Counter-Currents
4,104 words
“Ask not what you can do for the movement, but what the movement can do for you.” — Richard Spencer (paraphrased)
I think all of us Richard Spencer observers deduced long ago that the self-described ruler of the world has been pining for a rebrand. Last year, I wrote about him making overtures to the Bernie Left, which were met with cool indifference. He’s been wanting to sell out, the only problem being that no one is interested in buying. I’ve been half-tempted to start a GoFundMe to raise money for a dowry that would be donated to whichever political movement is willing to take him off our hands.
But it appears that with his latest CNN interview with Elle Reeve, Spencer has at last broken up with the Dissident Right — which, in Spencer’s mind, was already cheating on him, anyway. But hey, if there are any niche online political subcultures out there reading this, he’s single!
Before I get into Richard Spencer, let me redpill any newer folks to the Dissident Right on Elle Reeve. This is a bit of lore you need to know before you can really understand this interview’s significance and symbolism.
Elle Reeve was an unknown tech journalist for Vice when, on September 20, 2016, she appeared on the 103rd episode of The Daily Shoah, entitled “Vice Shitty Stories.” The episode was ostensibly supposed to have Elle interview the Death Panel about Pepe the Frog, but it ended up being about the Death Panel trying to redpill the painfully normie Elle Reeve. They tossed poor Elle around like a rag doll as she struggled, tongue-tied, to argue against some of the best White Nationalist debaters on the scene. It made for fascinating listening and superb propaganda.
The podcast ended up becoming an Alt Right landmark. It was one of the first times that Alt Right representatives were interviewed by someone connected to a major media outlet, and they were able to get their ideas out completely uncensored.
While Elle was made to look quite silly in the episode, it was also the most attention she had ever gotten in her career. She then set about making “the Alt Right” her main journalistic beat, and she was one of the first media figures to do so.
A lot of people on the Alt Right had a soft spot for Elle for a few reasons. First, even though she is a shitlib journalist, she was at least willing to go into the lion’s cage for a no-holds-barred uncensored interview with elite White Nationalists. Second, after the podcast, she appeared to make a good-faith effort to understand her subject. She attended an American Renaissance conference and interviewed Spencer at the infamous “Hailgate” NPI conference. Thirdly, the Alt Right made Elle Reeve. If you trace her career trajectory, it all goes back to that one episode of The Daily Shoah. She was nobody until she started talking to White Nationalists. Elle Reeve’s rising career is therefore a testament to the Alt Right’s relevance.
Chris Cantwell learned the hard way, however, that none of this is a reason to trust Elle Reeve. Her Cantwell interview before Charlottesville ended up being one of the most devastating anti-White Nationalist propaganda disasters. Granted, Cantwell was behaving so buffoonishly that I doubt much deceptive editing was required to make him appear so, and his decision to upload a video of himself crying remains the single greatest own goal in the history of White Nationalism.
The entire world was talking about the Alt Right after Charlottesville, and by that time, Elle had been covering them for a year. She was perfectly poised to present herself as an “Alt Right expert.” She knew all of them, they knew her. She’d been in the belly of the beast. Few journalists could make these claims. Whatever else one might say about her, she was smart enough to see which way the wind was blowing and managed to carve out a niche for herself in an extremely competitive field despite her obvious shortcomings. I will give her credit for taking the initiative.
If Richard Spencer was going to give his farewell interview to the Dissident Right, it is therefore perhaps fitting that he should give it to Elle Reeve, who was there at (almost) the beginning,
Five years after their post-Hailgate interview outside the NPI conference, things have come full circle. Elle Reeve and Spencer have been reunited once again, but oh, how the tables have turned. Elle, who was then an unknown, scrappy millennial Vice reporter, is now with CNN. Spencer, for his part, who was once the face of the most exciting and talked-about news story in the world, now finds himself a broke and broken man with nothing to show for his adventures but a trail of burned bridges and broken lives that he left in his wake. He has long since been surpassed in relevance by a 23-year-old who lives with his parents, and he is now even shunned by White Nationalists.
The interview was part of a CNN special on the Charlottesville civil trial that aired Sunday night called White Power on Trial. I guess they wheeled out Elle Reeve because she has a history with some of the main figures and they assumed she would be able to get these people to open up to her.
If there were any lingering doubts as to whether or not Richard Spencer is the poster child for Narcissistic Personality Disorder, the 8-minute interview should seal the deal. Right out of the gate, Spencer tries to distance himself from the movement and dodge any blame for how things turned out.
Elle: I mean, what you don’t want me to ask about is, like, the most interesting thing.
Richard: What?
Elle: Like, did you do it all on purpose, and do you feel bad about it?
Richard: Are you talking about Charlottesville?
Elle: Yeah, and the whole thing, the whole movement itself. Did you do it on purpose, or did you not care?
Richard: I didn’t create the movement.
Elle: You named it. You became the face of it.
Richard: I was trying to unite everything to where it would be simply me, and it would have been better if they had fucking bent the knee and shut the fuck up.
Better for whom?
You can buy The Alternative Right, ed. Greg Johnson, here
There’s a lot to unpack here. Basically, Spencer thinks that the Alt Right should have been a Richard Spencer cult of personality. Most of us already knew that, but it is refreshing to hear Spencer himself just come out and say it rather than try to gaslight us into thinking that his maniacal dopamine-chasing was somehow carried out for our benefit.
But at the same time, Spencer acknowledges that he did not create the movement. This raises the obvious question: “If you didn’t create the movement, then what is your claim to leadership?” He didn’t create the movement. He’s never written a book. He ran a blog, but it was one of many blogs. It wasn’t the biggest blog, nor was it light-years better than other blogs. His fan base was miniscule compared to that of TRS or The Daily Stormer. So why him as leader? The simple answer is that better candidates didn’t want the job. Spencer says as much in the interview.
Richard: The whole 2016-2017 experience was quite something, wasn’t it? I was making headlines every week. Trump was also reaching people online, and the Alt Right became a kind of advertising wing. And the Alt Right’s anonymous, and I am not anonymous, and if I dare say so, I think I am interesting.
Well, that part is true, but only in the same sense as someone like Ted Bundy is interesting. However, he is on to something. The main reason Spencer was able to land the job of Alt Right spokesman is because most of the movement was anonymous and no one else wanted the job. If the TRS doxes had happened a year earlier, Mike Enoch probably would have wound up with that job. Gavin McInnes (who had some Dissident Right cred due to his association with Takimag) could have gotten the job if he wanted it, but he wanted to grift instead. Thus, Spencer got the job because no one else wanted it.
That’s not really a strong claim to leadership. That’s like becoming the heavyweight boxing champion because the last champ retired. It’s not really proof that you’re the best.
Elle: You mean you were, like, a symbol of a broader movement that didn’t have a face.
Richard: Exactly. Yeah, and people could kind of freak out and love to hate me, or maybe hate to love me.
Let me interrupt Richard here. What he is talking about here is called “narcissistic supply.”
To a narcissistic sociopath, what you feel about him is not as important as the fact that you feel something and feel it intensely. To a narcissistic sociopath, being admired is of course the ideal, but failing that, being hated is the next-best thing. More than anything, a narcissist wants to be the center of your world. Thus, to Spencer, “love to hate” and “hate to love” are basically the same things. In both cases, he is the center of your world. They both fulfill the need for narcissistic supply.
Richard: There was “the punch of Richard Spencer” in 2017.
Yes, he referred to the event in the third person. I’m sorry, but I find that funny. He doesn’t say, “There was the time when I was punched in 2017.” He calls it “The Punch of Richard Spencer” as if it was a major historical event on par with “The Sinking of the Lusitania.” I wonder if Abraham Lincoln is up there in heaven talking about his death and saying, “I wanted to enjoy a play, but then The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln happened.”
Richard: So that’s kind of when, like, political violence: It’s back, baby. And antifa is real, and then it was almost like the Alt Right and the Alt Lite were kind of fighting back. And so you had, like, Nathan Damigo punch that Goldilocks, or whatever. I feel like I was attached to these people who want to come hang out and be Alt Right and . . . [Dramatically rubs his hands across his face] Yeah, I mean, I just was too old, and I was slumming. I don’t know.
Wow. Where to begin?
One of the managers for The Smiths complained that the band “wanted to be as big as The Beatles but also be as anti-establishment as The Sex Pistols.” But you can’t do both. Similarly, Spencer wanted to be respected as a serious intellectual like Jared Taylor, but he also wanted the street cred of Mike Enoch.
One cannot help but consider it an insult that Spencer would refer to associating with the greater Alt Right as “slumming,” but to be fair, compared to the days when he was doing conferences with Peter Brimelow, Paul Gottfried, and Jared Taylor and working alongside Steve Sailor, John Derbyshire, and other Dissident Right legends, Spencer was indeed kind of slumming throughout most of 2016 and 2017. That’s not a diss on the Alt Right so much as it is a reflection of the high-class characters Spencer used to run with. But then you have to ask, “Why wasn’t he doing that anymore?”
The only reason Spencer was “slumming” with 4chan kids that he was “too old” to be hanging around with is because he wanted to be seen as a leader. He could never lead people like Taylor and Brimelow, not merely because he was younger, but also because he was far less talented and accomplished than they. Can you imagine Jared Taylor “bending the knee” to Richard Spencer?
Spencer wanted to speak from a balcony to throngs of worshipful supporters. That meant he had to “slum.” He had to look down to find people who looked up to him. The Hailgate incident was a blatant attempt to pander to the very same people who Spencer now says sullied his reputation. After Hailgate, the old guard backed slowly out of the room, and the 4chan types were the only people willing to associate with Spencer. Eventually, he just went wignat.
Then, Spencer goes into Narcissistic Personality Disorder overdrive:
Richard: I think I underestimated about a lot of people. I think a lot of people wanted to be me. One of the big things in the Alt Right was, “I want to be Spencer. I want to be in the headlines.” It created a tremendous amount of jealousy.
Sigh . . .
Let me ask the readers of Counter-Currents a question: Can you think of a Richard Spencer rip-off?
I remember a time when every podcaster was trying to be Mike Enoch, and I’ve seen a million bloggers trying to write like Andrew Anglin, but I have never seen a content creator who made me say “Man, this guy is totally ripping off Richard Spencer. He’s jacking all of his talking points. He’s shilling for the EU and advocating for ethical child pornography. He even talks like the guy from the B-52s and everything.”
Spencer never really had much of a fanbase. During the Internet Bloodsports era, when Spencer was at his peak relevance, he could barely get a thousand viewers for his livestream — a third as many as Baked fucking Alaska.
You can buy Greg Johnson’s New Right vs. Old Right here
Let me put this in perspective for you. If Richard Spencer was seen on television by millions, and only 1% of the people watching said, “Hmmm, I’d like to know more about this guy,” and then became fans, that would be tens of thousands of people. Mind you, Spencer is a guy who everyone had seen on TV at one time or another. He was therefore profoundly ineffective at what he did.
That Spencer had any amount of influence at all was due to the fact that he had the goodwill of all the bigwigs who did have substantial fan bases, and who were willing to vouch for him.
This is one of the reasons Spencer has crashed so hard. He put all his eggs in the networking basket and no eggs into the “cultivating a fan base” basket. This is probably because cultivating a loyal base of support is hard and tedious work that often involves being nice to people who are not important, but who will support you forever and follow you to the gates of Hell in exchange for a morsel of respect. But Spencer was never the type to soil his hands by engaging with unimportant people.
Instead, Spencer networked and won over the key bigwigs in the movement who did have large followings. But when those aforementioned bigwigs withdrew their support, and he had no fan base of his own to fall back on.
Richard: After Charlottesville went the way it went, there was no way to transfigure this movement. I mean, on some level this movement was about, like, 4chan people and computer programmers and basement-dwellers and incels and whatever. But it was like there was this energy and opportunity around Trump where it can be transformed into something that I want, and certainly after Charlottesville, that was impossible.
Leaving aside the fact that he is leaning into every negative liberal stereotype about White Nationalists, I like his choice of words here. It wasn’t that the Alt Right might possibly be transformed into “a movement that could change things” or “a movement that could advocate for white people” (Spencer does not mention white people at all in the interview). No, he hoped that the movement would be transformed into “something that I want.” It was always only ever about him.
Richard: At the end of the day, Unite the Right meant putting me next to, like, Azzmador, who is just disgusting and gross.
Again, this is because Spencer did not actually have a fan base of his own. Thus, he needed people like Azzmador of The Daily Stormer — people who actually did have significant fanbases — if he wanted to have his picture taken speaking in front of a large crowd, which was all he ever wanted.
I’ll admit that I initially wasn’t too hot on Azzmador. He was a little too edgelordy for my taste, but I must say, he has really grown on me. Post-Charlottesville, he has improved his style a lot. Rather than being an edgelord, he now gives off a dad-like vibe and tries to be more of a positive role model and mentor for the youth. It’s quite a remarkable turnaround.
Despite currently being a fugitive from the law, Azzmador still streams regularly. You can find him on Odysee. Do listen and support.
Back to Spencer:
Richard: I don’t like ugly, stupid freaks. It always just should have been about Richard Spencer.
So here, Richard “Hailgate” Spencer is claiming that it was the movement that made him look bad.
The sense of entitlement is really breathtaking here. After all this time, I should not be surprised by Spencer’s narcissism, and yet I am. I never dreamed that he would ever take his mask off to this extent.
Then, Spencer was asked if he has any regrets.
Richard: I ultimately regret being a part of that whole crowd. All of that juvenile ironic Nazi humor is just so over, and I cringe when I think about it now.
Plot twist: Richard Spencer is an optics cuck! Where is your god now, wignats?
Spencer isn’t wrong, but he makes it sound like he did not actively participate in it himself. If you didn’t know who Richard Spencer was, and then saw this interview, you would think like that Nazi humor was something Spencer himself was above and that he dirtied his hands by hanging around people who made Nazi jokes. In reality, Spencer did quite a bit of Nazi LARPing himself. Aside from Hailgate, Spencer reportedly made people give him Roman salutes when he entered the room.
Elle: Whenever I ask you to explain those regrets, it’s always in terms of “I was hanging out with losers. I let myself get dragged down by this filth.” But those were your people. Those were your guys.
I can’t read Elle Reeve’s mind, but it sounds like she is somewhat appalled at Spencer throwing his own people under the bus. Spencer thought throwing everyone under the bus would make him look better, but it actually made him look like a huge asshole. There is a bit of “WTF?” in her voice when she says, “those were your guys.”
Elle: Why don’t you take responsibility? If they wanted to be you, and they went into the street and beat people up, what does that say to you?
Richard: You seem to just wanna . . . Your entire point here is just to prove that I’m like a piece of shit, and why don’t you just accept it.
I mean, what else is there to say?
The first article I ever wrote for Counter-Currents was called “The Skeptic War,” which was about the infamous Kraut and Tea controversy and the concurrent Based Mama-led Kilroy controversy, which together destroyed the immensely popular Skeptic Community. In it, I wrote:
Finally, the Kraut and Tea debacle is a cautionary tale of how destructive narcissistic sociopaths can be if allowed into positions of influence in a movement. There’s a lesson here for the Alt Right . . Between Kraut and Tea and Based Mama, the antics of these two sociopaths have managed to take a popular and thriving online community and make its name synonymous with dishonesty and incompetence. The Skeptic brand will never recover. Will the Alt Right brand be far behind?
I try to imagine a world where Richard Spencer never existed, and it’s frankly infuriating to think of what might have been. No Spencer, no Hailgate. “Alt Right” becomes a catch-all term for anyone who is not liberal or neocon. No Alt Right/Alt Lite schism.
To be perfectly fair, let me say that I believe that, given the kinds of personalities within the movement at the time, that a Hailgate-type incident was probably inevitable. However, there are several reasons why I think that the canonical Spencer-instigated Hailgate was more damaging than any theoretical, alternate reality Hailgate.
First, Hailgate happened at a time when the Alt Right had tremendous momentum. Had it happened six months or a year later, after we had had time to consolidate our gains, it would not have been nearly as damaging.
Second, alternate reality Hailgate would have been instigated by a guy in the Alt Right. That would have been orders of magnitude less damaging than the Hailgate we got, which was instigated by the guy claiming to be the leader of the Alt Right. This in turn deprived everyone in the movement any possibility of plausible deniability or the chance to say, “He doesn’t speak for all of us,” because Spencer was going around claiming that he did indeed speak for all of us.
One might say that Richard Spencer garnered a lot of attention for the Alt Right, which is true, but in hindsight, I do not think that was a good thing. Part of the problem with the Alt Right was that it got too big too quickly. You had a lot of people go from obscurity to the national limelight overnight. Most of those people were in no way prepared for the level of attention they were getting. Had the Alt Right grown more slowly, it would have allowed those people to make their rookie mistakes when there were not so many people watching. It would have given the psychos time to implode before they became celebrities.
No Richard Spencer, no Eli Mosley debacle. Again, to be fair, Mosley probably would have ended up being exposed as a fraud eventually, anyway, but had he not been known as the right-hand man of the guy claiming to be the leader of the Alt Right, it would have been exponentially less damaging to the movement than it ended up being.
No Richard Spencer, no fruitcake freakout. Spencer’s “I rule the world” rant was the second-most embarrassing controversy the Alt Right had to suffer through after Cantwell’s “crying Nazi” video. It played into every Hollywood stereotype about White Nationalists.
I will concede that Richard Spencer did do one good thing for the movement: his debate with Sargon of Akkad. While not the first Alt Right Internet Bloodsports event (that was JF Gariepy versus Destiny), that debate did kick off the Internet Bloodsports era, which was both the Alt Right’s greatest hour and also its last hurrah. I have encountered many, many people who have said that they got into the Dissident Right as a result of Internet Bloodsports.
There are other people who could have done as good a job or better debating Sargon, but there was no one who could have generated as much interest. The reason that “Spencer versus Sargon” became the event that it did was because Sargon and Spencer were both memes. That made their match-up “meme versus meme.” “Enoch versus Sargon” or “Anglin versus Sargon” would not have been as sexy as “Spencer versus Sargon.”
That is the one thing Spencer did that yielded tangible positive benefits for the movement at large. That said, like Hailgate, I think the Internet Bloodsports era was probably inevitable. It was a consequence of Kraut and Tea’s idiocy, which was set in motion for reasons entirely unrelated to Spencer. It would have happened anyway, just more slowly.
All in all, I therefore have no choice but to declare that Richard Spencer was a gigantic net loss for the movement for white survival.
I find myself feeling today somewhat similar to the day when I learned that Matt Heimbach had become an anti-racist activist. I have a smug feeling of satisfaction and a strong urge to tell the world, “I told you so.”
I wrote “similar,” because when Matt Heimbach took his mask off, he was already banished from the movement, anyway. It was an epilogue to a story that had already ended. But with Spencer, I had been worried that we might have to deal with carrying that guy on our backs forever.
I wish I had the energy for Schadenfreude. I would love nothing more right now than to spike the football and yell at the wignats, “I was right all along!” But my emotions now are subtler. I feel like the Allied soldiers must have felt on November 11, 1918: an enormous weight has been lifted off me. Rather than jubilation, my overwhelming feeling is that of relief. Thank God, it’s finally over.
* * *
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108 comments
Spencer appears to be selling out and hoping to grift off the left now. He so badly wants back in polite society. We are much better off without him.
Spencer should have stuck to editing a newsletter and podcasting. Or maybe a behind the scenes guy to Jared Taylor or Peter Brimelow.
The lure of Richard Spencer was a subliminal attachment to the wasp gentry of old. Spencer is upper class, a fallen member of the elites, a man who failed to achieve status in his own herd. Spencer, who could easily have passed as an American first cousin of Princess Diana Spencer, is the sort of person who might be seen at a dinner party in Martha’s Vineyard, of course a party where no POC’s like the Obamas are invited yet everyone makes hypocritically kind comments about BLM before moving on to discussing predatory business deals.
Spencer’s loss in life was not getting the role of James Bond, and he would have made a much better James Bond than the stunted, grim faced, genetically inferior Brit currently playing that part. A lot of people liked the idea of the movement being led by a Savile Row suited gent rather than possibly some overweight, teashirted, uncouth bearded former magatard from flyover country. It was all about optics in those days. What we got was a Savoy Truffle that had spent too long in the fridge, had no substance and was increasingly covered in mold.
Spencer interviewed Jonathan Bowden shortly before Bowden (tragically) died in 2012. I listened to the first 10 minutes or so around 2015/2016 when Trump’s campaign was in its most electrifying stage, when so much seemed possible. Bowden’s ability to speak was of course nonpareil. But Spencer came across like an annoying narcissistic little shithead, barely allowing Bowden to get a word in after long pretentious overblown questions designed to wow us with his raw intellectual awesomeness. I was increasingly disgusted and lost interest. A real leader serves his people, not himself.
Spencer abandoned his website not once, but twice. Along with his numerous other issues, he lacked the self-discipline to stay focused.
How much of Spencer’s trajectory was guided by his habits of laziness, hedonism & regular booze consumption? Suspect quite a bit. He also presumed to know far more than he did. It seems clear he really didn’t study the finer details of the 1990s and how the Globalist-Neocon Media cabal snuffed out Nationalism whenever it appeared. Spencer seemed not just arrogant but incredibly naive in retrospect.
MountainRunner2021
A little off topic, but what you said about an anti-nationalist push in the 90’s, do you suppose that was a part of why NATO bombed the Serbs? I was horrified by that.
The interventions in Yugoslavia and Somalia were definitely in the service of Globalism, particularly so since they enabled a massive stream of Muslim refugees to come into the West during and afterwards. But overall the 90s were a Neocon disaster because they stole away the peace dividend from the Cold War, and used it to maintain a bloated NATO, CIA & Military-Industrial bureaucracy
Spencer mostly became the face of the Alt-Right because he was so useful to the media in that capacity. They loved to have him on camera because he was such a stereotypical cartoonish villain, the Snidely Whiplash of the Right. He rarely said anything interesting and what he did say was better said by smarter people, and that is why those people didn’t get interview and Spencer did. He was a media creation and when he stopped being useful to the media he was reduced to random screeching on Twitter (and oddly enough he was one of the few to not be permabanned while people like Jared Taylor were)
Bingo
There was a lot of strategy involved in who was banned and who wasn’t
Anglin scared them most of all because he is a pretty solid writer, was using humor to make arguments, and worked tirelessly on his website. He was too dangerous to have a following on Twitter. Spencer was too busy kissing asses to get in front of the camera, and his dull, caustic personality was no threat.
Good points. Spencer’s problem was lack of discipline, and a desire to be a bigshot too quickly, without first spending decades building up a base of solid political support. He craved attention. The better path for serious, politically ambitious WNs is to bite the bullet; not say all that you wish you could were you living in a less oppressive society (imagine yourself as a closet Christian, libertarian, or conservative living in the Soviet Union); and play the mainstream GOP electoral game. Get yourself elected as a “solid conservative” (and actually be one), then focus on Hard Right issues (ie, only do as much on issues like defense and abortion as electoral prudence necessitates, but be tough on issues like crime suppression, gun rights, free speech, and immigration). You may have to be under deep cover your whole career, but then you might actually advance white interests. After all, how do we know that someone like Ron DeSantis is not secretly one of us? That is, if DeSantis secretly reads CC, what could he be doing differently from what he has been doing – and still expect to survive in office? Yes, we need some entities like CC and AR out there spreading the truth. But most of those who would seriously advance white interests need to be “infiltrators” and “moles”.
What we need is real power. How else but by subterfuge can we achieve it, given the “correlation of forces” today? It’s all about gradual radicalization (as I keep saying here). We start with Hard Right stuff, like CRT (which the Left worries is a great entryist issue for our side), illegal immigration, wokeness, etc. As more whites get angrier, we can open the window a little more, and so on.
“TRS doxes had happened a year earlier, Mike Enoch probably would have wound up with that job.”
I’m going to push against this a little.
I don’t think Richard Spencer just Willy Nilly landed into that role. It wasn’t an alignment of circumstances.
I fully believe that he was hand picked to be amplified by the mainstream media and people with deep pockets PRECISELY because they saw his narcissism from a hundred miles away, and they understood that it would be too caustic for him to be an effective leader.
His role evolved through media coverage of him that put him front and center. I distinctly remember him going LIVE on MSNBC or CNN, or maybe it was CSPAN, and being interviewed. Interviewing White Nationalists on mainstream news without HEAVILY editing the interview was unheard of up to this point. You were more likely to find us being trotted around on Maury Povich or Jerry Springer than on CNN or MSNBC.
My belief is that they knew the movement was growing and becoming a strong force. They knew they had to report on it, and that their audience would respond to an interview. But they didn’t want young working class white men to actually LIKE the person that they amplified. They picked an arrogant, elitist prick who better represented THEIR class than the white working class. They found their narcissist who would inevitably drive off supporters when the going got tough.
There were plenty of people, even at that early stage, who they could have interviewed who would have been much more appealing to the audience. But of course, they didn’t want someone appealing.
Interesting theory and probably correct.
Now, I didn’t mention in the article but let me make clear that in hindsight, it is obvious that the Alt Right did not need a leader or a spokesman but it sort of made sense at the time to have someone who could engage with the media and clear up misunderstandings.
You are right that if someone else had decided to step up to the plate to fill that role, the media would not have given him as much airtime as the gave Spencer. However, someone else might have been able to build bridges with the more mainstream Right.
Bur Spencer went out and alienated the Old Guard (VDare, AmRen, Takimag) who are only a millimeter away from us. He couldn’t even get those guys on board, nevermind the Alt Lite or normie conservatives.
We kinda had some people who were acting as bridges. Milo, McInnes. In some ways guys like Augustus Invictus were acting as a bridge because he had libertarian cred and had run for Congress.
It is true that Richard Spencer ruined that. He, like Trump, sucked a lot of energy out of things. Narcissism is the bane of dissident politics.
“Narcissism is the bane of dissident politics.”
Ain’t that the truth?
Damn shame, that it also seems to be a fixture of dissident politics.
Would that it twere, not so.
Indeed, a big fat “bane” in its purest and most classic sense. The root cause to that is simple. These people do NOT have the best interests of people of the White race in mind; they have their own (read “selfish” or “egoistic”) best interests and gains (fame, fortune etc.) in mind. They just attempted to use the WR movement as a spring board to catapult them onto a sort of stardom. Shame on Spencer and his likes! But isn’t that what “narcissists” are for in the first place? Identify them and weed out them to make the movement robust, healthy, and grow; it’s a must!
The only thing this phony was good for was turning me on to good swiss, melted swiss cheese and mush– roasted mushrooms and caramelized onions on a burger. Uh, that is hot stuff. I was not aware that you could get that at a number of different places.
LOL.
His infamous condescending attempt to sound like a regular guy. Wow. It’s really off-putting now. When it happened it was just funny. Now it makes me want to Nazi punch him too.
Fucking Fantastic!!!
“Hot Stuff” I almost forgot that meme.
TRS used it deftly. It’s really the only good thing Dickie ever gave us, in the end.
I ordered one of those at a fancy burger joint once. The cheese and onion drown out the taste of the beef patty. It’s the kind of burger that’d only work with low-end meat.
In Omaha we have a cajun style restaurant called Mouth Of The South which has a “cajun burger” that consists of blackened Angus beef, homemade tasso and andouille sausage, gruyere cheese and a spicy remoulade sauce. Now I’ve some good burgers in my time, but this is hot stuff. Unfortunately, I believe this isn’t available at a number of different places.
Thank you for this article. This is something that I’ve been screaming inside my head for a long while now. I haven’t seen many people point out the fact how Spencer was trying to go two ways; he wanted to be the new Jared Taylor, a good-looking, well-dressed and well-spoken representative that would appeal to the masses, but he also wanted to be the brash, edgy new face who would yell chan-memes and whose followers called people kikes online.
It was clear that these two ways of approaching the public don’t work together (I’d say the latter is utterly useless method anyway), and I can only imagine how far the alt-right would have gone had Spencer stuck to a clean style and gone with it. One can imagine if Jared Taylor or anyone else would have had the airtime that Spencer got. Obviously the media will take clips out of context and show only the worst bits, but when Spencer was seen talking on the TV, he was not talking about white identity or racial consciousness. He was instead talking about abstract ideas about a future white racial empire and how he didn’t generally like voting at all. Taylor has been talking about these issues for decades now and is able to articulate them clearly and in a concise manner. Oh, what I would do to have him be able to address the nation for just five or ten minutes.
I agree with your thoughts on Jared Taylor, as a speaker.
If he could be broadcast, Big Brother Style, to everyone in the U.S., for 10 or 15 minutes, the benefit to White Interests, and the damage to the current system, would be incalculable.
I guess this epic exchange with Elle Reeve was left on the cutting room floor:
https://youtu.be/_5wWGd4jNuI
Here’s an example of Spencer’s leadership ability at its finest:
https://youtu.be/zGxSM5y7Pfs
I met Spencer at a gathering organized by The O.G., Kyle Bristow, back in 2016. I got to hear Sam Dickson speak as well, submit was worth it.
There was a dinner the night before, at a popular Polish restaurant in Hamtramack. I spoke with Richard for a few minutes, about Wes Anderson movies. He seemed amiable and a bit needy. Later, he bummed a cigarette off me.
Need I say more?
On December 31, 2018, Reeve married her husband Jeremy Greenfield
I like Richard Spencer. I mean, I do see his flaws. I liked his old website and was very sorry to see that go. I wish he had stayed in the pundit/writer role. I believe the media liked Spencer because he was very good looking in his earlier days(duh). That’s likely also what accounts for the jealousy he receives from certain quarters!
We all have flaws but “sociopath” is not a flaw you can work around. There is no “Well, he’s a sociopath but he’s our sociopath”. That’s not how sociopaths work. Getting involved with a sociopath is always a net loss. Whatever you might gain, they take it all back with interest.
Pretty shocking that someone could say this after Spencer’s post-Charlottesville rant, news about his treatment of his wife, court statements about him fucking hid “friends'” gfs, throwing Kessler under the bus, and yeah, this very here interview.
Granted, Radix was pretty cool, he probably made Taki’s into what it was 3 years ago, he wasn’t a half-bad writer and he organized some conferences bringing everybody together early on. But come on, the guy is basically a parody of an upper-class narcissist!
Travis LeBlanc did a great job with writing/analysis, but I found this a very depressing read. Maybe I’m behind the curve, but I was still listening to Spencer’s talks with Ed Dutton and Keith Woods last year. I was reading that old site he did with Colin Liddell and Andy Nowicki almost a decade ago.
I understand that there are people who are relishing saying “told you so” about Spencer, but I find it very sad to read how he’s dumping on the very people who thought he offered us something.
IMO, the Spencer-Dutton-Woods power trio was Spencer’s last chance to make a comeback.
After the fruitcake freakout leak, all hope of him being “leader” ended and he resigned himself to being a content creator. Now, instead of it just being Spencer and one of his lackeys, Spencer-Dutton-Woods was sort of a Dissident Right supergroup. It was three established heavy hitters who all brought their own styles to the table. They had chemistry together and it was some of the best content Spencer had made in years.
But then Spencer blew that up too. One day out of the blue, Spencer turned on Keith Woods and started accusing him of being a crypto-Trumpist. Keith was apparently completely blindsided by this.
I dunno what his deal was. Maybe he didn’t think Keith was sycophantic enough. Keith had his own audience and kind of didn’t really need Spencer. Maybe he resented that. Or maybe he couldn’t handle not being the star of the show. I don’t know.
Point is that fate took enough mercy on Spencer to give him a second chance and he screwed that up too.
Hmm, well, I guess there’s always Apolloism.
I used to like Spencer, years ago. I can’t think of one thing he said or did prior to Hailgate I seriously disliked. Alternative Right and Radix weren’t as good as Counter Currents, but I remember them as being accessible but higher toned than TRS or the Daily Stormer – he certainly knew how to pick some good people to write for him. If he’d stuck to the editor/pundit/organizer role he had up to late 2016, I think he would have been a very good White advocate – something like a younger, more radical version of Jared Taylor.
But I think the seemingly meteoric rise of the Alt-Right starting in 2015 had gone to his head by late 2016 and seeing the success of Trumpism he started to harbor dreams of riding that wave to political power in the near future. Once that got going he increasingly lost touch with reality and began to behave more and more rashly. After Charlottesville those dreams were suddenly rudely dashed and his subsequent career has been a long futile exercise in attempting to distance himself from his prior actions and carve out his own media niche for his own sole gratification. It’s really a pity he’s come to this, he had potential.
This is a fair analysis. I say this as someone who used to get banned by Spencer in the early years of takimag for saying almost the exact same stuff I write in comments here at CC. He routinely told me that he wouldn’t publish “white nationalist” comments, though I rarely wrote hardcore WN stuff, but just kept the focus on the obvious “war on whites” that was already very apparent. Spencer had talent, but his ego is annoying and too big for his limited stature and abilities. Still, I feel sorry for him. He’s a white man who did speak some truth and did try to advance the cause of justice for our people. That counts for a lot with me. And I think what was done to him post-Charlottesville should chill the bones of any American patriot, prowhite or not. What law did he break?
The aftermath of Charlottesville is probably the greatest act of raw tyranny, and complete abrogation of the rule of law, in American history. Worse than what happened to Derek Chauvin or the McMichaels defendants. How can Richard Spender be sued? Under what remotely plausible theory of law? They had every legal right to be where they were. They broke no laws. How can Spencer be held liable, even if one of his own attendees had committed a horrible crime (and that verdict was also a grotesque violation of the rule of law, insofar as the driver of the car that killed that fat communist was in legitimate fear for his life – unlike the murderer in Waukesha, who deliberately murdered 6 or 7 white people, acting while under no duress at all)?
So I end with mixed emotions about both Spencer and this article. Richard Spencer was something of an unappealing publicity hound, but ultimately he has been greatly wronged. This article seems like piling on.
Fair analysis. This qarticle brims with hostility towards Spencer. I think Hunter Wallace has given the best and most fair description of Spencer at his Occidental Dissent as a reply to this article.
As regards to that Spencer brought the ironic nazi memes to the altright, memes I was never a great fan of although I laughed at it on occasion I have to embarrassingly admit, it was in fact TRS, 4chan and The Daily Stormer who brought that into the movement (although I liked TDS in it’s early and mid days until they went full 1488 and still like a few shows that TRS has on their website).
Also, I remember listening to Greg Johnsons podcast from Counter Currents (that I used to like as well) where Johnson said something like (and here I am paraphrasing) “I know I am a bit older than most of the young ones now joining the altright” and then he referred to the use of memes which had become such a sensational approach to metapolitics by the altright and at that time was mainly just of the ironic nazi humor type since there was no censorship on social media and then Johnson followed with (and here I am only very slightly paraphrasing) “but I’d like to think that I could get down with the kids and put toghether some memes anyway” in a somewhat self-depreciating but still serious way.
Spencer is obviously greatly flawed, but the fact that either Heilgate (Where it was Mike Enoch who first threw up his hand in a Sieg heil) or Charlottesville happened (which was Kessler’s ill-conceived idea), is not his fault except for maybe thinking that you could get anything out of associating with the MSM and certainly inviting them to a conference where unvetted people were attending was not the smartest thing to do.
And as Hunter Wallace says, who wouldn’t feel disgust for hanging out or going to a place to unite with people like Azzmador – I thought he was the perfect symbol of some of the worst of white America from the start as soon as I found out just a little about him.
The point here is that there is plenty of blame to go around and that just pointing fingers at Spencer – although he absolutely deserves blame and is obviously a huge narcissist who liked to be the center of everything, wanted all the attention and a personality cult, blames everybody but himself (As members of a certain ethno-religous group tend to do) and who also is obnoxious enough to almost have been thrown out of or fallen out of more communties than aforementioned ethno-religous group, perhaps everybody, even those of us who was only anons, should ask ourselves what we could have done better or what wrongs we did.
Richard Spencer is a talented man who also happens to be an opportunist, just like Trump. One shouldn’t blame Spencer for being Spencer, his struggles are a reflection of the overall currents of the times in 2016 and 2017 as the left wing swung into full counter-revolutionary mode and landed a direct, effective counterattack on the movement. Egoism itself is not a crime and if Spencer was stepping up into a leadership role of the alt-right, this is more a reflection on the fact that there wasn’t someone more capable and accomplished who would accept responsibility. Blame the movement, not the messenger. This is a reflection of the fact that it wasn’t ready for prime time in those years. Should Richard Spencer become a leader of a more mature Identitarian movement when the time is right? Probably not. But this issue will ultimately be irrelevant.
I think you are half right.
Although, in some sense saying “don’t blame Spencer for being Spencer” is like saying “Don’t blame a dog for having rabies”. When the thing is foaming at the mouth in front of you, “Well, it’s not his fault he has rabies” isn’t very helpful. The thing needs to be dealt with.
I don’t think anyone really needed to rise up and do the role Spencer was doing. It made sense at the time to have a media liaison but once it became clear that talking to the media was a rigged game, that, no, they don’t just want to try to understand your side of things, that no matter what they tell you, it will always be a hit piece, the rest of the Alt Right stopped doing talking to the media in 2017. Who would be stupid enough to knowing participate in their own hit piece? But it was like Spencer didn’t care if it was a hit piece as long as they spelled his name right.
Where you are half right is that there were people who could have stopped him. That famous “I rule the world” rant was delivered in front of every major figure in the Alt Right. I do not know how any man of conscience could have witnessed that firsthand and then continued to support Spencer afterwards but many of them did for months or years. Do not think that I hold those people to be guiltless. Every person in that room knowing what they knew had a moral obligation to put a stop to him.
I can’t really blame Spencer for the “I rule the world” speech. Sounds like high thumos rage the day after the Charlottesville debacle. And it is absolutely enraging that we should see our right to free speech & assembly denied to us by Antifa and TPTB. In general, it is enraging in these times that we have lost our power of self-determination. I personally had a couple episodes at bars in 2016-19 where I lost my cool and vented my spleen on all & sundry. Luckily I never got beaten up or arrested. I still on occasion yell at tv screens. (Why the television is even on is a different story.)
I would, however, note that Spencer’s ancestors didn’t enslave anybody. The slaves were sold to them by slave merchants. Second, there is no superiority to be had in enslaving others. Our greatest mistake as a civilization has been to forget the dignity & necessity of doing one’s own labor. Disdain for labor inevitably leads to population replacement and cultural demise.
The whole thing had a forced, histrionic quality to my ears. No matter how you cut it though, this is not a guy who should be making decisions about anything more important than ties and burgers.
It’s the words “I” and the “my face” that I find most objectionable, not so much the histrionics and rage. There is an element of theater in all politics. The question is what kind of theater for which audience, and whether theater ever reaches a limit in politics. Where does theater end and authentic speech begin? This is starting to sound a bit like Hamlet, the play within the play.
I wouldn’t know about that. His taste in burgers is pretension itself.
I agree. That type of reaction, though the anger is understandable, still suggests serious immaturity. Someone who is ‘acting’ a part – like a caricature of a Hollywood villain.
If no one else was willing to take the role of leader, that seems to say a lot about the movement. You can’t really blame the person who stepped into the ring, because you didn’t, and the people you think should have didn’t. Taylor, Brimelow, and other so-called “respectable” types were not going on college campus speaking tours at the height of Trumpmania. They were happy to ride Trump’s wave but put no more skin in the game than they had before the Trump/Pepe phenom took off.
As far as Spencer saying people could love him/hate him/love to hate him, that’s exactly what is said about any controversial figure. They said this about Howard Stern early into his shock jock career. I think that’s the sort of public figure he wanted to be. What he’s saying is having the conversation about our ideas, whether you agree with them or not, is what matters. That we’re heard.
Maybe you think it’s weird for him to refer to the punching incident in 3rd person, but the “punch of Spencer” was unequivocally the most widely seen example of antifa attacking a “far right white supremacist” unprovoked. It spread like wildfire on Twitter, often to the delight of leftists. It represented the turning point when leftists starting shouting, “punch nazis in the face” referring to anyone who was a Trump supporter as a neo-nazi (perhaps mostly famously, the creator of the netflix show Stranger Things during an awards ceremony).
You’re criticizing him for saying he regrets slumming around with the likes of Heimbach and “Eli Moseley” and Azmador? If Azmador has “turned a new leaf” as you claim, why hasn’t Counter-Currents had him on the podcast? Maybe Spencer is also referring to the groups he was grouped with at the trial, like the KKK. Are you criticizing him for saying he regrets slumming with them at Charlottesville?
You’re correct that nazi salutes and heils were inevitable, thus laying these at Spencer’s feet is petty even if he encouraged it. Like you said, it would happen without him. As far as Spencer’s “fruitcake freakouts,” shouldn’t you be blaming the people who secretly recorded and published those private comments? Who is worse, in your mind, Spencer or Milo? Just curious.
Looks like we have a budding lawyer here.
Spencer did not just slum around Mosley and Heimbach. He made them his right-hand men. He took two guys who had red flags written all over then and promoted them to a higher visibility level so that when they imploded, it was all the more damaging.
Anyone remember Ronny Cameron? This guy came out of nowhere and kissed Spencer’s ass so hard, that Spencer made him his righthand man. For a few weeks, Ronny Cameron was Spencer’s official attack dog. Then someone went through his social media it turns out that on the day of Charlottesville, Ronny Cameron was attending some Jewish Defense League rally in Canada. How do you let that slip through?
If all Spencer did was slum, it wouldn’t have been as bad as what actually happened but he did a lot more than just hang around these people.
Ronnie also dates a black chick.
Ronny Cameron would make a great subject for an Inspector Clouseau-style comedy. He’s Ronny Cameron: the world’s worst JDL spy. He keeps forgetting to take off his yarmulke before going into the skinhead meeting. They catch him with his black girlfriend. He has a picture of his bar miztvah as his cellphone wallpaper and his ringtone is from Fiddler on the Roof. He just keeps blowing his cover over and over in hilarious ways and has to keep making increasingly ridiculous excuses.
Ronnie has the unique distinction of being the only person I hung up on in the middle of a livestream interview.
The movement was bigger, more effective, and better off without “a leader.” Spencer’s bid for the leadership role was wrong and destructive on many levels.
First, it was fundamentally fraudulent. Spencer created the Alternative Right webzine in 2010 then quickly lost interest in it. It continued under the editorship of Liddell and Nowicki until Spencer shut it down and started Radix. The phrase “Alt Right” was picked up in early 2015 by a very different movement that emerged on social media as well as The Right Stuff and The Daily Stormer. Most of these people did not know who Spencer was, and most of those who did thought he was a pompous tool. Once these people made the Alt Right a big thing, however, Spencer was happy to present himself as the inventor of the movement. He was trying to take over other people’s achievements. It became a pattern. Later, he tried to use the sociopath and sycophant Mosley to take over Identity Evropa.
Second, the project of turning a movement with many different “leaders” into a movement following “a leader” who had almost no organic audience or followers of his own required coopting people who did have audiences and followers and driving away those who wouldn’t go along. Hailgate was probably just the behavior of an impulsive drunkard pandering to the cool kids on the chans, TRS, and the Stormer. But it also had the effect of driving away a large segment of people who came to be known as the Alt Lite. The result was a smaller, less influential movement, but one that took Richard Spencer more seriously. Then Spencer, in cahoots with some very shady people, including some deep state types promising all sorts of dark money, launched the AltRight Corporation, as an attempt to centralize key sectors of the movement around himself. Later Spencer engineered a split between me and the TRS people. Then he and his then partner Daniel Friberg launched a comically inept attempt to purge me from the movement. In short, the task of centralizing the movement under Spencer required a great deal of division to facilitate conquest.
Third, Spencer’s drive for leadership put him in bed with the mainstream media. Years ago, Matt Parrott explained to me why he and Heimbach courted the media and responded to the SPLC. Parrott said that the people in our movement had so little “self-esteem” that they let the mainstream media and the SPLC declare who their leaders are. Therefore, if one wishes to become a leader, one must court the SPLC and the enemy media. It was disgustingly cynical and obviously self-defeating. All one needed to do to gain media and SPLC attention is incarnate the negative stereotypes that they wanted to promote. Heimbach played the fat prole, Spencer the WASP snob.
Special thanks needs to be give to Weev who really helped get the ball rolling on Spencer’s downfall. He released a series of blog posts in 2017 where he declared Richard Spencer the greatest threat to the white race and start exposing some of Spencer’s most indefensible crimes. Anyone remember The BigKK?
Spencer always had his critics but Weev had so much clout that he couldn’t be written off as a player hater. Weev has made plenty of headlines and has had a documentary made about him so it would be absurd to accuse Weev of being jealous of the attention Spencer was getting. Weev declaring war on Spencer was a real dam-breaking moment.
Yes, I remember that. Wasn’t it in response to Spencer endorsing some sort of armed protest a few months after Charlottesville?
The accusation of “jealousy” is so tiresome. Of course, it is the first thing a narcissist would think of. The very idea that people might have principled disagreements is foreign to people who think entirely in terms of personalities.
Spencer is a caricature of the entitled WASP snob that the anti-white left so loathes. His entitlement shows with his numerous rebrandings. Won’t be surprised if Sines v. Kessler is all kabuki theater for Spencer.
Speaking of narcissistic sociopaths, whatever happened to Daniel Friberg? He seems to be keeping a low profile lately.
Don’t know, don’t care.
The obscene thing about the “slumming” comment is that Spencer is now spitting on the people he was leeching off. These people had far greater audiences and followings than Spencer could generate on his own. He used flattery and pandering because he wanted them to follow him. He wouldn’t have had to “slum” if he had more talent at creating his own audience and following.
I’ve never heard of this ‘I rule the world’ speech and consider myself reasonably well informed about affairs of the Right.
This author frequently writes as if he were a fan talking about the latest Marvel movie or if he is the mainstream media insisting what is and isn’t important. What did or didn’t happen. ‘Mostly peaceful’.
He often claims some item is a pivotal moment in history that everyone was beholden to and in agreement on, that either embarrassed everyone or became some iconic turning point.
Sometimes it feels as if he is in some private world of fan fantasies, which he steps out of now and again to make an article about.
Just a point, I wasn’t embarrassed by Cantwell crying at all.
I was aware the media insisted this was embarrassing. But I wasn’t. Why were you ?
Spencer has been dumping on much of the right for a while and taking inflammatory and often inappropriate hot takes on various topics to anger others. In so much as this article reminds us of that okay I guess if the author feels it important enough to reflect on this, but I don’t see in this article any new smoking gun, or any further progression on Spencer morphing into some new thing.
What I do see is a sort of fanish/soyish/fantasyish gossip column about ‘those narcissists’ ruining it for everyone else. But I get the impression this author will extol other narcissists he thinks are giving him more fan content to consume on a regular basis.
Here’s a link.
Give it a listen and tell us what you think.
I was aware that Milo Yiannopoulos ran a story about some leaked footage of Richard Spencer making a ‘racist rant’ after they were trapped and set up at Charlottesville. I’m assuming this was shortly afterwards.
I never listened to it at the time because I wasn’t sure where the story was. I thought, was I supposed to be shocked or outraged that our guys, steered into a trap by the police, were angry ? That they expressed racial attitudes ?
I listened to it now. And my feeling is the same.
People expressing their anger about that, about blacks and Jews is not something I’m offended or shocked by.
Is this something I would push normies towards ? No. Is it something I would build a campaign around ? No.
But I’m not personally offended or embarrassed by it in its context.
On: “I rule the world”.
I’m not exactly in disagreement with the general analysis of the author of this article, if not his style, and I guess this is part of his case. But at the same time, I’ve watched a number of people in our sphere get carried away with how powerful and important they really are.
Because it is a real life outburst amongst others I suppose it’s deeply ‘shocking’ to people who’ve never heard anything like it before. I’m not shocked by it. I feel some compassion for Richard in this context.
Some might say an explosive ego will always get in the way of results. Perhaps. But if Trump and Spencer had delivered a better outcome I imagine we would be less focused on this stuff, rather the author would be writing articles about how narcissism is a ‘tough but necessary component of leadership.’
But this level of attention for us was all new unexplored territory at the time.
All I can say is that people should listen to the rant itself.
As much rage as Charlottesville deserved, in that clip he kind of sounds like the villain in an 80s teen movie giving that dumb speech at the end where they say how they really feel about all the geeks and losers. Very theatrical.
Richard Spencer is certainly a spent force politically but do not imagine that (as was said of Saruman) he is not capable of some small evil in a mean way. There is no route to redemption for him on the Left yet as a tool of damage and distraction he remains useful to them. At the risk of stoking Spencer’s amour propre one could draw an (unfavourable) parallel with Alcibiades: I believe Greg Johnson perceived this early on and has written of the perils of ability and influence combining with bad character. Perhaps that needs reiterating.
I was brought into this all by Spencer in 2016, and I still agree with Spencer on most things. He never jumps on the terrible conservative or reactionary talking points that are popular, and will sometimes say the harsh truths that need to be said. He’s able to look at the pathetic state of the “Dissident Right” (that is the worst term ever) and why its current trajectory is doomed to fail.
If only he had that kind of forward-thinking and reflection applied towards himself. But that ship has now sailed; he has made too many awful decisions and burned too many bridges. I don’t see how he could transform himself into someone influential or relevant in any way. It’s a sad story, much wasted potential.
I’m not the least bit interested in listening to Spencer’s opinion on why the Dissident Right is doomed to fail if he honestly believes that it would have been destined to succeed if everyone had bent the knee to him.
Spencer has already told us what he thinks would have have work for the Alt Right and it was obvious horseshit so why would I listen to him about what he thinks wouldn’t succeed?
I mean, if he truly believes that the Alt Right would have been better if everyone had bent the knee to him, then he clearly does not know what the fuck he is talking about on the subject of what would or would not work. Why would I listen to such a person?
You seem extremely willing to talk about Spencer. Fine. Go off. I don’t give a fuck about movement gossip, which is why I never write about it.
But you promised to answer the person who asked you about the Groyper who gloated about little white girls dying in Waukesha. You never answered him:
https://counter-currents.com/2021/11/the-rise-of-anti-woke-talk-show-hosts/
OK, done.
What’s done? Goad makes a fair point.
He didn’t really answer him.
Why don’t you write a letter to the United Nations Human Rights Council? My failure to answer the question to your satisfaction might qualify as a crime against humanity. You might be eligible for economic compensation.
Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR)
Palais des Nations
CH-1211 Geneva 10
Switzerland
Jim – and Lord Sheng, for that matter – this is addressed to both:
This whole “gotchya” game might have appealed to Boomers such as you two when Iran-Contra broke in 1987 or Slick Willy left a stain on Monica’s dress in 1998, but in the age of the internet, those rules don’t matter and don’t apply. Nick Fuentes, being a 23 year old man who lives with his parents, is inevitably going to do things he should have done better or miss things he shouldn’t have missed. He’s going to have failures.
I’m deeply sympathetic to SP/ReadLinkola’s twitter account, so if SP says Nick should have denounced that anon with the 300 followers, sobeit. But sorry, you and Sheng here are clearly trying to use this little business to discredit someone you don’t like altogether. Oppose Nick on ideology and substance if you please – I know I do – but Trav’s instincts are correct here. This is petty horseshit. Do better.
Not I. I don’t know anything about Nick Fuentes, except the little I have read from Travis on the subject. I’ve never read or watched or heard him (honestly, I’m a bit of an age snob: I have a hard time reading anyone today under 30, which is why I was impressed that Jeelvy was so much younger than I’d assumed; I also like CC’s Alex Graham, learned beyond his years). I don’t follow 4chan (I really don’t know what that is), TRS, any podcasts. I come to CC so I can read Johnson and others (Bolton, Quinn, Devlin, Gullick, Kathryn S, etc) on deep issues pertaining to white interests, philosophy, history, and the place of whites in the world today.
I simply clicked on Goad’s supplied link, and thought his question was fair.
Aside from Alex, I generally hew to the “Don’t trust anyone under thirty” maxim.
If Fuentes had a moral core, he would have reacted appropriately. The message it sends is terrible. But the message gets lost in the petty personal struggles going on here. This is a petty “own Nick” op by people I don’t like (clustered around the wignat faction) directed at other people I don’t like in the Fuentes faction. In terms of the issues, the wignats happen to be right. In terms of the personalities and their agendas, they’re all wrong. I don’t see any reason to intervene.
“He never jumps on the terrible conservative or reactionary talking points that are popular”
Nah. The problem with conservatism or reactionary politics isn’t the talking points themselves, it’s that so many mainstream conservatives – David French, George Will, Rich Lowry, Sean Hannity, Charlie Sykes, etc – don’t sufficiently oppose the Left. The term “Cuckservative” was invented to describe these kind of people.
There’s never going to be a mass market for “Racism + Social Liberalism” like you want there to be. If you believe climate change is real and is caused by humans, that transgenderism is a biologically valid and harmless identity, that the “Religious Right” is an embarrassing albatross on the Right,* that there’s no point in opposing the 1965 immigration act because “the dye in the wool is cast,” and so many other talking points and political positions that align perfectly with the toxic agenda of the Cultural Left, then, like Spencer, you’re never going to make it.
White Nationalists won the culture war against Cuckservatives. David French has been reduced to shilling for The Atlantic. Tucker Carlson and Charlie Kirk literally cite WN talking points. Tucker may or may not actually believe in them. But unfortunately, this Movement still attracts Radlibs such as yourself who simply don’t like the anti-white rhetoric of your friends and comrades but never met an argument by MSNBC or Media Matters that didn’t appeal to you.
Buddy, they are simply taking your own trash social and cultural beliefs to their logical conclusion. And that’s the other thing about Richard Spencer: His narcissism is by no means unique or extraordinary. It’s perfectly common among his type: College Educated Whites who live in urban cities and the suburbs and who come from Upper Middle Class backgrounds. That’s the Democratic Party base right there. The disciples of Wokeness.
Trav LeBlanc does a good job here summarizing all of Spencer’s sins, and the narrative arch of his crashed career. But if there’s one thing missing, it’s an indictment of the type of awful ideology Spencer embodies. “Rush Limbaugh But Racist,” or, since its not the 1990s anymore, “Steven Crowder But Racist,” has potential mass appeal. “NPR But Racist” or “Keith Olbermann But Racist” is a fantasy that makes “Dems Are Da Real Raycist” sound legitimate in comparison (ironically enough, the former would sort of make the later a reality! lol)
*I used to feel this way myself, but the fact is, its 2021, not 1981
Isn’t Spencer wealthy? If he’d had 10 more IQ points he could have controlled people through donations. But I guess being the power behind the throne is unappealing.
His mother is wealthy. Richard has an allowance. He didn’t bring money to the movement. In fact, his expensive tastes sucked a lot of money out of it.
“It played into every Hollywood stereotype about White Nationalists.”
This sentence I think accidentally touches on the heart of the matter. The system molds its own enemies through its own propaganda systems. It says opposing views are espoused by undesirables. The world is full of undesirables looking for a place to belong. They see Hollywood type movies and see what undesirables like them are supposed to be doing. It’s no wonder the fringe ideas that liberals are opposed to, like Fascism and Marxism and anything too far off from the centre-left, are espoused by undesirables. And in turn, it breeds people like Spencer who feel like they can play king of the undesirables, which is what he did. It’s wholly predictable.
The thing is though, aside from these cute mind games and petty politics, the truth is still found outside the system, and it’s something the system can never spoil, no matter how many freaks it throws at it.
Hmmm. I am wondering about the effects of washing dirty laundry in public.
Well, Spencer claims to not be on our side anymore so this isn’t really dirty laundry so much as it is oppo research.
Spencer seems to be looking for a niche as booster of feminism to reverse dysgenics. Guess he sees Harem culture as a way to attract more women, and undo the past 100 years of IQ decline. Not a surprise that he’d be so disdainful of the average Joe since he has already bought into the basement dwelling incel trope about many of his followers. If he can just insult more White proles, the liberal media might give him another spurt of attention.
Because squandering your prime reproductive years as a woman through self-sterilization and then risking having an autistic child at 35 or 38 with some beta male totally isn’t the definition of dysgenics.
Spencer’s recent fling with terfs is pure spiteful revenge against us, nothing more. This is a man who beat his ex wife and cursed her in front of their children, and then encouraged her to commit suicide.
Slight clarification. Spencer was the editor and writer of an essay in his and Paul Gottfried’s “The Great Purge: The Deformation of the Conservative Movement.” Not a book per se, but it had some good essays in it including Spencer’s.
Spencer essentially road on the coattails of Gottfried who, to the best of my knowledge, was the one who coined the term “Alternative-right” in a Takimag article written a few years back. I believe I read in a Jewish publication interviewing Gottfried that Spencer took Gottfried’s message and put it in a garbled form.
There was a sort of energy going on in 2016/2017 with Trump and the alt-right. Even for a normie such as myself back then, it had the Streisand effect on me. The thing is, I don’t think anyone, Spencer or even Trump himself, knew how to properly channel it. A populist in power who’s outside the establishment that’s actually in power. Covid and mail in ballots and ballots found in a rental car in an airport parking lot are going to ensure that that never happens again.
I forget the interview, but Spencer was asked or was talking about identity politics and he said, “all politics are identity politics.” Granted, he may have taken it from someone else.
Hunter Wallace wrote a response:
https://occidentaldissent.com/2021/12/11/counter-currents-spencers-farewell/
“The people who felt the strongest about this, however, were the same people who encouraged their followers to take to the streets and to join forces with Trump and Alex Jones at the Capitol Siege. They participated in the biggest goon march in history and got the president impeached.”
Rofl. Hunter Wallace still has moments of lucidity. Let me be clear, running apologetic for such a complete human failure and embarrassment like Spencer is akin to participating in his shame, it is obvious that HW wanted to address his own grievances.
Also this:
“Is there anything more White Nationalist and more self-marginalizing though than trying to create your own racial religion?”
You know it’s true.
“The Alt-Right has moved on from Richard Spencer. It has moved on to a 23-year-old closeted “Latinx” conservative who is also a narcissist and the leader of an army of incels. Perhaps the next generation of White Nationalists will give up on the ethnostate and “politics in the grand style” and just stick to gay porn, catboys and video games?”
Painful but true. I know “leaderlessness” and “sticking to the shadows” works to some degrees but surely the main goal of WN is to avoid becoming a creed that belongs solely to troglodytes.
I know how much references to popular culture and memes are lazy and low hanging fruit, but I beg everyone’s indulgence.
This article is akin to the “Stop! Stop! He’s already dead!” Simpsons meme.
and
Richard Spencer is the real life version of Francis Buxton from “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure”. (You can’t un-see it once you have.)
Great work Mr. LeBlanc.
Richard Spencer never had the makings of a leader.
Anyone who has captained a team, led a rifle squad or managed the swing shift at a fast food restaurant could spot this after a few minutes of listening to the man. Facility with the language is necessary but not sufficient. Spencer is one of those guys who is pathologically incapable of being anything other than That Guy, i.e. a massive pain in the ass to serious people trying to do serious things.
Now that he’s made his views of us clear, I say let him slip into the wake of this thing and get on with what is to be done.
“He even talks like the guy from the B-52’s and everything.” Ha, that made me smile.
More seriously, just watching 30 minutes of VertigoPolitix videos would do so much more for white survival than listening to Spencer for five years ever could. Sigh.
Richard, over the years, has produced an enormous amount of content in the form of speeches, articles, podcasts, interviews, etc. – much of it stimulating and thought-provoking, some of it stupid and absurd (such is the fate of any true philosopher).
We all know that he has character flaws. But do you want to throw all that out over a few P.R. bumbles?
If so, the Alt/Dissedent Right deserves to lose.
LOL, nice try. Your argument is bad, but it is also moot, since he is the one who has broken with us.
The first time I heard Spencer was on a podcast he hosted with Colin Liddell and Andy Nowicki back in 2012-2013. In one episode, Spencer invited his co-hosts to talk about their philosophical path to the alt-right. Spencer went first and gave a tedious chronology of his adult life. He spoke for almost 2 hours and revealed little about the formation of his views, except that he went to Germany in 2003 or 2004 and perceived it as an ethnostate. (The notion that Germany in 2003-04 was an ethnostate would have confused his mentor Paul Gottfried, who has said that Germany is a nation plagued by guilt and self-doubt.)
He not only thought that talking about personal minutia for 2 hours would interest his listeners, he showed contempt for his co-hosts by treating their stories as uninteresting. When it came time for Nowicki and Liddell to speak, he acted like it was time to wrap things up.
But here’s the part I never understood about Spencer – he made no attempt to hide his contempt for others. He expressed his contempt for others openly, by abandoning them, ignoring them, exposing their identities (he can be heard at the 2016 NPI conference saying Millennial Woes’ Christian name before he was officially doxxed) and even (apparently) cuckolding them.
If he doesn’t like other people, fine. But since he was seeking leadership, wouldn’t it have made sense for him to hide it? It’s almost like he was on a self-destructive course and he rode it until it took him to Charlottesville. Maybe the guy is a philosophical nihilist.
Spencer is a lot like David Irving: (1) completely dependent on the opinions of others and (2) comically inept at making a good impression. The first trait is narcissism. The second springs from an inability to empathize with other human beings.
Irving is at least good at what he does…
Yes, that is a significant disanalogy. His recent book on Himmler is quite good.
There but for the grace of God ….
https://www.salon.com/2021/09/06/white-nationalist-richard-spencers-life-is-in-shambles-as-charlottesville-trial-looms-report_partner/
Spencer may be a d-bag, but what did he actually do to deserve this oppression? Speak up for white people? Surely all here can see that he has been totally railroaded. You could be a liberal Jew and recognize this massive violation of the rule of law. The government has hounded him because they don’t like whites taking their own people’s side even to the extent of merely voicing opposition to the race war that has been declared against us. This isn’t a joke; this is an outrage! Every freedom-loving American, not only prowhites, should be on Spencer’s side. Was Charlottesville illegal? No. Did Spencer personally do anything illegal? No. Why then is he in any kind of a trial? I am disgusted that no conservative or libertarian legal group has taken up his case and that of the other political dissidents being persecuted for antifa’s crimes at Charlottesville.
We are living under a kind of Soviet occupation – one whose tyranny is directed at achieving white second class citizenship, then enslavement, and finally genocide. We must ingather into “red states”, and then start the hard PR push for secession.
I have emphasized throughout my Charlottesville coverage that being an asshole is not against the law, but the strategy of the enemy is to pretend that it is, and Spencer makes it way too easy for them to pillory him and the rest of us.
Bingo.