White Nationalist at CPAC Doesn’t Fit In

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Richard Spencer, executive director of the National Policy Institute, an organization that seeks to foster a community of intellectual white nationalists and publishes books such as “Perils of Diversity,” purchased his own pass to CPAC. Yet, he has noticed that even many of the GOP’s brightest oratory stars like Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, have failed to fire him up. Cruz, he says, is “really using white angst” for his own “career advancement.”

Spencer, who once worked as an editor at the American Conservative, has evolved his views over the years. Today, he likes to imagine a future “ethnostate” where whites would establish their own homeland devoid of ethnic diversity. That has made some of the panel discussions about expanding the GOP’s big tent at CPAC problematic for him. During one presentation, Spencer said his questions about whether it was morally acceptable to prefer one’s own race were rejected.

“We have all these precedents within our history of immigration restriction and restrictions to Northern Europeans,” Spencer said. “We used to think of ourselves as an extended family and a nation and that should be the natural position for conservatives, but they did not like it. They were [all] ‘those laws were reprehensible.’”

But Spencer says he is confident there are plenty of folks at CPAC who sympathize with his cause. He’s even hoping to do a little recruiting. Although, he notes, he doesn’t have anything as official as an exhibition booth. Instead, Spencer will host his own “unconference” Friday evening, an off-the-record dinner for roughly 40 people who support his cause.

“I won’t reveal their identities, but we have many moles in the system,” Spencer says. “A lot of them live in D.C.”

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