, 2017, https:// www.
counter- currents.com/ 2016/ 12/ punching- right/ .
81. Greg Johnson, “The Alt Right: Obituary for a Brand?” accessed December 14,
2017, https:// www.counter- currents.com/ 2016/ 11/ the- alt- right- obituary- for- a-
brand/ .
82. Arktos, “The Attacks on Arktos,” last accessed December 14, 2017, https://
altright.com/ 2017/ 06/ 17/ the- attacks- on- arktos/ ; “Boatsinker,” “Greg Johnson, Daniel Friberg and What Happened before Scandza Forum,” accessed December
14, 2017, https:// forum.therightstuff.biz/ topic/ 48716/ greg- johnson- daniel-
friberg- and- what- happened- before- scandza- forum?page=1 and Greg Johnson;
“Reply to Daniel Friberg,” accessed December 14, 2017, https:// www.counter-
currents.com/ 2017/ 06/ reply- to- daniel- friberg/ .
83. Johnson, “New Right vs. Old Right.”
24
14
Richard B. Spencer and
the Alt Right
Tamir Bar- On
B O R N I N B O S T O N in 1978, Richard Bertrand Spencer is the presi-
dent of the National Policy Institute,1 a “white nationalist” think tank
founded by William Regnery II, the multimillionaire who also funded
the Charles Martel Society, the publisher of the Occidental Quarterly.2 In a
2015 YouTube video titled “Who Are We?” Spencer notes that people are
reasserting their identities, and he asks peoples of white European ex-
traction to return to their ancestral identities, to end their attachment to
liberal multiculturalism (a “fate worse than death,”) to become “seekers”
rather than “wanderers” of the “rootless” internationalist and cosmopol-
itan variety.3 Spencer also points out that man does not live for “freedom”
(which, he insists, equals “shopping” in liberal societies), but rather “for
a homeland, a people and its future.” Finally, he also asks a primordial
question in respect of identity: “Are we ready to become who we are?” For
Spencer, white Americans must define themselves as white Europeans as
well as promote a politics of white racial solidarity.
In this video, we can see the contours of Spencer’s Alt Right world-
view: use of the internet as a main vehicle for provoking both conservatives
and liberals with politically incorrect language and ideas; a rejection of
liberal multiculturalism; a disdain for capitalism because of its ten-
dency to homogenize diverse peoples and cultures; support for political
communities wedded to white, European identities; a challenge to “he-
roic,” white, and European elites to create a revolution in mentalities and
values (i.e., a right- wing metapolitical struggle) against multiculturalism
25
Richard B. Spencer and the Alt Right
225
and immigration; and a desire to create white, homogeneous ethnostates
(“homelands”) on both sides of the Atlantic. Greg Johnson has suggested
that these ethnostates could be erected in “European colonial societies”
such as the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and even Uruguay and
Argentina.4
For Spencer, white homelands are rejected by liberals and conservatives
alike, thus suggesting that the Alt Right is as much about hatred for all
established and “cosmopolitan” elites as for the traditional liberal Left
“enemies.” Moreover, Spencer believes that the racialist and anti- Semitic
agendas of the Old Right can be attained through metapolitical, legal, and
nonviolent methods. In this sense, Spencer’s Alt Right is heavily indebted
to the French New Right’s metapolitical framework, although Spencer
is more openly racialist and anti- Semitic compared to the French New
Right’s leader Alain de Benoist. Thus, the Alt Right aims to unite different
elements of the Right from white nationalists and racists to conservatives
and others beyond the radical Right, which seek to stem the tide of liberal
multiculturalism, advance the interests of the white race through concrete
m
easures such as halting nonwhite immigration, and end “Jewish influ-
ence” in politics.
A few weeks after the 2016 presidential election, at a National Policy
Institute conference, Spencer declared: “Hail Trump, hail our people,
hail victory!”5 while some of his supporters gave the Nazi salute. Spencer
brushed off the incident as a moment of “irony” or exuberance, yet he
also called Donald Trump’s presidential election win “the victory of
will,” echoing Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will (1935), a Nazi propa-
ganda film.6 The desire to break political taboos about Fascism, Nazism,
anti-
Semitism, and issues of white racial identity also informs the
Weltanschauung of Spencer and the Alt Right. So, for example, whereas
whites historically engaged in ethnic solidarity through colonialist
practices, the creation of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) or apartheid in South
Africa, Spencer endorses Jared Taylor’s argument that today’s whites lack
ethnic solidarity and that “nonwhite ethnic solidarity is an entrenched part
of the political landscape.”7
Spencer has been dubbed a “neo- Nazi,” “white supremacist,” and
“ethnic nationalist.” The Southern Poverty Law Center called him “a
suit- and- tie version of the white supremacists of old, a kind of profes-
sional racist in khakis.”8 Spencer, however, denies that he is a white su-
premacist, fascist, or neo- Nazi because he neither supports the use of
extraparliamentary violence or colonialism, nor does he want to impose
2
6
226
E M E R G E N T T H I N K E R S
his societal model on other peoples.9 Like Johnson and Taylor, Spencer
believes that white racial consciousness and political solidarity can be
attained without violence, continuing the French New Right’s “right- wing
Gramscianism,” which was promoted by de Benoist and Guillaume Faye.10
Spencer has argued that whites are victims of cultural “disposses-
sion” in their own lands because of orthodoxies such as racial equality
and multiculturalism. He has called Western immigration and refugee
policies a “proxy war” against white Europeans. He has also advocated
“peaceful ethnic cleansing” and longs for the erection of “a new society,
an ethno- state that would be a gathering point for all Europeans. It would
be a new society based on very different ideals than, say, the Declaration
of Independence.”11 In short, Spencer’s Alt Right is not merely conserv-
ative. In their desire to smash liberalism, administrative equality, mul-
ticulturalism, and capitalism, as well as create ethnically homogeneous
“homelands,” Spencer’s Alt Right is indeed revolutionary. This point is
corroborated by George Hawley, author of Making Sense of the Alt- Right,
who argues that, unlike mainstream conservatives, the Alt Right conceives
of the immigration issue through a racial lens based on a core defense of
white identity; rejects two sacred American values, namely, equality and
liberty; and wants to, at minimum, end mass immigration to the US.
Spencer is self- described as an “identitarian.”12 The identitarian move-
ment has French and European origins and advocates rights for members
of specific European ethnocultural groups. Some of their thinkers include
Fabrice Robert and Markus Willinger. Spencer claims to be the inventor
of the term “Alt Right,”13 a term that has also been welcomed by Daniel
Friberg, Greg Johnson, Jack Donovan, and Taylor. In a Radix interview,
Spencer noted that he coined the term “alternative Right” in 2008 in
order to differentiate himself from “mainstream American conservatism”
and pass down European “ancestral traditions” to new generations.14 Paul
Gottfried argues that both he and Spencer jointly created the Alt Right
term.15 For Spencer, as one can read in the “Alt- Right manifesto,”16 those
“ancestral traditions” are racial preference for white Europeans and anti-
Semitism— both decidedly Old Right staples.
Despite his anti- Semitic and pro- Nazi comments, Spencer’s key in-
tellectual influences are largely those thinkers concerned with winning
the “cultural war” against egalitarianism, liberal democracy, capitalism,
socialism, and multiculturalism: the German philosopher Friedrich
Nietzsche, French New Right intellectuals such as de Benoist and Faye,
Conservative Revolution theorists such as Carl Schmitt, Ernst Jünger, and
27
Richard B. Spencer and the Alt Right
227
Martin Heidegger, European theorists like Julius Evola, Francis Parker
Yockey, and Alexander Dugin, and a collection of US right- wingers with a
penchant for race- driven politics or anti- Semitism, including Sam Francis,
Jared Taylor, and Kevin B. MacDonald. In contrast to parliamentary poli-
tics and extraparliamentary violence, Spencer’s focus on the cultural realm
makes his thought far more threatening for the system and highlights
the important evolution of the radical Right on both sides of the Atlantic.
That is, the radical Right understands that in an antifascist, antiracist, and
anticolonial epoch, conspicuous displays of violence, support for coloni-
alism, or overtly racist language are not acceptable. As Spencer stated,
“We have to look good” because few would want to join a movement that
is “crazed or ugly or vicious or just stupid.”17
Life and context
Spencer is “an icon for white supremacists”18 and a controversial star on
the university lecture circuit. Yet his path to mass media stardom was
not predictable. He neither suffered materially nor did he have major life
crises. He is the son of Rand Spencer (an ophthalmologist) and Sherry
Spencer (née Dickenhorst), an heiress to cotton farms in Louisiana. He
grew up in Preston Hollow in Dallas, Texas. In high school, he was not in-
tellectually brilliant, yet he did mature intellectually. In 2001, he received
a BA in English Literature and Music from the University of Virginia. By
2003, he gained an MA in the Humanities from the University of Chicago.
From the summer of 2005 into 2006, he was at the Vienna International
Summer University, thus cementing his links to European culture, iden-
tity, and history— key Spencerian themes. From 2005 to 2007, he was a
PhD student at Duke University in Modern European intellectual history.
He joined the Duke Conservative Union, where he met Stephen Miller,
later Donald Trump’s senior policy advisor. Spencer’s former website
claims that he did not complete his PhD at Duke in order “to pursue a life
of thought- crime,” thus suggesting that universities are laboratories for
dogmatic thought.
In 2007, Spencer was the assistant editor at the mainstream conserv-
ative magazine the American Conservative. He was allegedly fired from it
because his views were considered extremist. From 2008 to 2009, he was
the executive editor of Taki’s Magazine, a libertarian online politics and
culture magazine published by the Greek paleoconservative journalist and
socialite Taki Theodoracopulos.
228
E M E R G E N T T H I N K E R S
By 2010, Spencer had charted his own intellectual direction. He mocked
both established political parties in the US, especially the Republican
establishment. In March 2010, he founded AlternativeRight.com,
a website which he edited until 2012. In 2011, he became owner and ex-
ecutive director of Washington Summit Publishers. In that same year, he
also became president and director of the National Policy Institute. In
2012, he founded Radix Journal as a publication of Washington Summit
Publishers. Contributors have included white nationalist thinkers such as
Kevin MacDonald, Alex Kurtagić, and Samuel T. Francis. He also hosts a
weekly podcast called Vanguard Radio. In short, Spencer has focused on
using various media outlets to disseminate his views to ordinary people in
an accessible manner.
In 2014, Spencer was deported from Budapest, Hungary, after trying
to organize the National Policy Institute conference, ironically as Hungary
then had one of the most nationalist regimes in Europe under President
Victor Orbán,19 and Spencer’s ultranationalist, anti-
immigrant, and
antirefugee views dovetail with Orbán’s.
On January 15, 2017 (Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday), Spencer
launched AltRight.com, a key website for Alt Right supporters. The date
was not selected accidentally. If Martin Luther King is the symbol of racial
equality, liberal multiculturalism, and desegregation, Spencer is the voice
for racial inequality, white nationalism, and segregated white ethnostates.
A key contributor on AltRight.com is Jared Taylor, the author of the sem-
inal white nationalist tract White Identity: Racial Consciousness in the 20th
Century.
It should also be mentioned that Spencer is married to Nina
Kouprianova, who has translated numerous books written by Alexander
Dugin.20 Those books have been published by Spencer’s Washington
Summit Publishers.
Work and thought
Spencer is more known for his YouTube videos, tweets, television and
newspaper interviews, and university speaking engagements than for any
substantive body of intellectual work. In this respect, he differs from de
Key Thinkers of the Radical Right Page 38