Buzzfeed News: White Nationalist Richard Spencer Said In A Text Message He Was Preparing For “IRL War” Before The Deadly Charlottesville Rally

By Christopher Miller, Buzzfeed News. Read the full article here. 

Richard Spencer, the one-time national leader of the alt-right movement who headed a Washington, DC, “think tank” promoting his racist ideology, strode confidently to the witness stand in the Charlottesville federal court Thursday morning.

By lunchtime, Spencer would become frazzled and irritated as an attorney attempted to undress his suit-and-tie brand of white nationalism and expose him as a violent racist who behind closed doors worshipped Adolf Hitler, launched into antisemitic tirades, and was bent on sparking a “bloody and terrible” race war to create an all-white “ethnostate.”

He was the latest person to testify in the high-profile civil trial that will decide whether a conspiracy to commit racially motivated violence existed among 24 white supremacists — including Spencer — who organized the deadly “Unite the Right” rally on Aug. 11–12, 2017. They are being sued under the 150-year-old Ku Klux Klan Act by nine plaintiffs, who are seeking not only damages for their personal injuries but to bankrupt and dismantle the white supremacists’ organizations.

Over the course of hours of direct examination, Michael Bloch, the plaintiffs’ attorney, stripped away the polished veneer that Spencer, whom the Southern Poverty Law Center has called “a kind of professional racist in khakis,” typically presents. Under questioning, Spencer, who was once punched in the face in a viral video that sparked widespread conversation on the ethics of punching Nazis, discussed a report he authored that focused on the bogus claim that Black people are intellectually inferior to white people. Spencer also admitted to using hate speech in private while at his apartment, which other white supremacists had dubbed the “fash loft”; he confirmed that “fash” in that context meant “fascist.”

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