Richard B. Spencer
A photograph of Robert Spencer holding a microphone and pointing
Spencer in 2016
Born Richard Bertrand Spencer
Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.
Nationality American
Education
University of Virginia (BA)
University of Chicago (MA)
Duke University (PhD candidate; withdrew)
Occupation Author, publisher
Known for
President and director of the National Policy Institute
Executive director of Washington Summit Publishers
Home town Preston Hollow, Dallas, Texas, U.S.
Political party Independent
Movement
Alt-right
Identitarian movement
Neo-Nazism
White nationalism
White supremacy
Spouse(s) Nina Kouprianova
(m. 2010; div. 2018)
Richard Bertrand Spencer (born 1978)[1] is an American neo-Nazi and white supremacist.[2] He is president of the National Policy Institute (NPI), a white supremacist think tank, as well as Washington Summit Publishers. Spencer rejects the labels white supremacist and neo-Nazi, considers himself a white nationalist, a white identitarian, and the equivalent of a "Zionist" for white people.[3][4][5][6] Spencer created the term "alt-right", which he considers a movement based on "white identity".[7][8][9] Spencer advocates white-European unity, a "peaceful ethnic cleansing" of nonwhites from America, and the creation of a "white racial empire," which he believes would resemble the Roman Empire.[10][11][12]
Spencer has publicly engaged in Nazi rhetoric on many occasions, for which he has been criticized by the political mainstream, as well as by many fellow white nationalists, who believe that Spencer's flamboyant rhetoric and persona marginalize their movement.[13][14][15][16][17] In early 2016, Spencer was filmed giving the Nazi salute in a karaoke bar.[18] After Donald Trump was elected President, Spencer urged his supporters to "party like it's 1933," a reference to the year in which Hitler came to power in Germany.[19] In the weeks following the election, at a National Policy Institute conference, Spencer quoted Nazi propaganda and denounced Jews, and he also used the German term Lügenpresse ("lying press") to vilify journalists.[9] Later, in response to Spencer's cry "Hail Trump, hail our people, hail victory!", a number of his supporters gave the Nazi salute and chanted in a similar fashion to the Sieg Heil chant used at the Nazis' Nuremberg rallies.[20][21] Spencer later called Trump's election "the victory of will", a phrase evoking the title of Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will (1935), a Nazi-era propaganda film.[9] Spencer has expressed admiration for the tactics of American Nazi Party founder George Lincoln Rockwell, who in Spencer's view used "shock [as] a positive means to an end".