Who is Richard Spencer?

The story on me from last week’s Whitefish Pilot (Nov. 5) no doubt raised some alarms: apparently, a right-wing extremist lives in Whitefish, one who’s been arrested overseas and who berates people on chairlifts.

Half truths can be worse than lies, and I appreciate that *The Pilot* offered me the opportunity to tell my story, or at least part of it.

I’m President of The National Policy Institute, which includes Washington Summit Publishers and RadixJournal.com. We publish books and essays on culture, society, history, and science. We host periodic conferences, mostly in Washington, DC.  

NPI has never been “Montana-based” in the conventional sense. Our corporate charter is in Virginia, and we’ve never involved ourselves in Montana politics nor held a conference here—nor will we. We are, to a great extent, an international collaboration. The east coast is NPI’s natural home and that is where we are establishing a permanent facility.

What happened to us in Budapest? NPI hosted a conference on Pan-Europeanism, featuring speakers from across Europe and America. Hungary’s Prime Minister didn’t like what we had to say and officially banned the event: my colleagues and I were declared “national-security threats” and I was arrested and detained for “thought crimes.” (Ever read “Nineteen Eighty-Four”?)

False ideas don’t get banned by governments; true and powerful ones do. And I’m proud that we engaged in justified, non-violent resistance.    As for my encounter with Randy Scheunemann, I’m amazed at how this has been blown out of proportion. In his career, Randy has been directly involved with the worst foreign-policy disasters of recent memory, including the Iraq War, which wasted the lives of more than a million people.

When the fates seated me next to Randy on a chairlift, I treated him with derision. I regret being so rash; a wiser man would have remained silent. But I moved on; Randy just can’t let it go. First, there was his profane outburst at a private party; next came a whisper campaign against me and my family.

I have no interest in participating in Randy’s inane grudge match. The facts speak for themselves. And ask yourself: Is any of this really newsworthy?      

So what am I doing in Whitefish? It’s simple: I came here to get away from it all, and I’ve tried to maintain a low-key, even anonymous presence.  

What do I believe? This is easy to discover. And I encourage you to give what I write, speak about, and publish a chance. Perhaps you’ll rethink you own beliefs? Perhaps you’ll be outraged? No doubt, you’ll develop a deeper appreciation of the ideas and ideals I stand for.  

In a nutshell, my beliefs revolve around “Identity.” No man is an island, and no individual can be understood outside his extended family, his people, his culture, his civilization. And identity and diversity are among humanity’s greatest resources. Who would desire that the Native-American tribes of the Flathead abandon their spirit, their tradition, their wisdom and become interchangeable consumers of Big Macs and corn syrup? To the contrary, we hope that they become more passionately who they are, more rooted, more native.

I seek a similar awakening for men and women of European heritage. This is who I am.

— Richard Spencer, Whitefish