A group of white nationalists praised President-elect Donald Trump in Washington D.C. over the weekend with Nazi salutes and shouting ‘hail Trump!’
During a meeting of the National Policy Institute (NPI), the think tank of the so-called Alt-Right movement, Richard Spencer addressed the gathering by praising Trump.
Monthly magazine The Atlantic released video purportedly recorded during the annual conference showing members raising the arms in the air in an apparent Nazi salute.
“Hail Trump, hail our people, hail victory!” the NPI head said addressing the crowd.
Video shows audience members rising from their seats, cheering Spencer while saluting the air.
“No one will honour us for losing gracefully. No one mourns the great crimes committed against us. For us it is conquer or die,” Spencer said in the edited video. “The mainstream media, or perhaps we should refer to them in the original German, lugenpresse.
WATCH: Some leaders of the Alt-right movement say they are gaining momentum with the election of Donald Trump as president
“It’s not just that they are leftist and cucks. It’s not just that many are genuinely stupid. Indeed, one wonders if these people are people at all. Or instead, soulless golem, animated by some dark power to repeat whatever talking point John Oliver stated the night before.” Spencer told the crowd.
Speaking with NBC News on Monday, Spencer said his statements were meant to be “ironic.”
“There’s an ironic exuberance to it all,” Spencer told NBC. “I think that’s … one of the things that makes the alt-right fun, is that we’re willing to do things that are a bit cheeky.”
As Reuters reports, protesters gathered outside of the building blocking traffic to express their outrage at the annual gathering of NPI members, which includes neo-Nazis, white supremacists and anti-Semites.
The agenda of the National Policy Institute’s Saturday meeting included a breakdown of the 2016 election and plans for the growth of the alt-right.
The U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington condemned the meeting and hateful rhetoric at the conference, saying Spencer’s comments “closely echoes Adolf Hitler’s view of Jews and that history is a racial struggle for survival.”
- What is a halal mortgage? How interest-free home financing works in Canada
- Ontario doctors offer solutions to help address shortage of family physicians
- Capital gains changes are ‘really fair,’ Freeland says, as doctors cry foul
- Canada will take bigger economic hit than U.S. if Trump wins election: report
READ MORE: Twitter bans ‘alt-right’ user accounts in apparent hate speech crackdown
“He spoke in German to quote Nazi propaganda and refer to the mainstream media. He implied that the media was protecting Jewish interests and said, ‘One wonders if these people are people at all?’ He said that America belongs to white people,” the Holocaust Museum said in a statement. “The Holocaust did not begin with killing; it began with words. The Museum calls on all American citizens, our religious and civic leaders, and the leadership of all branches of the government to confront racist thinking and divisive hateful speech. “
As the Associated Press reports, Bryan Lanza, a spokesperson of Trump’s transition team, issued a statement denouncing the hate speech.
“President-elect Trump has continued to denounce racism of any kind and he was elected because he will be a leader for every American. To think otherwise is a complete misrepresentation of the movement that united Americans from all backgrounds.”
Last week, in an apparent crackdown on hate speech on social media, Twitter suspended several accounts of members of the so-called Alt-Right, including Spencer’s and accounts for the NPI.
-with a file from the Associated Press
Comments