Whitefish pushes back against alt-right leader Spencer

[Ptah]

http://helenair.com/news/state-and-regional/whitefish-pushes-back-against-alt-right-leader-spencer/article_4afeb21d-2a8c-5d2a-a702-9505f79155e5.html

WHITEFISH -- An anti-discrimination group took a step Friday to distance Whitefish from Richard Spencer, at the same time Spencer told the Missoulian he would probably be putting some distance between himself and the ski resort community.

The white nationalist and alt-right movement leader most recently made national news last weekend with shouts of “Hail Trump! Hail our people! Hail victory!” as he and his followers -- some of whom responded with Nazi-like salutes -- celebrated, in Washington, D.C., the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States.

Trump disavowed their support afterward.

Spencer, president of a white supremacist think tank called the National Policy Institute, is often identified in news stories as a resident, or part-time resident, of Whitefish.

“We want to get the message out that we don’t embrace his rhetoric,” Whitefish Mayor John Muhlfeld said after Love Lives Here distributed a news release designed to “counteract the Richard Spencer news coverage and communicate that the community of Whitefish does not ascribe to his views.”

[mahatmakanejeeves]

1. Gee, he has such excellent taste.

Meet the White Nationalist Trying To Ride The Trump Train to Lasting Power

Alt-right architect Richard Spencer aims to make racism cool again.

Josh Harkinson Oct. 27, 2016 5:00 AM

UPDATE: Several weeks after this story published in October, Spencer gave a triumphant speech at a conference in Washington describing America as a "white country" and proclaiming, "Hail Trump, hail our people, hail victory!" He was met with cheers and Nazi salutes. Read more in our investigation of how the white nationalist movement capitalized on the Trump campaign.

Richard Spencer uses chopsticks to deftly pluck slivers of togarashi-crusted ahi from a rectangular plate. He is sitting in the Continental-style lounge of the Firebrand Hotel, near his home in the upscale resort town of Whitefish, Montana, discussing a subject not typically broached in polite company. "Race is something between a breed and an actual species," he says, likening the differences between whites and people of color to those between golden retrievers and basset hounds. "It's that powerful."

We are well into our third round of Arrogant Frog, a merlot that Spencer chose because its name reminds him of Pepe, the cartoon frog commandeered as a mascot by the "alt-right" movement that has been thrust from the shadows by Donald Trump's presidential campaign. Spencer says Pepe could also be seen as the reincarnation of an ancient Egyptian frog deity, Kek: "He is basically using the alt-right to unleash chaos and change the world," he says, looking slightly annoyed when I crack a smile. "You might say, 'Wow,' but this is literally how religions arise."

If Pepe is the alt-right's god, then Spencer is its self-styled prophet. A 38-year-old Duke Ph.D. dropout who sometimes resides in a Bavarian-style mansion at the edge of a ski slope, he has for years been quite literally shouting into the wilderness, proclaiming to anyone who will listen that the alt-right, whose name he coined in 2008, is the only political movement that really gives a damn about white Americans. In Spencer's view, if you aren't a white American, that's fine—but you should leave.