Facts to counteract the normalization of neo-nazis
This past weekend, Richard Spencer was punched while giving an interview to an Australian outlet. Now certain media is wondering whether punching a neo nazi is the right thing to do. Spencer vehemently argues that he is not a neo nazi and most media profiles are not challenging this assertion, further complicating the morality of “punching a neo nazi” (since he argues he is not a neo-nazi, then whoever punched him took a jab at a victim of “anti free speech violence” or so goes one of the lines of thinking).
Richard Spencer, founder of the so called alt-right has been on record numerous times stating that his desired political goal is to dress extreme right, white supremacist ideas in an acceptable shell. In an extensive profile published in October 2016, he explained this ultimate goal:
That is, after all, the ultimate goal: to expand the boundaries of what is permissible or even thinkable and red-pill more normies. For Spencer and his clique, that process isn’t about influencing policy but rather the way people saw the world, which would naturally lead to policy changes. He calls it metapolitics. His aim is to seed these ideas in Washington.
In order to reach these goals, Spencer uses numerous neologisms and newspeak to refer to old Nazi and white supremacists ideas. Instead of referring to eugenics, for example, he uses “human biological diversity” which is the way white supremacists attempt to introduce these ideas to the mainstream.
Yesterday I posted a critical analysis of the ways that mainstream media is playing right into his hands of mainstreaming neo-nazi ideology and pushing the boundaries of acceptable discourse. The whole thread can be read here:
I have already written about the way the “fashion profiles” of Richard Spencer and other known neo-nazis in mainstream media are normalizing these discourses and making these people appealing to the public, sexy and desirable even. As recent as November 2016, Spencer was filmed giving a speech where his followers broke into Sieg Heil Nazi salutes and Spencer himself used words such as “lugenpresse” (lying press) that have a long history within Nazism. However, since these interviews and profiles rarely (if ever) point to this man’s history of neo-nazi advocacy (including eugenics and mass extermination), here’s a rundown of the past seven years of Richard Spencer, in his own words, calling for ethnic cleansing, mass sterilization and a whites only ethnostate.
2010 Spencer begins the “promo tour” announcing he is starting a new political movement with the aim to “push the boundaries of discourse.”
In March of the same year, he officially starts the movement he named “Alternative Right”. On his first public forays as leader of this new movement, Spencer starts the rhetoric obfuscation:
Instead of spouting racism, Alternative Right is engaging in the much more respectable-sounding analysis of ‘human biological diversity’ and ‘socio-biology’.
As Ari Feldman explains in this article, “human biological diversity” is a neologism for eugenics
“Human biodiversity” appropriates scientific authority by posing as an empirical, rational discourse on the genetically proven physical and mental variation between humans. It uses the language of genetics to underscore, for example, the prevalence of Mongolians in sumo wrestling, the IQ scores of black people or the inbreeding patterns of Ashkenazi Jews.
As an aside, Milo Yiannopoulos has spouted this neo-eugenics garbage in a couple of articles.
This heavily sourced article, from 2010, about the founding of the alternative right, already traces the many links between Richard Spencer and advocates of old school nazi ideas such as revoking citizenship for Black people.
2011 via Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, a screenshot of the white nationalist conference Spencer hosted where, among other topics, speakers discussed eugenics (Dysgenics is the study of factors producing the accumulation and perpetuation of defective or disadvantageous genes and traits in offspring of a particular population or species) and again, “Human Biological Diversity”.
A journalist at Media Matters attended the conference and reported thusly
This was a gathering of the so-called “academic racists”; people who discuss literature and advocate science-y sounding concepts like eugenics and “human biodiversity” that provide the foundation for their policies of racial sequestration and superiority. Mainstream Americans, they believe, and mainstream white Americans in particular, are ignoring the science and politics of race to their peril.
The journalist was also subjected to a variety of phrenology theories that extolled the virtues of the white cranium’s inherent superiority.
Another speaker at this conference organized by Richard Spencer was Samuel Dickson, former lawyer to the Georgia Ku Klux Klan. The journalist pointed out that Spencer cloaks his supremacist views behind veils of fairness and fringe science.
2013 In a speech at at the 2013 American Renaissance conference, he advocates for “ethnic cleansing” so that in the aftermath a white ethnostate can be created
Today, in the public imagination, “ethnic-cleansing” has been associated with civil war and mass murder (understandably so).
On the same year he spoke about ethnic cleansing, he also advocated for mass sterilizations of Black people (which would be an unequivocally nazi way to achieve the ethnic cleansing he was hoping for)
“We are undergoing a sad process of degeneration,” he said, coming back to minority births in the U.S. “We will need to reverse it using the state and the government. You incentivize people with higher intelligence, you incentivize people who are healthy to have children. And it sounds terrible and nasty, but there would be a great use of contraception.”
He didn’t mean the government should encourage people to use birth control pills and condoms. He was advocating for some type of government-forced sterilization.
“They could still enjoy sex. You are not ruining their life,” Spencer said.
Also, in 2013, the glamorizing fashion profiles already started. He explained the reasoning behind them (though obviously nobody took him seriously) and how it was part of the strategy to make the alt-right attractive to new followers
“‘[White separatists] have to look good,’ Spencer said, adding that if his movement means ‘being part of something that is crazed or ugly or vicious or just stupid, no one is going to want to be a part of it.’”
The assumption is that if they dress nice, people will follow Spencer and his fellow travelers on their road to a white ethno-state where pasty people can listen to Jack Johnson records and play Frisbee in glorious racial homogeneity.
At the nationalist conference he hosted, these were the books offered for sale:
Notice “The Chosen People, a study of Jewish intelligence and achievement” on that table. VDARE, the white nationalist hate site that Spencer used to be part of before he went on to start his own neo nazi cart has an extensive review of the book and its analysis of IQ of Jewish people.
2014 At a far right conference in Hungary
One speaker, US author Richard Spencer, has argued that black people are less intelligent than white people, and that “when blacks are left entirely to their own devices, Western Civilization — any kind of civilization — disappears.”
2016 At yet another conference hosted by Richard Spencer, Alt-Right Leaders: We Aren’t Racist, We Just Hate Jews
The three alt-right leaders who gathered in D.C. this afternoon made two things very clear: They think white people are genetically predisposed to be more moral and intelligent than black people, and they do not want to share their envisioned utopian ethno-state with folks of the Jewish persuasion.
Richard Spencer at the Republican convention in 2016
Next time someone claims Richard Spencer is a “dissenter” or a “politician” or some such nonsense, point them to this list of “Richard Spencer in his own words”. He has been spouting racist violence for years and we should not allow the normalization of his rhetoric as part of the acceptable boundaries of political discourse. Advocating for mass sterilization of Black people or the elimination of Jewish people are not topics of political debate. They are the machinations of cruel, immoral people who should not be allowed to promote these views unchallenged.
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