The Trials and Tribulations of the Fourth (?) Reich

 

Good times! This was Richard B. Spencer, a neo-Nazi "alt-right" leader, a few days after Trump's election (Nov. 19, 2016) at a fellow-traveller (Trumpist) rally in Washington:

The inflammatory nature of that gig above caused the following to happen, pretty much in this order:

1. Whitefish, Montana, where Richard Spencer lives in his mother's house and where there's a sizable Jewish citizenry, erupted in protest. Residents began discussing a rally in front of a downtown commercial building owned by Mr. Spencer’s mother, Sherry.

2. Either Sherry Spencer called her, or real estate agent Tanya Gersh called Sherry, but both women agree that Tanya agreed to list the business for sale to relieve the pressure on Mrs. Spencer. Mrs. Spencer later claimed in a published article that Tanya Gersh used the threat of protests to blackmail her into selling. Gersh became the target of an organized anti-Semitic hate campaign, which in its turn was organized by another Nazi alt-right leader, Andrew Anglin of the Daily Stormer. Anglin exhorted his “fam” online to “TAKE ACTION” to defend Spencer. He shared personal information and the social media accounts of Gersh and her family, including her son, then 12. A post in which Anglin encouraged his followers to “stop by and tell her in person what you think of her actions” was the first of some 30 articles he published targeting the Gersh family and the Jewish community in Whitefish. 

3. Mrs. Spencer's son Richard (see above) admits that he wrote the editorial that Mrs. Spencer published attacking Tanya Gersh.

4. 2017. Tanya Gersh files suit against Andrew Anglin in U.S. District Court in Montana. In 2019, she wins $14 million in damages. A team of lawyers is still searching for Anglin and his assets.

5. Nazi Editor Andrew Anglin uses his Daily Stormer to announce and promote a big new alt-right march, which intends to end at the Gersh home in Whitefish, scheduled for Martin Luther King Day, January 2017.

Richard B. Spencer.
Photo Alex Wroblewski for The New York Times

6. As tensions rose in Whitefish, Richard Spencer and both his parents made public statements distancing themselves from the march and from Andrew Anglin. Behind the scenes, the police and the federal authorities readied themselves for a potentially violent event.

7. Whitefish rallied around the Gersh family. “There were menorahs in every window in Whitefish,” Ms. Gersh said. An anti-hate rally drew 600 participants in zero-degree weather. On the eve of the neo-Nazi march, Rabbi Francine Roston organized a chicken and matzo ball soup get-together for 350 people at the middle school in Whitefish, in a demonstration of unity and appreciation. (NYTimes)

8. Not a single neo-Nazi showed up in Whitefish on Martin Luther King Day, January 18, 2017.

9. According to residents in Whitefish that the NYTimes interviewed, Richard B. Spencer is now an outcast there, unable to get a table at many of its restaurants. His organization, the National Policy Institute, has dissolved. "Meanwhile, his wife has divorced him, and he is facing trial next month in Charlottesville, Va., over his role in the deadly 2017 neo-Nazi march there, but says he cannot afford a lawyer."

The Upcoming Trial in Charlottesville

Both Richard Spencer and Andrew Anglin (along with many others) are defendants in Sines v. Kessler, which goes to court in Charlottesville on Oct. 25. A group of victims and counterprotesters filed suit in Federal court against people and groups involved in the “Unite the Right” rally, August 11-12, 2017, after a neo-Nazi plowed his car into a crowd of counterprotesters, killing Heather Heyer, 32, and injuring at least 19 others.

Spencer's lawyer in the Charlottesville case withdrew as counsel last year. He said he hadn't been paid. Spencer is now representing himself.

Separately, in May, a federal judge in Ohio ordered Spencer’s National Policy Institute to pay $2.4 million to William Burke, a counterprotester who was severely injured in Charlottesville.

Trump and History

To cut to the chase: Trump knows as much about history as a dog knows his father.

In the statement Trump read aloud on Saturday about the violence in Charlottesville (a part of it not usually replayed on TV news), he said "We must ... cherish our history." That's an interesting line, as it shows up all the time as camouflage on the Web and elsewhere: "We're just celebrating white heritage. We're just honoring history." Well, particularly, the specific history of pain and loss of property by Civil War Americans defending their right to own and sweat human beings for a profit. 

L to R: Trump, Bannon, Gorka, Miller

Josh Marshall asked a crucial question yesterday: Who wrote that statement about "cherishing history" for Trump. He didn't write it himself. He can't write. He can barely read.

Was it White House adviser Sebastian Gorka, who reportedly has Trump's ear as some kind of international sage. Very recent headline about Gorka: "White House Aide Says People Should Stop Criticizing White Supremacists So Much."

Or was it NortoriousSB, Stephen Bannon? Everybody knows his fondness and nurturing care for the "Alt-Right."

Or was the author the other Stephen? Stephen Miller, the man who wrote Trump's Inauguration speech ("Darkness Falls") and the subsequent Trump Anti-Immigration Presidential Order that crashed. This Steve hung out at Duke University not long ago with Richard B. Spencer, the now-president of the National Policy Institute, a white nationalist think tank. Richard Spencer's big media moment came soon after the election of Trump and in a Washington venue to boot: "At a National Policy Institute conference, [Spencer] quoted from Nazi propaganda and denounced Jews. In response to his 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. Spencer has also refused to denounce Adolf Hitler."

Jeffrey C. Billman, in The Independent Weekly, threw down the gauntlet to a major political party that is now left holding the coats of resurgent white supremacists:

At minimum, every decent Republican—looking at you, Tillis and Burr—should be demanding that Trump immediately fire Gorka, Miller, and Bannon .... In any normal administration, Republican or Democrat, [people] half that repugnant would have been prevented from getting anywhere near the Oval Office. In Trump’s, they’re top advisers.

History, who hasn't been introduced yet to Mr. Trump, will not be kind in telling this tale of a bad seed moving into the White House.

The American Nazi Movement in the Era of Trump

What is the alt-right? Above all, it's a harmless-sounding euphemism for "white nationalism." What is white nationalism? What follows is its most recent and most joyous blossoming on American soil.

Last Saturday in Washington, D.C., the alt-right held an all-day celebration of Donald Trump's election. White nationalists have embraced Trump, and Trump has embraced them back, naming the movement's number one publisher, Steve Bannon, as his right-hand man (so to speak).

Richard B. Spencer

A man named Richard B. Spencer both coined the term "alt-right" and is currently president of the organization spreading its doctrine, the National Policy Institute.

At the conclusion of Saturday's pep rally for Trump in the Ronald Reagan Building and National Trade Center on Pennsylvania Avenue, Spencer said and did this:

Mr. Spencer’s after-dinner speech began with a polemic against the “mainstream media,” before he briefly paused. “Perhaps we should refer to them in the original German?” he said.

The audience immediately screamed back, “Lügenpresse,” reviving a Nazi-era word that means “lying press.”

Mr. Spencer suggested that the news media had been critical of Mr. Trump throughout the campaign in order to protect Jewish interests. He mused about the political commentators who gave Mr. Trump little chance of winning.

“One wonders if these people are people at all, or instead soulless golem,” he said, referring to a Jewish fable about the golem, a clay giant that a rabbi brings to life to protect the Jews....

As he finished, several audience members had their arms outstretched in a Nazi salute. When Mr. Spencer, or perhaps another person standing near him at the front of the room — it was not clear who — shouted, “Heil the people! Heil victory,” the room shouted it back.

If this doesn't shoot shards of ice into the chambers of your beating heart, then you either don't know history or don't care what Donald Trump is now mid-wifing into the heart of the American democracy.