Seeing Richard Spencer, Peter Brimelow and Jared Taylor standing up for the so-called “alt-right” reminded us that “alt” means “old” in German!
WASHINGTON, DC – Although they were thrown out of the National Press Club on Wednesday, the organizers of what has been called an “alt-right” press conference managed to hold the event in the lounge of an historic hotel just blocks away from the White House.
The National Policy Institute (NPI) held their press conference at the Willard InterContinential, a 169-year-old hotel that every president since Franklin Pierce either stayed or visited, and where Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his famous “I Have a Dream Speech” days before his March on Washington in 1963. A crowd of reporters and supporters packed the small Peacock Lounge where the conference was held, and while some did appear to be under thirty – the general demographic of those said to be of the “alt-right” – NPI Executive Director Richard Spencer at 38 was the youngest of the three speakers, American Renaissance publisher Jared Taylor and VDARE editor Peter Brimelow being 64 and 68 respectively.
The press conference was held in response to the public reaction of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s hiring of Breitbart.com editor Stephen Bannon to head up his presidential campaign. Breitbart.com is a website that routinely promotes neo-Fascist and racist ideals that as of late have been referred to as the “alt-right”, particularly in an article published by Breitbart.com and written by Breitbart.com editor Milo Yiannopoulos, that praised this ideology. On Thursday, Yiannopoulos went even further while appearing on CNBC saying that the “alt-right” in power would be “so much fun.” After Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton gave a speech on the “alt-right”, many White Supremacists attempted to capitalize on any notoriety that might have been gained, most notably Spencer, who noted during the conference that he began to “own” the term “alternative right” after retired professor Paul Gottfried used it in a speech, even using it as the name of the blog he started with writer Colin Liddell. Spencer, Taylor and Brimelow also noted that they were supporting Trump in the presidential election,
“We are, from what we can tell, the first guests that have been censored for what is clearly ideological reasons,” Spencer told the conference regarding the cancellation at the Press Club, which has allowed NPI to hold events there three times in the past. “The National Press Club told me that they feared security, that they had to pay more security and so on and so forth. Well the fact is freedom isn’t free…Fact is if your mission statement is about free speech, then I think you can expect people to be appalled when you don’t allow us to talk.” He also spoke on his ideals which included a White imperial ethno-state that would serve as a homeland for Europeans. “It’s very similar to the idea of Zionism for Jews in the 19th century,” he said. “It’s actually very similar to the ideal of communism for the left in the 19th century. It’s not here, it’s in the future, we should dream about it.”
Brimelow said in his remarks that many of those that support their neo-Fascist views are in the mainstream of society but unlike them prefer to be hidden to avoid reprisals. “They may be your colleagues,” he said. “They may be sitting next to you in this conference, but they do not wish to show their faces. These are people with careers (and) families to support and so on and so forth. They simply can’t speak out and issue public policy and expect to go on unpunished in the land of the free.”
Taylor chose to use his time to promote his long time defense of eugenics, proclaiming that intelligence levels can be determined by races and while Asians ranked at the top, Blacks and Hispanics were genetically inferior to them and Whites. During a Q&A point in the conference, Taylor and Spencer disagreed with the role Jews would play in a European ethno-state, Taylor saying, “I don’t think that if a Jewish person identifies with the West and with Europe than that’s something that we should deny.” while Spencer suggesting that “Jews have their own identity, and they are not European” and saying so would undermine them.
All three seemed to take an ambiguous position on women in the leadership of the “alt-right”, a longstanding concern amongst White supremacists who have recognized that their numbers have been mostly aging White men. Taylor merely suggested that there were women amongst its supporters.
Among those who attended the conference was Marcus Epstein, a Korean-Jewish man who in 2009 was working as an Executive Director for organizations and PACs owned by Pat Buchanan and former congressman Tom Tancredo when he was arrested for attacking a Black woman and calling her the N-Word while in a drunken stupor in nearby Georgetown. Epstein made an Alford plea to the court, meaning he admitted guilt, but was sentenced to a probationary period after which his record was expunged.
There was some initial confusion as to how to attend the event after the Press Club closed their doors to it and NPI found another venue. Fearing a second cancellation or possible protests, the organizers had attendees visit a nearby location where they were told where the conference was being held. Two emails with differing meetup locations were sent out, however. One said attendees had to meet an NPI representative at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in West Potomac Park, a mile and a half away from the Willard, while another directed attendees to Old Ebbitt Grill, an historic restaurant just a half block from the Willard. It was there that the NPI representative actually could be found. Two Black security guards were hired for security during the event.
The next event that the National Policy Institute will have in Washington, DC will be a conference at the Ronald Reagan Building with a pre-conference event where reality show star Tila Tequila plans to make an appearance.
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