The intellectual leader of the white nationalist alt-right movement said that the election of Donald Trump represents a “paradigmatic shift” of white identity politics coming to the fore.
Richard Spencer said in an interview Thursday with Reveal that a Trump presidency “ will not bring about racelessness” but will incite white “ethnic consciousness” and present new historical opportunities to create a white ethno-state.
Immigration has brought about multiculturalism and multiracialism that bring about a “white guilt complex,” since the “arrow has not been pointing toward a country of and for white people,” said Spencer.
Policies like affirmative action might try to fight overrepresentation of white people in various industries and education, but “fairness has never really been a great value in my mind,” he said. “I like greatness and winning and dominance and beauty. Those are values, not really fairness.”
The way out, “for my people, for us to survive and thrive,” is to reaffirm identity politics and celebrate Protestant Anglo Saxon heritage, said Spencer. White people, he added, are the “essential” and “indispensable” people in founding the United States, since “the American nation is defined by the fact that it is derived from Europe, that European people settled this continent,” he told radio host Al Letson, who is Black.
When Letson pushed him to explain the difference between alt-righters and the KKK, Spencer admitted that he respects Letson for being proud of his Black heritage and that white people need to develop their own identity. White nationalists today are adjusting with the times, which are rife in racial tension, he said.
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“ Do you think that in modern America, in contemporary America there are greater levels of trust and togetherness than we had decades ago?” responded Spencer.
“I think we actually kind of hate each other and that is a very tragic thing, and that’s a very sad thing,” he added. “We can talk about how one day we’re gonna all be holding hands or we can actually be realistic about this, and we can look at the power of human nature and the power of race.”
The solution — the ethno-state — has parallels, said Spencer, with both communism for being utopian and Zionism for imagining a homeland and a “safe space” for “my civilization.”
Letson warned him that he is essentially suggesting forced migration or genocide, to which Spencer retorted that he doesn’t know how the ethno-state will come about, but that, “History presents opportunities and it becomes possible.”