As co-editor of AltRight.com and president of The National Policy Institute, white supremacist Richard Spencer has risen to become one of the highest profile white nationalists in America.
Spencer, who was born in 1978 in Boston, made headlines shortly after the 2016 election when a meeting of the National Policy Institute went viral. In a video clip of the gathering, attendees could be seen giving Nazi salutes as Spencer cheered, “Hail Trump! Hail our people!”
1. Spencer is a white separatist who believes in creating an Aryan homeland. He told Salon.com in 2013 that white people "need to start thinking about a new ethno-state that we would want to be a part of."
Here are some things to know about the alt-right leader:
He told The Atlantic in June 2017 that the goal of creating a white "ethno-state" is a long-term project and will come about "through a slow process of awakening ethnic pride and instituting government policies that reflect a new white race consciousness."
His National Policy Institute describes itself as “dedicated to the heritage, identity and future of people of European descent in the United States and around the world.”
2. Spencer is known as one of the most successful young white nationalist leaders in America, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit civil rights advocacy group.
The organization described Spencer as a leading “academic racist” who “takes a quasi-intellectual approach to white separatism. “
3. Spencer doesn't see himself as a white supremacist but instead calls himself an "identitarian." In a 2015 interview with Vice magazine, Spencer said that, "He prefers the terms 'alternative right' and 'identitarianist' over 'racist' or 'white supremacist.'"