{"id":78901,"date":"2015-11-08T07:05:44","date_gmt":"2015-11-08T15:05:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=78901"},"modified":"2015-11-08T07:05:44","modified_gmt":"2015-11-08T15:05:44","slug":"daily-beast-inside-the-white-supremacists-halloween-bash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=78901","title":{"rendered":"Daily Beast: Inside the White Supremacists\u2019 Halloween Bash"},"content":{"rendered":"

From the Daily Beast<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Two blocks from the White House, members of America\u2019s white nationalist movement gathered over the weekend to debate whether Jews are white, how the country could be divided along racial lines\u2014and whether Trump is a savior.
\nIt was something everyone in the room had clearly put a lot of thought into: Are Jews white?<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s an interesting question,\u201d replied Richard Spencer, the 37-year-old University of Virginia grad and former journalist who\u2019s become the de facto leader of America\u2019s white nationalist movement. \u201cI would say Jews are Jews.\u201d<\/p>\n

Spencer is the president of the National Policy Institute, a think tank \u201cdedicated to the heritage, identity, and future of European people in the United States and around the world.\u201d And this was the NPI\u2019s big shindig, its biennial Halloween conference in the heart of downtown Washington, D.C. This year, it was held at the National Press Club, just two blocks from the White House, where the nation\u2019s first black president resides.<\/p>\n

Spencer tried to phrase his thoughts on the whiteness of Jewish people carefully. \u201cThe Jews exist precisely because they were apart,\u201d he said. \u201cPrecisely because they had a sense of apartness\u2014perhaps you could say a little bit of paranoia, about trying to stay away. That\u2019s a clear aspect of Jewish\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

Then he caught himself. Jewish paranoia is an old anti-Semitic trope, and Spencer didn\u2019t want to come across to the press like some old Nazi. He\u2019s young and articulate and handsome in a generic way, a bit like a local TV weatherman. His aim is to give fascism a human face.<\/p>\n

\u201cPlease don\u2019t quote \u2018paranoia,\u2019\u201d he said with a nervous smile, as he glared at the three journalists who showed up at his press conference Saturday afternoon.<\/p>\n

It has been a big year for Spencer and company, who said the Washington conference drew its biggest crowd ever. About 175 people were in attendance, almost all of them men and, according to Spencer\u2019s estimate, roughly half of them under 35.<\/p>\n

\u201cBefore, I felt like I knew everyone in the room,\u201d Spencer said. \u201cI knew most editors of everything. We went to cocktail parties together.\u201d Now, he said, his ideas are everywhere. \u201cI can\u2019t keep up with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Part of the reason why, in Spencer\u2019s words, his views are \u201cmetastasizing\u201d is Donald Trump, whom Spencer described as an \u201cicebreaker\u201d for the white nationalist (or, to use his preferred label, \u201cidentitarian\u201d) cause.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think Donald Trump does have something to do with it,\u201d said Spencer, who claims he doesn\u2019t vote. \u201cTo be honest, I\u2019m rather skeptical that he\u2019s going to, by the power of his negotiation ability, make America great again.<\/p>\n

\u201cHowever, what I think he\u2019s done is that he\u2019s delegitimized\u2014and I think he\u2019s to a degree he\u2019s humiliated\u2014mainstream conservatives, the elite of the GOP, and certainly the kind of fuddy-duddy conservative movement types, the National Review. He\u2019s delegitimized them, he\u2019s humiliated them, and I think that opens a space for someone else\u2026 it\u2019s not so much Trump per se. It\u2019s not like we think he\u2019s going to save the world. It\u2019s like we finally felt like we\u2019re breaking through, that something\u2019s breaking out, and what comes after Trump is going to be interesting.\u201d<\/p>\n

White nationalists like Spencer insist that, unlike other and previous racists, they are not motivated by hate. They don\u2019t wear brownshirts or Klan robes. They are not violent. But they do look forward to the eventual dissolution of the United States and the creation of a new all-white republic, which explains their fascination with who is and who is not Caucasian. And to bring that new country into existence, explained former Klan lawyer Sam Dickson, a speaker at the conference, America needs is its own Mikhail Gorbachev.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From the Daily Beast: Two blocks from the White House, members of America\u2019s white nationalist movement gathered over the weekend to debate whether Jews are white, how the country could be divided along racial lines\u2014and whether Trump is a savior. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29615],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78901","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nationalism"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=78901"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78901\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78902,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78901\/revisions\/78902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=78901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=78901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=78901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}