Richard Spencer, Racist Putz, Is Having A Lousy Labor Day Weekend

Richard Spencer, the loathsome alt-right skunk best known for getting clocked in the jaw during an interview, is feeling the repercussions of his actions, according to a report published in The New York Times on Sunday. The article details how one of the central figures in recent white nationalism, who shouted “Hail Trump!” in a widely seen video as his followers made Nazi salutes, has been effectively silenced by his neighbors in Whitefish, Montana.

Spencer, who is “unable to get a table at many restaurants” according to the report, faced bipartisan pushback, led by local synagogues and human rights groups as the summer resident’s notoriety increased. Currently, Spencer, whose organization is dissolved and whose wife has divorced him, faces trial in Charlottesville, Virginia next month for his role in instigating the deadly white nationalist rally in 2017. However, the man who once lived in his mother’s $3 million summer house can not, according to the Times, afford a lawyer.

That house proved a significant turning point in the relationship between Spencer and Whitefish. According to a local realtor, Tanya Gersh, Spencer’s mother, Sherry Spencer, contacted her, dismayed over her son’s actions, wondering what to do. Gersh advised her to sell the house, donate some of the profits to a human rights charity, and publicly distance herself from her son’s statements. At first she agreed to take that path, but two weeks later an article posted to Medium attributed to Sherry Spencer (though Richard Spencer now says he wrote it, with his then-wife) accused Gersh of blackmailing her into selling the house, using the threat of protests.

This triggered Andrew Anglin, the neo-Nazi publisher of The Daily Stormer, to lead an antisemitic campaign of harassment against Gersh. Threats were made to lead a march on Whitefish, on Martin Luther King Day, that would end at Gersh’s home. (Ads for the event included images of Gersh, her son, and a Whitefish rabbi at the gates of the Auschwitz extermination camp.) Gersh later won a $14 million dollar lawsuit against Anglin, who is currently in hiding.

As the Charlottesville trial looms, Spencer will be representing himself. A previous lawyer withdrew from the case due to lack of payment. “It is very difficult for me to raise money as other citizens are able to,” Spencer said in a pretrial hearing in 2020, citing “deplatforming efforts.”

Spencer uploaded a rebuttal to the Times’s article on the blockchain-based video platform Odysee, a service where, according to an internal email leaked to The Guardian, a “Nazi that makes videos about the superiority of the white race” would not be grounds for removal.

In the 10 minute video, Spencer, who says life is too short to respond to every “hit piece,” says that the article is filled with lies and half-truths (which are “kinda worse than lies.”) Spencer is particularly angered that the Times reported that he saw Tanya Gersh on the street and ran away. He says he wouldn’t recognize her, and doesn’t run away from people. He also claimed that Gersh was the one who made the first contact to Spencer’s mother, not the other way around, and that he and his then-wife, not his mother, were the ones who wrote the Medium article that inspired Andrew Anglin.

He also says that he and his mother are not pariahs in Whitefish, he keeps a low profile, and is “simply a guy” not a “controversial, flame-throwing persona.” He added that “these events from years ago are no longer relevant.”

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